The Indie Travel Challenge, week 4: Winter Getaways

                                                           
It's week number 4 of the Indie Travel Challenge, and I have to say that this week's topic couldn't be more appopriate. The good folks at Boots'n'all want us to talk about our dream winter destinations. You can see the prompt here.

Saturday night I cam back from a 3 day mini vacation to Leukerbad, in the Valais canton in Switzerland. It was one of my 2012 travel resolutions to see more of the country I live in and going on this trip showed me how much I had ben missing. Switzerland is tiny, but is also very diverse in landscape, language, culture and food. In Tessin, where I live, we have a fiarly mild climate, everyone speaks Italian and things aren't as organized and rigis as one might think. Only two hours away, though, Leukerbad folks speak French and German, the cuisine is definitely not ass-friendly and the Alps, which I see from a distance here on lake Lugano, are so close and beautiful, they take your breath away.

I traveled there by train -total travel time 4 hours and 20 minutes- and was definitely happy not to have to deal with having a car there. It's not a car friendly village, unless you have a 4x4 with snow tires. I was greeted by a gorgeous blue ski and 29°F, perfect weather for a little exploring and working up an appetite. You can see my rendition of rösti, the Valais "national" dish, here.



View from the Alpentherme pools

After lunch it was thermal baths time. Leukerbad is famous for its hot springs and, even more, for the amazing Alpentherme, a complex that features indoors and outdoors hot water pools, saunas, steam baths and everything else your heart might desire. I went there both on Thursday and on Friday, after skiing which was heavenly. The best part? The 100°F outddors pool you can reach from inside, with a view of the Alps and massage jets. A 5 hour pass that includes access to all areas of the complex is 39 CHF, about 45 dollars. a little steep, but worth every penny. 

 Leukerbad also rocks because of its beautiful ski slopes. I spent Friday skiing at the Torrent station, at about 8900 feet. The weather, again, was wonderful, so skiing was even more enjoyable. Not to mention how enjoyable it was to stop at a bar at 8000 feet and drink a cold beer on the terrace, with my face in the sun.

I was lucky enough to see an abundant snowfall on Friday night, after I was done skiing. And Saturday morning, it was still snowing as I woke up. I lingered in bed, under the comforter, watching the snow fall out of the window. It was quiet and peaceful and beautiful, all at the same time. It reminded me of similar mornings back in the 90s, when my parents still had an apartement in Val Gardena, in the Italian Alps. It's alwasy nice to time travel while you are traveling. It made me feel like an 8th grader again, wishing the weather would turn so bad it would keep me from going back home.

Too bad it didn't happen. Not then, not now.

Wordless Wednesday: Tate Modern, London

London in pictures, day 3

Lately I've become a huge fan of public transportation. Not so much where I live, since Bissone is not exactly very well connected to the rest of the world via public transportation, but when I go elsewhere I'm very happy to abandon my car and use trains, buses and subways. In London, especially, I took advantage of its awesome public transportation system by purchasing an Oyter card, on which I loaded 7 days of unlimited travel for 29 pounds. It may seem a lot, but it really isn't. The Tube rocks and so do duble decker buses, although on my first day I managed to piss off a driver for being impatient. Gotta love that.

After a brief visit to the outside of St. Paul Cathedral (I would have had to shell out 14 pounds to get in... are they insane?!?) I walked across the Millenium Bridge to reach the South bank, where Tate Modern is located. As most museums in London it's free, which is pretty amazing if you think about it. The art inside is the kind of art that one can only describe as kind of crazy, but so cool it deserves a post on its own... so stay tuned for that. 

In the aftenoon I visited another great museum, the British Museum. Again, it was free, and the art there is definitely more conventional, ranging from ancient Egypt's Rosetta Stone to more modern masterpieces from all over the world.

I had some time to kill before dinner so I walked around, stopping in a pub every once in a while to rest and recharge (and drink beer, of course)

At night we took it is. I showed up at the pub where my friend was just in time for the kitchen to be closed, so we ended up cooking at his place. I made pasta, so there was no weird both cubes involved ;-)

The Indie travel Challenge, week 3: "Learning through travel"

                                       

Travel is learning. If one travels and manages not to learn anything, I suspect he or she could very well be braindead. I mean, how can you not absorb everything that is new and different around you? Art, language, food, traditions. You name it. One of the most exciting aspects of traveling is meeting different people, who live in ways that are foreign to us for reasons that are part of a history that is not our own.

Week 3 of the Indie Travel Challenge deals with this. Learning and traveling. Except for when i attended summer school to learn English in California (every year from 1992 to 1998) I have never really taken classes while abroad, but that doesn't mean that I haven't learned a lot while traveling. i guess I'm just not much into taking organized classes while I'm on vacation. My bad. I'm sure that if I had taken, let's say, some cooking classes while abroad I would have learned to cook the same recipes I know how to cook now, but without all the trial and error.

One thing, though, I have learned by traveling, and that is appreciating art. When i was in high school Art History was possibily one of my least favorite subjects. Watching works of art printed in a book isn't that exciting and we were never taken to any museums, despite the fact my school was across the street from the church where Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper is. I know, I know. Terrible.
Anyhow, I had to learn to love art as an adult, by browsing art museums on my own, without the aid of an art expert. Sure, I'd probably learn even more if I had someone telling me about focus and composition and the likes, but would I enjoy, and therefore learn, from the experience that much? Probably not.

So alone I go to museums of all kinds and I let the art speak to me. If the art in question doesn't, well, no biggie. Not all art can move us, which is what makes art so interesting. For it to arise my interest, it has to surprise me, amaze me, even shock me. Or, some other times, to make me discovere that even a mirror placed on wall of a museum can surprise us, ^making us realize that us, too, are works of art.

Self portrait, Tate Modern, London.
January 2012

London in pictures, day 2

My second day in London was awesome. Filippo had the day off, so we got to hang out together all day, which is always awesome. We dedicated the afternoon to the exploation of one of my favorite neighborhoods in London: Notting Hill. I hated the movie, but absolutely love the streets and stores and market stalls you find there. It made me wish I could ship a crate of furniture, books and knick knacks back to Switzerland, but since I couldn't I had to restrain my self and refrain from buying everything I saw.

It was hard. It was very hard.

 I mean, how can you walk into Alice's and not buy an old wooden coffee table you absolutely have no room for or a trunk that will only set you back 300 dollars or so? I didn't actually buy any of the above, but had I been there by car I would have. So, good thing I was traveling by train, I guess.

 Only a few doors down Portobello road I found another store that me want to move to London instantly. It's called Books for cooks and, you've guessed, only sells cookbooks. Again, I had to refrain from buying everything in there and my heart ached for all my wonderful cookbooks I've left behind in Florida. I know I'd never have the time to use of all them, but it's a collection. It exists purely for the purpose of pleasing me, no matter how useless and bulky a collection it may seem. And, as collections go, actually, it's far more useful than others. Stamps, for instance. Or coins.

I manged to leave the store with only one purchase, a British food book called, well, British Food, which I selected both because I thought it would have been dumb to by an Italian cookbook in London and because it was fairly small. I could have (and would have) spent the whole afternoon there, but Filippo was fidgeting, so I figured that a half hour was enough for him. The poor guy was already putting up with my obsession to find a grey coat (which I didn't find, by the way), so I decided to go easy on him with the cookbook shopping.

 We then kept walking around Portobello road, which is really as charming as in the movies, full of little quirky details and even quirkier little stores.

 On the way back we stopped in a store that sold funky t-shirts and, I was hoping, grey coats. Although I didn't fiond the damn coat, I made friends with the store cat, who hang out by the cash register, sleeping on piles of t-shirts and being overall one of the friendliest cats ever.

For dinner we decided to stay home since we kind of already had a bad lunch experience invoving a pub, a microwaved burger and a Brooke Shields sighting. Filippo asked me to make risotto and I obliged. A tiny catch: they were out of Knorr beef broth cubes, so I had to use Oxo's version. I was terrified. I mean, look at the freakin' box, for crying out loud. The broth turned out to be extremly dark and not too flavorful, but overall the ristto was good, if maybe a little off colorwise.

London in pictures, day 1

Welcome to London! First off, London has always been one of my favorite cities in the world. When I was 5 my dad used to work there, so my mom and I would go there at least once a month. And I loved it already. 25 years later, I still love it. Not to mention that now I can also enjoy the beer... so what's not lo like?

 

Anyway, I started off my exploration in Trafalgar Square. The weather was chilly but sunny, so it was really pleasant walking around, looking at Admiral Nelson, on top of his column, staring into the distance. It was also a Tuesday morning, so the city wasn't packed with other tourists, which is always nice. Gives you the feeling that you have more space to move and take pictures and take in the views without feeling rushed.

 

On my way to Covent Garden I couldn't resist taking this picture of two quintessential icons: the London tube sign and the red, British phone booths. 

 

Coven Garden itself is kind of a huge tourist trap, with expensive stores and even more expensive food. But it's worth checking out, if only to take a couple of pictures. But then, of course, is better to go shopping and dining elsewhere.

 Before lunch I also had to take one of my infamous self-shots in front of the National Gallery. Some guy asked me if I wanted my picture taken the proper way, and I let him, but then deleted the pic he took and kept my crappy one. It's a tradition, what can I say?

 I made sure to be in Chinatown around lunch time. I browsed the streets, taking in the sweet and spicy fragrance of Asian food wafting through the air, then decided to eat at a wonderfully depressing Vietnamese restaurant that was called, this is truly awesome, "Vietnamese Restaurant". Sheer genius, right? And the pho!! Oh, the pho was divine. No other words to describe it. The broth had an intensity and a depth of flavor you don't encounter everywhere. That and a pint of beer sent me to lunch heaven.

 I then made the HUGE mistake of walking down Oxford Street. I had been so good at not buying stuff while I was in Paris, but all of the sudden I turned into a crazed shopping Godzilla. I kid you not. Between Primark, Urban Outfitters and Pull&Bear I bought tons of clothes I didn't need. The good thing is, I now own really cool clothes nobody else is wearing around here. Totally worth it, if you ask me. So after all that walking and shopping I had to stop at a pub and drink a couple of pints to regain my strength. I love pubs and I love beer, so I really enjoyed my down time, waiting for my friend Filippo to be done with work so we could go out to dinner.

I met him at the Angel tube station and we walked to a Turkish restaurant nearby, called "Cappadocia". As we often do when we are together we ordered too much food. An appetizer sample platter that featured everything from hummus to eggplant dip, and then a main course each —chicken in sauce for him and spicy Turkish sausage for him. Delicious. The only drawback was that it was a little bit difficult to digest, so we ended up having weird dreams all night. Oh well. A little price to pay, I say. 

Stay tuned!

More London pictures are coming in the next few days!

The Indie Travel Challenge, week 2: "What is an indie traveler?"

So here we are. Week two of the indie travel challenge. This week's prompt is a question I knew would arrive sooner or later, but I was hoping it would arrive later rather than sooner. The question is: what is an indie traveler? And my problem with it is: why do we always feel the need to define everything?

Defining an indie traveler is pretty mucg impossible, in my humble opinion. There are as many types of indie travelers as there are travelers. So who am I to say that I'm indie and someone else is not?

Of course there are those who consider themselves better than most because they go to the most exotic, hard to reach, unknown spots of the world and kind of look down at anyone who would get excited about going to any place where you can get a hot shower and a decent bed. And there are also those who would never leave the beaten path, who would never try whatever food the locals eat (unless they are in Italy or France, that is) and are afraid of getting robbed pretty much everywhere.

Those, of course, are extremes. Then there's a whole bunch of us who are somewhere in between. Who like nice hotels and crowded hostels just the same, who like to explore less traveled by destinations, but won't disdain a touristy museum or monument. We would love to take a whole year off and go travel around the world, but for a number of different reasons -both financial and personal- we just can't do that right now, so we have to travel when we have time off, or suring weekends or even explore our own town on a Saturday afternoon.

Does that make us indie travelers? I think so. Being an indie traveler is more of a state of mind rather than a collection of stamps on your passports. Is that need to go and see what the rest of the world is like, no matter if the rest of the world is 10 or 1000 miles away.

Paris in pictures, day 3

My third, and last, day in Paris was packed with walking and sightseeing. The weather was fairly nice and I decided to walk from the Latin Quarter to the Eiffel Tower. Normally it's a 5 kilometer walk, but I kind of zigzaged around, making it almost a 9 kilometer affair. Not that I'm complaining. I had to burn off some of the calories I had ingested the previous day, after all.

 What I love the best about wandering around big cities, is that you never know what awesome little (or big) view awaits for you around the corner. I literally took hundreds of pictures of random windows and doors, which are my latest obsession. Don't ask why. It's something I've devolped last summer in Greece and I just can't stop.

 I walked and walked and walked trying to avoid the largest streets and concetrating on the little allways and courts.

 ...and then, when I started to feel hungry, I dove into a little brasserie by the Musèe d'Orsay and ordered one of my favorite dishes: entrecôte with french fries. As it always is, it was delicious and very satisfying. It would have probably been even better with a glass of red wine, but I was so freaking thirsty, only beer sounded good.

 After lunch I finally reached my destination, where I took this self-portrait. One thing about traveling alone is that you can't count on someone taking pictures of you.

And that same night I was off. I went to the Gare du Nord where I boarded the Eurostar to London. I was very excited, both because I had never been in an underwater train tunnel and because I hadn't been in London since January of 1998. What adventures laid ahead?

If you want to see the whole picture album go here (and no, you don't need to be on Facebook to see it):

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150483043670186.367880.515600185&type=1&l=c383b0f5fc

Paris in pictures, day 2

My second day in Paris was a wonderful, family-oriented day. Not my family, of course. I spent the day with my friend Virginie's family, celebrating her birthday. It was really great to spend time in their Montmartre apartment, sipping wine and eating homemade food.

 We started off with some salami I brought as a gift. When I bought it in a boulangerie that morning, I was a little perplexed because it felt too hard, but decided to buy two anyway because they were all like that. I figured that showing up empty handed would be far worse than showing up with salami that is a little too hard. I picked an Italian one with black truffles and a smoked one from Corsica. They were both really good and not hard at all. Turns out they were just cold from being near the fridge in the store. I guess I could have figured that out, right? 

Then there were oysters. Many, many, delicious oysters to be eaten with a spash of lemon juice over buttered hazelnut bread. I had never eaten oysters like that before, but I have to say it beats the Tabasco and saltines.

We then had a pork roast with roasted winter vegetables and, after that, we indulged in a trey of cheeses. Hard to tell which one was the best. Wish my stupid camera would have had some battery left to pictures of it, but of course it didn't. Oh well. More to come, people! 

Paris in pictures, day 1

So I finally have loaded my pictures on a real computer, so I can actually post them. iPads are fun, but trying to update your blog from one is a pain in the ass.

Here are a few pictures of my first day in Paris.

I woke up after an exceptionally good night of sleep on my Milano to Paris sleeper train. I would have never dreamed a train would be so comfortable, especially since I was not traveling first class.

I had breakfast with my friend Virginie, who was kind enough to pick me up at the station in the morning. Loved the lamps in the cafe' where we drank coffee. Wished I could have some of those at home.

I walked aimlessly through the Latin Quarter, looking at cute little restaurants and taking in the atmosphere.

I visited Notre Dame, because for once in my life I found no line to get in. It was about time since I've been trying for years!

I rode the metro. It's funny how I used to hate taking the metro as a teenager, and now I could ride it all day. Probably because I now live ina place that has no metro at all.

And I made friends with Banti, my friend Annapaola's cat. He's adorable. Now that I left Paris and I'm in London I miss him already!

The Indie Travel Challenge, week 1: "Planning for 2012"

So I'm not much of a planner. Nor am I much of a resolutions person, mostly because - let's be honest - I'm horrible at keeping resolutions. Or follow through with my plans, for that matter. There is one exception, of course: travel planning. I absolutely adore travel planning. I buy Lonely Planet guide books on a whim, whenever I see them, even when I'm not planning a trip. I constantly scan the internet for insipration, as if I needed more crazy ideas running through my head. When relatives ask me what I want for Christmas or my birthday, I usually ask for train passes or more guide books or anything, really, that is travel related. It's a sickness, similar to only one other sickness that I have: cookbooks. But that's another story.

Let's focus on the traveling. And the planning. I read about the Indie Travel Challange while I was browsing the web for my upcoming Paris and London trip, and I thought it would be a fun little (errr... not so little actually) way of pushing myself both as a writer and a traveler. Ever since I moved from Florida to Switzerland I have missed writing the travel articles I used to write for the Naples Daily News, so why not taking up travel writing seriously again? After all, is only one of my two dream careers (the other one being a food writer for a large newspaper).

So here's week 1, a week about planning for 2012. After reading Boots'n'all travel resolutions for the upcoming year, I feel pretty inspired, and ready to share my list. Here's a link to their resolutions and the challenge: http://www.bootsnall.com/articles/11-12/travel-resolutions-to-keep-this-year.html

1. Speak French while I'm in paris, even though my French is poor, to say the list
2. Get lost around the little streets of Bruges, Belgium
3. Eat perfect, greasy, salty fries from a street vendor in Brusselles
4. Try a new dish I've never tried before, everywhere I go
5. Visit all cantons in Switzerland, including the one where I live, which I don't know quite as well as I'd like
6. Take a German class
7. Go to Oktoberfest
8. Buy a ticket to go to Vietnam in January 2013
9. Swim in the Blue Lagoon in Iceland
10. Blog about my travels more consistently

That's it. Well, I hope you all will follow my adventures... as I travel, eat and drink my way around Europe.

Things I loved about Zurich

                         

Rosti. What's not to love about a generous serving of shredded potatoes, hash brown style, mixed with raclette cheese and ham bits and topped with a fried egg? Swiss perfection on a plate.

                                   

Gothic cathedrals against the cloudy sky. I don't usually love cloudy skies, but the clouds I saw on my first day in Zurich where very picturesque and made everything look even prettier.

                         

Serious Christmas lights. This city doesn't mess around when it comes to Xmas decorations and lights, they are in every street and on every building...

                                     

 ...including super-cool toy store Franz Carl Weber, a multi story kid's (kid at heart) paradise filled with toys, puppets and games of all kinds.

                            

Oysters at Brasserie Lipp, a wonderful art deco restaurant with one of the biggest and best raw bars I've ever seen. The original Brasserie Lipp is in Paris, but this Swiss replica is as cool looking as the original and serves impeccable food as well.

                            

Christmas markets. I could have bought virtually everything there, although the prices where not exactly affordable. Still I found some cool little presents for my family and friends and vowed to go back next year for more.

                           

 Very cool looking bars. Case in point the Heineken New Bar opposite the Central train station. Neon lights and thousands of booze bottles neatly stocked on the walls.

                           

And speaking of drinks, hot mulled wine of course, or as they call it in Zurich, Glühwein. Throughout the city there are hundreds of little wood huts selling fragrant perfectly spiced mulled wine. The bartenders are dressed like elves and the wine is prepared in big witch-like cauldrons. How cool is that? I wondered what they do with the little huts in the summer. I'm guessing they use them to sell beer.

                                     

Fondue chinoise. One of my favorite dishes ever. There's something so satisfying about cooking your meet in hot steamy broth and then dipping it in one of the six sauces it's served with: curry, sweet and sour, garlic, cocktail, tartar and spicy tomato.