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Travel

Madrid

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Mid-March my friend Grace visited Spain from NYC. Since we graduated design school together we have made an effort meet each other usually in NYC or Columbus, but Grace has also come to Zurich a couple times and when she started planning her Spain trip, she immediately asked me if I could meet her for a weekend. We had last seen each other in Baltimore last summer for a friend’s wedding.

Weekend trips in Europe are one of my favourite ways to meet with family and friends in Europe because I get to see and experience a new place as well. I had been to Madrid before, but Kay had not and his brother is actually living there at the moment, so we were planning on taking a trip this year to visit him anyway.

While it was 26ºC the weekend before we came, it did cool down to almost the same temperature at home around 14ºC, but it was sunny at least!

Language was funny. Kay’s brother is fluent in Spanish, so he did most of the talking to waiters. Kay and his brother obviously spoke Swiss German and any time I talked to Kay’s brother alone, I also used German, but with Grace we all spoke English. She also understood some Spanish, so the whole table was a mix of Spanish, German and English at times.

Selfie time! Some of the only time I get photos with my friends… but no selfie sticks for this girl. 🙂

Brothers.

The Palacio de Cristal, which doesn’t really hold up to the Franklin Park Conservatory in my eyes. It had a really creepy art installation in it when we visited.

Streets of Madrid.

The Almudena Cathedral, which was closed when we visited.

Royal Palace of Madrid below.

The train station where Grace left from, filled with trees!

Kay also managed to get us into the business lounge on the way back, so we could fill up a bit on snacks before our flight home.

Overall it was a great weekend. We walked a TON and although it was overcast and much windier and colder on Sunday, we ate well and enjoyed the time.

Do you ever meet old friends in new places?

Travel

Travel 2015 Quick Trips

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Coming back from a three week world trip in January to grey skies in Zurich is always a bit bleak, so we didn’t waste any time planning our first weekend trips for the year. It’s time to visit some new cities!

1. Madrid

(Photo from Flickr)

A design friend is visiting Spain from NYC for a week, so we’re heading over for a weekend to visit her, another mutual friend living in Spain and Kay’s brother who is also living there at the moment. I’ve already been to Madrid when I was hosting some broadcasting Brazilians there during the 2010 UEFA Champions League final, but I didn’t see quite as much of the city as I wanted with all the broadcasting commitments, so I’m looking forward to seeing some of the important sights.

Kay has never been to Madrid and it’s been awhile since we’ve seen his brother, so he is also looking forward to the visit.

 2. Oslo

(Photo from Flickr)

Kay received an email from Scandic hotels about his points and vaguely mentioned that we could go to Oslo for Easter. We’ve already been to Stockholm and Copenhagen, so it would be another country. Then we’ll have seen most of Scandinavia.

Kay was a little surprised when I started looking for flights immediately, but ultimately I booked because I found a great deal. Normally flights over Easter weekend are 400-500chf anywhere from Switzerland, but these were around 200, which is a pretty fair price.

 3. Munich

(Photo from Flickr)

I realised that it was over 100chf cheaper to fly back from Oslo with a stop in Munich and then I thought, why not do a layover? Munich is really close to Zurich, but for all the German cities I’ve been to, I have never visited it.

Instead of spending time in the Munich airport waiting for a transfer, we’ll stop there Easter morning and spend the day there before taking the train home on Easter Monday. Since I found some supersaver tickets from SBB, it only costs us an extra 24chf to take the train home a day later.

The best part about these quick trips is that we don’t need to take any holiday for them. We are still plotting out big trips this year, so it’s nice to save up the holidays until then with these mini-trips to look forward to.

Do you ever do weekend trips in your area?

Food, Travel

Gluten-free Beijing

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Surprisingly (thankfully!), I did not get sick in Beijing. I was pretty scared that I would accidentally ingest some gluten due to the language barrier, but the Chinese note I had was SUCH A help!

We stopped at our first restaurant on the way to Forbidden City on the first day. It was a small, relatively local, if not dirty, restaurant where locals smoked inside seated at sticky tables. I ordered a simple stir fry and after handing my note to the waitress, she motioned if she could show it to the chef. They prepared my stir fry and rice with cooking oil instead of soy sauce and left the salt off, because often salt or MSG could contain traces of wheat in China  and it’s better to be safe than sorry. It was a little bland, but I was fine afterward.

Every morning we at breakfast in the French hotel chain Novotel where we stayed. The breakfast was relatively expensive, but expansive, with many gluten-free options from fresh fruit, yogurt, dried fruit, deli meat and tapas to fresh omelettes.

Since we couldn’t really find any gluten-free restaurants, we had to wing it with my note. We decided that hot pot would be a pretty easy meal to eat gluten-free, so we went for that the first evening.

The waitress did a double take when I handed her my note that basically said my insides will bleed if they feed me ANYTHING with gluten. She also wanted to take the note to the chef. It was so helpful that I had it printed on a piece of paper that people could take into kitchens.

When our hot pot arrived, it was basically just water. No bouillon or broth because everything they had would have been unsafe for me. It was a little bland at first, but as the meat cooked in the water, the flavors started tasting better. Still, it was a very low-sodium meal.

I was really intrigued by hot pot. The Swiss have adapted something really similar called Fondue Chinoise, which is basically “Chinese Fondue” and it’s boiling broth in a fondue-type pot where you can cook little pieces of meat and eat them with different sauces.

It’s a typical Swiss meal at Christmas, so it was funny to have it in China, the source of the idea! Below were the different items we put in ours: Green onions, onions, greens and meat!

The second and last night in Beijing, Kay wanted to try to get Korean BBQ because he had had it in Seoul and thought it was great.  When we arrived, they seated us and placed scores of little dishes at the table with various foods like kimchi, greens, onions, breads and sauces. Kay explained that you cook the meat on this hot grill and then eat it with all the little dishes.

The problem was that once we gave my note to the waitress and they discussed it with the kitchen, they came back and took away ALL of the little dishes. They brought back two bowls with romaine lettuce and plain salt.

No one at the Korean restaurant could speak any English, so we couldn’t really explain ourselves. They didn’t even trust us to cook our own meat, so a waitress stood there and grilled our meat for us while we ate it with the lettuce and salt. We left a little hungry.

I wanted to get bubble tea to make up for it, but our waitress was outside the restaurant at the bubble tea stand and I wasn’t sure if she was warning the bubble tea worker, but the stand was mysteriously closed for us, even though we’d gotten bubble tea from the same stand the night before.

Our flight from Beijing to Sydney with Air China was relatively uneventful, but they did manage to lose my gluten-free order so I had my first experience on a long-haul flight without a meal option.

Luckily I could still eat the salad without sauce and the fruit and my gluten-free snacks that I have brought with me for this very reason. Kay also gave me his fruit to have a little more food and I was all right without anything for breakfast besides my snacks.

Travel

World Wednesday: Beijing!

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So I’m a little overdue, considering that we visited Beijing just before Christmas. We travelled to Beijing on the way to Sydney, so with my clever flight planning, I managed to get us a direct flight from Zurich to Beijing and from Beijing to Sydney, leaving us almost three whole days in Beijing to explore.

I have to say, Beijing was awesome! We were incredibly lucky with the weather and had a great, jam-packed layover trip. I am starting to love layovers more and more. Also, we had our first private tour guide and I was surprised how happy I was that we booked it! I spent a lot of time researching the tour because I really wanted to maximize our time and make sure I saw my top picks.

See this? This is the sun rising up bright and clear while we arrived from the airport. We were SO excited how clear it was. There was almost no smog, which is apparently really lucky in Beijing.

I’m always happy whenever we travel somewhere with good weather because so often it’s rainy or cold and cloudy, but to have blue skies in Beijing just felt especially lucky. It was like an early Christmas gift!

First up on Sunday was Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City.

Mind you, blue skies does not mean that it wasn’t freezing. It was a bit colder than Zurich at the time and super windy!We got the audio guides with Forbidden City and wandered around for a few hours, but after that we got cold and wanted to head back to the hotel.

The architecture is so entirely different than what you see in Europe and some of the buildings had recently been renovated and repainted.

Also, apparently Christmas is becoming a big thing in China. They had Christmas lights and trees everywhere! It really surprised us because we thought they wouldn’t celebrate as much as Western cultures. I got my fill of holiday lights. 🙂

The next day our tour guide from Catherine Lu Tours arrived at the hotel at 8:00am with a driver to pick us up for our Great Wall tour. Our tour guide’s name was Minnie and she was so friendly! The entire way to the Great Wall she spouted out fact after fact about the Wall and the surrounding area. We ended up visiting the Mutianyu section because we heard it was less touristy and it was fairly empty on a Monday morning.

It felt a little bit like being on a school trip again, except that a private guide has your complete attention and you don’t have to fight for attention to have your questions answered. We could point to anything and Minnie would tell us whatever she knew about a certain kind of drawing, stonework, empresses, you name it!

I was like a little kid on the wall. Somehow being in Zurich at work on a Friday and then being on the Great Wall on Monday morning just seemed crazy… and the sun made me all the more ecstatic.

Tour guide bonus: They can take pictures of you whenever you want! Even Kay was humoring me to take as many as I wanted.

I’m sure the wall must be just gorgeous on a clear summer day, however rare those are. It was really warm with all the sun on the stones, but I just imagine what the hills would like like with a little more green on them.

It was also nice to be out of the city and see a bit cleaner part of Beijing. Being in the city and the surrounding area was definitely eye-opening to the reality of Chinese industry impacts.

We even saw someone collecting the famed “sewer sludge” for gutter oil from some sewers in the city. Kay showed me a Youtube video about it a few years ago and it was astonishing and sad to see things like this really happening. It makes me wonder how much of an impact do our Western needs make on countries like China.

We took a break for lunch, where Minnie helpfully ordered some gluten-free food for me with the restaurant and then we were on our way to the Summer Palace with Minnie giving us a history lesson along the way.

The summer palace was gorgeous and we had a wonderful time asking Minnie about the long gallery and how it was when Empress Dowager Cixi lived there.

Next to Kunming Lake, it was pretty cold. You can see how the water was even beginning to freeze on the surface.

Cold, but beautiful. I was impressed by China. 🙂

On the last day we took our time with breakfast and then went to see the Temple of Heaven and its gardens where locals practice Tai Chi, dance, play cards, music and other games.

Even Kay admitted that he was having a good time. Beijing surpassed all our expectations!

It might not be on my top places to live, especially when the smog started coming back on our last day and you could smell the stink of pollution, but I had a blast in Beijing and would think about visiting China again some day if it works out.

I’m also really impressed how luxurious, handy and informative it was to book a private tour and driver. We are more the DIY type of travelers, but it was really worth it to book. I can’t recommend Catherine Lu Tours enough. They were worth the cost and I would book again in a minute !

Is China on your list of countries to visit? Do you ever book private tours?

Travel

Happy New Year!

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A bit late from us, but we just got back from our crazy three week trip. Going on holiday for three weeks is definitely a luxury, but it’s sooo nice to totally forget yourself while away and completely shed all the stress of work and life back home.

I definitely have lots to share about our travels. It was an interesting trip compared to some. We enjoyed ourselves a lot, but there were a surprising amount of mishaps from small accidents to natural disasters. Australia is an exciting place! 🙂

We started the trip off right with a bottle of champagne sent from Kay’s father, but things already took a peculiar turn as soon as we were up in the air.
Kay’s father has sent us a bottle like this at the start of several SWISS flights and we’ve never had any problems, but the person in front of me decided to lean their seat back as soon as we were in the air. Now, if you ever flown Swiss economy, you might have noticed that their seats are quite close together. They might be one of the most cramped economy classes out there.

The chair back hit the bottle, which is taller than normal airline cups, and my iPad that I was watching. The iPad smacked out of its stand, the bottle fell over on us and and the champagne spilled all over Kay, his seat, my jacket and scarf, etc…while I scrambled to make sure my iPad didn’t get wet.

It ended up being a little bit of a stressful start, cleaning a sticky substance off our fresh travel clothes at the beginning of a 9 hour overnight flight, but compared to some of the things that would happen later on the trip, it was just a blip in the radar. I should have seen it as a sign of things to come! 😉

SWISS also felt bad about the person knocking our champagne over, so they brought us some extra prosecco to replace it later. (No complaints from Katie!)

What’s the worst spill you’ve encountered while flying?