A couple weeks ago, Kay got wind that one of his Brazilian friends of the family was going to be in Switzerland for the weekend and might stop by on Saturday morning.
We were planning to go to Liechtenstein for a short overnight trip that Saturday and never heard if they would come or not, but Saturday morning at 9:30am, Kay heard his phone ring and told me to get up because apparently they were almost here!!
Whoops… I quickly washed my face, brushed my teeth, and threw a bra on while thinking “Thank God I cleaned all the pantry items out of the living room the night before!” despite Kay telling me to just leave it after a lazy fondue evening.
Luciano, next to me, is an old friend of the family and he is currently studying English for one month in London. My BIL’s friend on the far right picked him up from the airport in Basel on Friday evening and spent the weekend showing him around.
It was a little sad that we did not have more notice, because we probably would have done our night in Liechtenstein another weekend, but it was still really great to finally meet Luciano. I have been Facebook friends with him for around four years since Kay and I got married, but I haven’t been back to Brazil since.
He is such a sweet, friendly guy. My Portuguese is still terrible and he was over here to learn English anyway, so we mostly spoke English and he told me some funny jokes that only make sense if you have some understanding of Portuguese and English and the mistakes that can happen.
I hope we can meet him again sooner!
After a lot of hemming and hawing, I ended up ordering the freezer myself and stayed home to have it delivered. Thank God that a) it fit in the lift and b) there was a cleaning man around to help the delivery guy unload this.
It’s a tight squeeze, but the freezer is in the left of the pantry with some of the original, taller shelving between the freezer and the back wall, with the shorter, newer shelving to the right. I could even sneak the cordless vacuum in the door frame so that it can still plug in since there is only one plug on the wall of the freezer.
I was mildly annoyed at myself that I did not realize how much shorter the new shelving would be considering we have our tall ceilings, but it has the same number of shelves as the older shelving and honestly I was in a IDGAF mood.
I believe the older shelving was from Jumbo and the newer was just from Migros DIY, but the Migros wood is much worse quality than from Jumbo. The slats are closer together on the older shelving and smoother, making it easier to store smaller bottles on the shelves.
Anyway, after assembly and putting everything back in the pantry that is not trash or to be sold, there is actually quite a lot of room in the pantry even with the addition of a huge freezer.
On the smaller wall above I still have room to sneak my cleaning mops in. I might space the cleaning products out more so that they are easier to get to individually, but this is where it’s at for now.
After the empty shelf I have cleaning cloths, food shopping bags and paper bags. Below that is cardboard recycling, bound up to go out.
Up on top I still have room for buckets and cleaning products that are too tall to fit on the shorter shelf.
With the taller shelf set between the freezer and the wall, it makes for really deep shelving. I put all the glass, metal, and PET recycling on the ground back there and hopefully it will be less annoying to deal with than our previous corner shelving, which had a lot of extra shelf legs mucking up space below.
On the upper shelves I can store electrical things we rarely get to as well as Kay’s tools.
And above are even more bags, because who has a ton of reusable bags?? This girl!
Overall, I’m really happy how everything fits in and as long as the floor remains free so I can open the door, which is likely considering Kay is gone next year, I will be a happy camper.
A few weekends ago we visited my MIL’s grave again on a beautiful autumn day. It makes me wonder what I would do if I lost Kay earlier than I would like… although I’m sure it will always be earlier than I want.
Of course it is hard to remember sometimes when I am caught up in a moment or I get upset about something, but the older I am, I do try to be more mindful and more humble. I am a work in progress, trying to let small things go and focus on the big picture.
Still wanting a nicer coffee, we stopped at 
For lunch, I was adventurous and agreed to eat at a local diner at Largo São Domingos 23, which I couldn’t get a picture of the restaurant name, but we dropped down that dark scaffolding area in the photo below and went to the restaurant with the red door.
We had to scramble a bit to get to 
It was a bit of a disappointing degustation because all the port was too quickly explained and then the guide took the bottles away with the labels and left, so we had no reference besides our quick retention skills to talk about what we were supposed to be tasting.
It was a shame because they even had the glasses set up on sheets with space for writing, so they could have easily written down what we were drinking.
We did get to sample a 20 year old tawny (if I have that right) as well as another LBV. I of course liked the most expensive one the best. 🙂
After the port, we were a little tipsy and tried to wake ourselves up with a coffee on the walk back to the bridge. Mine had a wonderful sweet cinnamon touch.
After coffee we wandered around aimlessly wondering what to do. Museums were closed, but it was not yet time for dinner and without my usual gluten free selection guide, we were again lost as we normally were on city trips pre-celiac disease.
It ended up being a pretty nice restaurant. Sure, the prices were a little more expensive than other places, but Kay thought the melon above was to die for and the restaurant was knowledgeable enough about gluten to make a special gluten free port sauce for my duck.
We also decided to sample another brand of port to help us with our decision of what to purchase at the end. 
Knowing we liked both the 20 year tawny and LBV from Ferreira, we tried the same from Graham’s and decided we liked both of them much more than the Ferreira stuff. The 20 year tawny was the better of the two and had a nice long and complex finish.
The next day we got up for breakfast again before checking out and finding that the sun was starting to peek out. We stopped for a fresh juice and coffee before tackling our day.
I had actually asked, albeit with very short notice, if there was room for dinner reservations for two at 
And it was. This meal made up for all the missed anniversaries this year. We hadn’t gotten around to eating somewhere amazing and this place really spoiled us. They altered everything to be gluten free for me if necessary.
Chef’s greetings with lobster and caviar on a macaroon base and avocado cream on what I think was a shrimp kind of cracker for me and a corn tortilla cracker for Kay.
Next was a refreshing gazpacho and molecular mozzarella to the right, paired with a white wine. I was terrible and forgot to get any of the wine names.
Below was a crispy salmon fillet sandwich with wasabi mayonnaise.
Sea bass, crustaceans & coconut served in a halved coconut.
Below then codfish swim bladder and bean stew, codfish fillet and codfish sauce. This one tasted nice and hearty, like preparing for winter.
The main was grilled and glazed sirloin, chanterelle mushrooms and barbecue sauce & oxtail stew. I think below is the oxtail stew and the next photo is the sirloin with mushrooms.
Ah, heaven!!
They also served Kay seaweed bread and another kind, while I enjoyed a nice light and fluffy gluten free bread with soft butter and olive oil.
The “pre dessert” was some kind of chocolate mousse over nuts. Kay’s probably had some gluten cookie underneath which they just replaced with nuts for me.
Actual dessert was green tea cream with lime merengue, tonka bean ice cream and iced tea.
Here was the iced tea. Funny serving. We were marveling at the interesting dishes for presenting food. Some of the plates were quite large and voluminous.
After dinner we received a selection of macaroons and chocolates. I left the crackery bits to Kay.
After dessert, we decided to try some more port again, so we splurged a bit and chose an LBV from 2010 and a 1976 vintage from Krohn.
I am not sure we could decide which one of these we liked better, but we made sure to look for something similar in the duty free section at the airport. Of course everything is more mainstream in the airport, but we had carry-on only and didn’t want to invest in shipping something home.
In the end we settled on Graham’s 20 year tawny, a white port from Graham’s, a 1998 Krohn vintage, and a Borges Porto 2010 LBV.