Author: kymdt
Photo Slideshow for Copenhagen and Amsterdam
Coast to Coast – Photo Slideshow
We’ve been trundling through our 20,000 or so photos. This is the first slideshow of our challenging and wet ride from one side of england to the other.
Coast to Coast from Kym Della-Torre on Vimeo.
Foodie Report #2
Foodie Report #2
Wow, time has flown. It is our last day of our vacation and I haven’t written a foodie report since early July. It could be because we’ve only been eating at McDonalds, Quick and Mos Burger. But that isn’t true. Rather it is because we have been rather occupied by eating good food.
He are the 2011 Vacation Foodie Awards – Part 1.
The “Oh my god do you expect me to cycle up that steep hill” award goes to the Burnside Brace Guesthouse for cooking a great FULL english breakfast. What followed was a hill that at points had a 17% gradient. Also very good breakfasts came from Lowbyer Manor Country House and Norcroft Guest House.
The “Wow, can this really be that good” award goes to the Danish Grilled Medister. Yes it is a sausage with mustard, tomato sauce, onion chips and a soft bread roll sold from vans from the side of the road. But, it is bloody good and we should bring it to Australia.
The “Home sick and two Michelin stars” award goes to The Ledbury amazing food and amazing wine everything you’d expect from two Michelin stars. It started of a little frosty at the front door but warmed up wonderfully with Luke the very engaging Aussie sommelier. He provided a wonderful wine education from around the world. I just hope to remember some of it. The Chef Brett Graham is also from Australia. (Note for David if you find your future wife in London this is the place to go to pop the question!!)
The “Sweetest town on Earth” award is jointly awarded to Paris and Tokyo. The most amazing sweet and cake shops on the planet are in these two towns. My only question is how come people in Paris and especially Tokyo are so skinny?
The “That’s not Pudding” award goes to the Brew Pub in Copenhagen. After a great meal of beer braised pork cheeks I had a pudding of summer berries. The only thing missing was the “pudding”. It was like a summer berries soup with cream. Yumm! A special mention goes to the on-venue brewed beers and the tasting flight option!
The “Most Showy Dish” award goes to Restaurant Herman for its dish of Scandinavian Shellfish and Bisque of Dried Chamomile. It was presented in amazing two level bowl. The first level emitted chamomile infused steam adding smell to the taste sensation!
… more awards to come.
Are we on a train?
At about 4:00am yesterday morning Helen and I woke up to a gentle rocking. In our half awake state it felt like we were on an overnight train. But we weren’t! It was an earthquake. The map from the Japanese Meteorological Agency shows the extent.
If you check out their site you can see many earthquakes each day in the North East.
We checked out the instructions from the hotel. They said wait for instructions over the p.a. There were none so we went back to sleep. Hotel Niwa is very new and has state of the art foundations. Check them out at http://www.hotelniwa.jp/english/info/seismically_isolated.html . The result was a gentle side to side rocking motion.
Wedding Photo Shoot
In Adelaide you may go to the Botanic Gardens or Adelaide University for your wedding photos. In Tokyo, some go to Paris!
Sheep and rain the story of our holiday.
When we planned our holiday we thought our theme would be cycling and food. We were wrong. The theme has turned out to be sheep and rain. In every country we have got wet. We are proud owners of new yellow ponchos and our umbrellas and wet weather gear have been well used. Helen went so far as to buy a new cycling jacket.
Golly, there are a lot of sheep in the north of England. But even in Provence there are a lot of sheep. You can see Helen’s magnetic personality as a flock of Provencal sheep surround Helen on Mont Ventoux. This is a famous TDF climb. In reality it’s not that bad 24km with a bracket of between 6% and 12% going upto 1912m. Nothing really, compared with 17% and 500m in the Pennines. I reckon I can do it :)
A Festival of Yellow – Cadel Evans
Yesterday we spent eight hours being wined and dined on th Chanps Élysées to celebrate the great achievement by Cadel Evans of winning the Tour de France. Dismantling the course was well underway by the time BMC had finished th team parade. His team noted that he stopped for every Australian flag!
Coffee Collective et al
We have just finished visiting Copenhagen and Amsterdam. I have to say we didn’t look for any good “coffee shops” in Amsterdam. There are many however around the red-light district near our hotel. They must be selling good coffee because many of the clients seemed very happy when they walked out. They just didn’t have the same inviting smell as some coffee shops back home.
We did notice one happy English lad who had too much coffee having a chat with a friendly lady in a shop window. When he finished shopping he promptly fell down a set of stairs! He may have been better off purchasing.
Anyway, on to more important matters we did check out the coffee shops in Copenhagen. All-in-all these threes were very good. They were micro-roasters with only a very limited range of food, but extensive coffee menus.
If in Copenhagen I would recommend Estate Coffee and Risterit.
These two are both on the edge of the main shopping district. If you want a longer a bike ride and a more edgy suburb then I would recommend Coffee Collective.
Here at the Amsterdam Library
While Helen examines the public library ideas and space, I am here playing with an old iMac. Do you like my pop-art self-portrait using Photobooth.
