Category Archives: food

city, Europe, family, food, hiking, travel

A family week for a Chianti wedding

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The main impetus for a month of family visiting me from the Southern Hemisphere at this particular time was that my second-cousin (that is, my mother’s cousin’s daughter) Catherine and her fiancé Chris were getting married in Tuscany after a lot of planning. As well as the parents of the bride, & Mum and Adele, also along for the week in Chianti from our side of the family were two cousins, Trish (from most of my previous adventures in & around London) and Keith, and my aunt Valerie from Sydney (who’d I’d last seen on the our big west-USA roadtrip three years ago). Sorting out all the flights, accommodation, rental car etc. between such far-flung people was not particularly easy – but it all came together in the end, with different people sorting various things out.

Many of the wedding guests stayed in the same building, four separate apartments, for the week with others joining us later in the week staying closer to the castle. I was excited to be back in Italy yet again as I really enjoyed the week when my Kiwi cousin got married nearby six years ago and also since then I’ve learnt a little bit of Italian at work. Plus Tuscany is beautiful and the food and red wine excellent. At least this time, being six weeks earlier in the year, was more moderate in temperature – mid-twenties is much better than high-thirties.

With the wedding later in the week we had a few days to amuse ourselves. While I still had some enthusiasm for driving a large people-mover on windy & slow Tuscan roads we did a couple of day trips to Siena and San Gimignano. The weather wasn’t as good mid-week, but by then I was keen to explore the pretty hill-top villages that one could see from Castello di Meleto – Adele was happy to oblige and come along for some big walks exploring the local hills, tracks and restaurants.

Home for the week

Looking down to the castle

And out over the Chianti hills – much hillier and more wooded than around San Gimignano, where we stayed last time

Siena – while eating the most expensive, but not necessarily the best, gelato of the week

Siena Duomo again

Back looking at the towers in San Gimignano – where Mum, Adele & I somehow managed to bump into our fourth-cousin (we share the same great-great-great-great grandparents, I think) from NZ & her fiancé completely unexpectedly

The ground around where we were staying (that’s the villa at top-left) was so rocky only grapes or olives were any good for cultivating

I’d had my eye caught by the large walled village right across the other side of the valley – as it wasn’t on many maps, I was intrigued. To walk off lunch & the early wine-tasting Adele & I set off in that direction happy to explore small lanes. Perhaps the road we chose was steeper than we bargained for, but we were enjoying ourselves. We did get to the village and unlike the previous ones we’d been to, it was pretty much deserted with a church and single cafe seeming the only public buildings. A couple of lost bikepackers rode in, so that was encouraging (that there were bikepackers in the area, not that they were lost); we had more ice cream in the sun.

Buoyed by the success of Tuesday’s exploring we set Wednesday aside for a more ambitious route – thanks to the big map boards in Gaiole-in-Chianti central car park, we had plenty to choose from. These well defined routes went some way to explaining why there seemed to be so many people randomly walking and mountain-biking through the estate during our stay.

We’d reached our objective, Barbischio (another village we’d seen across the valley on the previous day’s walk), by lunchtime. Perhaps spurred on by the wine and the grappa/limoncello, it was decided it was a good idea to walk up another big hill to a small ruined keep that had been taunting me like a French knight. It was a good idea, but our chosen route took us to the top of the wrong hill – leaving the keep to “taunt us a second time”. Still, can’t complain about six hour walking around with great company in the sun spotting deer, wild boar, snakes and multitudes of lizards and admiring the landscape.

Half this tower had fallen down, so someone had built their house inside the shell

Like a few other complexes we’d seen around, these four or so new houses were all but finished, and completely deserted

The morning of the wedding (four o’clock service) I could stand the taunting of the keep no more, so Mum, Valerie, Adele & I drove up there (having worked out how to get there). It was pretty ruined, so we had fun pretending we were like the Famous Five, or some such, exploring it. The views back down to Gaiole & beyond were worth it too.

We popped into another small town, Radda-in-Chianti for a little wander, a quick bite and more gelato – I made the mistake, not to be repeated, of not getting lemon as one of the three scoops. With what was supposed to be plenty of time, we returned home to eat & prepare for the wedding; that is, until Adele found the first of her five flights home starting the next day had been cancelled due to strike action. So cue a couple of hours of stress trying to find a nearby flight that would get Adele to Heathrow after the wedding, but before her intercontinental journey was to start. Somehow we both managed to sort that out and still get to the wedding scrubbed up, all will be well when the travel insurance stumps up.

Earlier concerns over the weather for the outside service proved unfounded and it was good in such a beautiful setting. Now is when I find that I really did leave all photography of pretty much everything wedding-related to those with better cameras and ability – all I have is this pre-shot of the strings. Shocking. Still, I’ll have to go off my memory of a simple & elegant service, with some nice readings and a very beautiful happy couple (that was mostly Catherine, but Chris scrubbed up pretty well too).

So much food, again. Canapés & cocktails on the lawn while the photos were being taken; dinner and speeches in the castle; and finally cake-cutting out in the garden as the night drew in. Great night.

Adele managed to get all packed up the morning after the night before and we, Mum & Valerie too, were off to drop her at Pisa airport. It was supposed to be the relatively close Florence airport, but flight rearrangement meant a lot more driving – but we got to see the tower again. With goodbyes, lunch, final Italian gelati for a while & the sightseeing done we took a rather roundabout route home via Lucca as I forgot there was a difference between the autostrada and highway between Florence & Pisa. Nevermind, we got to see the huge thunderstorm pummelling Chianti as we drove towards it.

That was about the week really – a fantastic one spent with family in a stunning setting with plenty of top-notch food & red wine and just enough exercise to offset it and stop me going slightly more crazy.

bikes, combe raiders, food, friends, GPS, MTB, UK

Christmas Rides

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It’s been a bit quiet on here recently – mainly because me riding pretty much every day for the last four weeks is not all that interesting for anyone but me (& the odd other bike nut).  I’ve upgraded the wheels on my Surly Ogre to Stans Arch rims & tyres to Nobby Nics – it’s a marked improvement in weight, grip, reassurance, acceleration, rolling resistance &, most of all, fun.  The following week there was a rather chilly night spent bikepacking out in the New Forest just north of Burley somewhere.

Then Christmas ride season began – first up with the biggest group of Combe Raiders I’ve ever seen:

This on the strangely misty Quantocks – & quite damp under wheel as well. Dave got stuck on a stick:

Much to my surprise, I won the hill climb (by getting the furtherest up a rather steep & technical ascent) – I was well pleased with my giant certificate (that’s a large & very good paperback on the left).

After not really earning it from a less than twenty kilometre ride, it was off to a nearby pub for the award ceremony & an awful lot of food.  Great time had by all – although I had to go for a harder ride the following day to get the most out of my two hundred mile round-trip.

This weekend past I managed two more Christmas rides – and associated meals of course.  The Vindaloo group of the local MTB club (which I ride with if I’m around every second Sunday – so hardly ever over the past two years) had their Christmas ride & curry planned very local to me on Friday night.  The bikes decorated with Christmas lights and wrapping paper and the costumes made the whole thing seem a lot more festive than the Combe Raiders event.  It was only a short local ride, but it was a nice warm, dry evening & there was plenty of good food.

For some reason I thought it a good idea to ride my single speed twenty-odd kilometres to the Christmas ride & dinner for the whole club – this after seeing a rather dismal looking weather forecast.  Anyway, it rained pretty much all day – but it wasn’t cold.  Annoyingly, my front brakes failed about thirty kilometres in – so I rode most of the day with rear brakes of dubious usefulness (just as well the Forest is almost entirely flat).  Somewhere out near Burley & Picket Post our fearless leaders started to get a little vague in our route – just as we got out of the trees onto the heathland in the driving rain.  Oh well – we made it back to the pub eventually for another huge meal.  It probably was just as well I had to ride all the way home – wasn’t really intending to do close on eighty singlespeed kilometres for the day, but I survived & really quite enjoyed it.

Canada, city, engineering, food, roadtrip, travel

Montreal

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Montreal had never really been much of a blip on my radar of places to visit one day.  But the little I read about the city after deciding to include it on this little drive led me to believe that I would quite enjoy it – at the least, there would be good poutine (which was on my quite long list of “things I must eat while in Canada & the States”).  A city of neighbourhoods, with excellent food it sounded good fun to explore for a couple of days.

We easily found our way on to the island (curiously, Montreal is an island in the St Lawrence River – I did not know that beforehand) and then to the apartment.  Apparently, our neighbourhood was good for food so we just wandered out the door to the end of the block to peruse the local haunts – Jane spied a good looking cupcake shop that was noted for a later date.  What followed at a rather too-hip-for-me cafe was the best meal I’ve had in ages – scallops on a barley risotto with vegetables done to perfection.

It turned out that one of the biggest & best markets in the city was only a few blocks away, so we headed down there after breakfast Saturday.  That probably wasn’t the best idea as I was immediately hungry again – I shouldn’t go into detail of the huge range of produce & meat that was on display.  I managed to cross a bagel off the list; Montreal bagels are supposed to be a little sweeter than most – either way, it was better than I used to bake.  I think we managed to sample half as many plums as we ended up buying – delicious & many varieties.

Jane was aware of the Bixi public bicycle sharing scheme in Montreal from a previous visit.  I was familiar with the concept from London & other European cities – a bit of research shows that the London system is a Bixi system (the largest, with Montreal second) – Bixi being a company set up by the city of Montreal.  Basically, there are over five thousand bicycles at four-hundred docking stations all around the city – for the measly sum of seven dollars for twenty-four hours, one can have have as many half-hour rides as desired (if you take a bike for more than thirty minutes, you get charged extra).  As it turns out, it’s an absolutely fantastic way to see the city.  The bikes are very solid (tough, but pretty heavy), easy to ride, comfortable, internally geared (the range of three is plenty) & with a handy basket on the front.  That is pretty much how we saw a lot of Montreal on the Saturday – interspersed by a fair bit of walking & eating too.

The local church

Not the kind of picture I usually snap while riding bikes, c.f. this

We ditched the bikes for a stroll, rather – a brisk steep walk, to the top of Parc du Mont-Royal – through plenty of leaves to kick around and brilliant colours.

It got a little cloudier

Looking over McGill University to downtown

We spent a fair bit of time riding near water – either along canals or over the river.  Montreal was the biggest industrial centre in the country until surpassed by Toronto in the second half of the twenty-century – strangely, I always find old silos & other industrial relics fascinating. As I write that, I realise that is a little weird – but think of the hundreds of people that used to work there making all sorts of things.



We went downtown for a little while, but I wasn’t overly impressed as it was sort of European, but not properly so.  The neighbourhoods were much more fun – so we walked back to where Jane stayed last time & found a great hot chocolate & more cakes.  We returned to the same cafe for dinner – I got to have my poutine & it lived up to all expectations; I eat more meals without meat that I ever used to.  I’m not sure this one really counted as it was probably so full of fat & such artery-clogging ingredients.

We worked out we’d biked & walked over forty kilometres the day before (just as well with all the food), so it was a little slower start on Sunday.  With still some of our twenty-hours left on the Bixi bikes, we headed off to the botanical gardens in the autumn crispness.  There were some cool lanterns in the Chinese Garden – although I suspect they are better at night.  I narrowly avoided being eaten by a tiger.

There were a few bugs too

Up much too early, the Montreal stay was over as I dropped Jane off at the airport for her to depart to her new life as an optometrist (that bit’s not new) in small town Nova Scotia. It’s not really far to the border & I was gone from Canada again by eight o’clock.

I had no idea that I’d enjoy Montreal so much – but I fear if stayed longer I’d eat well too much and put back on all the weight I lost over summer, plus some more. The whole time I was in Montreal however I did find something very disconcerting about it. It’s so obviously North American with American cars, big wide streets laid out on a grid, Canadian brands and so on – but all the signs & speech is in French, everyone’s better dressed & the food so good, it feels continental. It’s very difficult trying to reconcile all this – will people get upset if I just assume they speak English (most seem to be bilingual)? Annoyingly, the rest of Canada seems to make an effort at being bilingual with their signs, but you get to Quebec & there is next to English on the major signs – that seems a little rude, so I suppose that fits in well.

Anyway, Montreal – well worth a visit for a few days at least, if not more.

city, Europe, family, food, travel

Windy, chilly Amsterdam weekend

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When I booked a weekend away at the end of March with cousin Trish, I was expecting winter may have been receding for a few weeks.  Alas, winter had not loosened its grip on the UK & western Europe last weekend.  But it was still a good weekend to be away, as however bitterly cold & windy it may have been in Amsterdam, it was dry and therefore better than being at home.

Flying in from Southampton, it turns out Schipol Airport is massive if you’re in a little turboprop that takes an age to taxi to the terminal.  With only a vague idea of which trains to take to our airbnb accommodation (go to Central & get the metro), we fortuitously got off the train at the first stop (after overhearing advice given to other tourists) and eventually managed to get on the metro and cut quite  a bit of time off our journey.

The first thing noticed while walking in the dark was of course all the bicycles still out at that hour of the night.  We managed not to get knocked over by any and find the apartment OK.

After a good sleep, for me, and the start of mass-cheese-consumption-Saturday at breakfast (bread, ham & cheese) it was a short metro ride in to town, then a walk west admiring the old buildings and canal towards the Jordaan area and Anne Frank House.  It was well worth waiting for over an hour (we got up a bit too late) in the wind and occasional sun to get in to see such a reminder of those dark times in Europe’s recent past.  The warehouse and offices do well to hide the small annex at the back in which eight people managed to hide for two years with the help of Otto Frank’s office staff.

The rate (number over time, not price) of admission was such there was sufficient space to linger and contemplate without feeling rushed or that there were too many people around.

Royal Palace from Dam Square in the centre of the city

The front of the Anne Frank House complex

We spent much of the afternoon wandering around the old suburb of Jordaan following a walking tour, popping into various little squares hidden in the centre of blocks of houses, looking at the rather higgledy-piggledy skinny houses. When the cold got a bit much – popping in to various cafes and bars for beer, lunch, hot chocolates and gargantuan pieces of apple pie.

Note the protruding beams at the top for lifting furniture up, to circumvent the narrow staircases

A city with the wisdom not to rip up its tram tracks, there were still plenty of trams around.  As dusk started to draw in, we jumped on the first tram we saw as we walked out of Central Station to rest our legs and generally speed up the wandering.  I think we went all over looking at canals, bikes, and whatever street scenes happened to pass by.

The third, final and best cheese meal of the day was the three-cheese fondue served in yet another bar somewhere in town.  Walking back to the metro there was that often-present lingering smell of weed before we inadvertently wandered through the red-light district copping much too much of an eyeful.

Excitingly, there was even a bit more sun as we took the tram towards the National Museum.  The guide we were using told us that it was under renovation & only partially open.  After walking all the way around, we can confirm that it is completely closed.  At the least, I got a token photo of the sign below.  We followed the red rope up at streetlight level to the van Gogh exhibition at the Hermitage.

The small part of the van Gogh exhibition that is temporarily housed at the Hermitage was well worth seeing – even if I was a little underwhelmed by Sunflowers.  We crossed the Amstel a few times over the course of the afternoon before more food – I had delicious snert (pea soup).

Trying not to look too cold above the Amstel

A great weekend away from England, the first for quite sometime – since late January I think.  Unfortunately back to a four-day week in which I tried to cover three different roles at work and went in to Easter exhausted.  So my first weekend at home in five weeks is much needed – thankfully only one more week until a proper holiday.