"Doh Ray Me, When Ah Wis Wee"

Traveling around the island of Harris, stopped in a cafe for a wee spot of tea and scones...and there on the table, this children's music book...totally captures the whimsical side of Outer Hebrides life and culture - so much so that it's this blog post's title, because whimsy and culture are what we'll cover here (other very very serious blogs on birds/nature/etc. to follow...).

Written Stuff

The title of this book has cracked us up ever since we saw it. For two weeks now, all one of us has to do is say, "it reminds me of when ah wis wee," to send the other into giggles. The people really do talk like this: I was charmed when a fairly gruff elderly bus driver said that the nature preserve we sought was "just a wee bitty up the road there."  (And as a quick reminder: no, we are not implementing a random text color scheme to reflect the supposed playful theme of this post...it's an identity thing: Juliet's comments are in pink, Phil's in purple.  You can be the judge of what that says about us. Though I really really wanted to be yellow.  That may say something else entirely. But that doesn't show up on-line well. )

This is the back of a Scottish 20 Pound note. If you click on the image to see it full size, you will see a map that looks just like something out of The Hobbit or some other work of fantasy. The land of Ibibio, is it on good terms with the kingdom of Ikoi? 

And here's what you find on Page 3 of a major Scottish newspaper (carefully masked to make it Safe For Work). I wish the New York Times would start doing this; I bet it would help the sales of their print edition.   By now it's clear that Phil has an odd affinity for images like these.  I absolve myself of all responsibility & blame here.  These do nothing for me, and if you have complaints, take it up with him.  I'll back you up. 

"If you have any problems, queries, complaints, suggestions or comments" please contact these people, or leave a note using the notepad and pen provided. This is in a public toilet, in a tiny town of maybe 30 residents.  As it happens, we did not have any problems, queries, complaints, or suggestions, but we did leave a comment:  "Thank you for taking such good care of this facility.  We really appreciate it!"  Try finding a sign like this anywhere in a US public toilet.  Oh, and there was a jar next to the toilet for leaving a small donation, if you were so inclined (we were).  Coins all piled up in a small heap, open top.  Just love a place where you can do that.

Animals

These shaggy cattle were very interested in my bike. The one on the right liked the sweat on my saddle and handlebars (he licked the saddle clean, then tentatively gave the handlebars a try); the one on the left figured he must be missing out on something good so he came over too, but since he only sniffed at the wheels and the pedals he never figured it out. 

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. (Or, if not greener, it's sweeter.)

These are not just meerkats being displayed at a small agricultural fair in Scotland, 10,000 miles from where meerkats live; these are meerkats carved with a chainsaw!  (Chainsaw carver was a huge draw at the ag fair, discussed further, below.)

Vegetables

So we went to this fantastic local agricultural fair one afternoon in Tarbert, on the Isle of Harris.  The big event of the week for the community (July 4, no less!).  Maybe 300 people there, total - including a few of us tourists.  "Big event" takes on a whole new meaning when you're in places like the outer Hebrides.  And we learned important new things about the local culture here.  One highlight was the two or three small tents set up to showcase the local produce, agricultural items - and then just other stuff. Not entirely clear how it related, but nice anyway.  I don't think I am exaggerating when I state that probably everyone who entered something in the competition got some kind of prize.  

Agriculture prizes: the potato category.  Winners for, "4 potatoes round, white" are on the right.  Then of course you have, "4 potatoes white, kidney" and "4 potatoes coloured, kidney" on the left.  I really didn't even have to write that out for you, did I?  You just knew that's what was going on here...

We weren't sure whether we should start a new section for these, or leave them in "Animals", because these are "Animals Made from Vegetables." This was, I swear, an actual category at the fair. 

Sheep made from cauliflower. A worthy winner. 

Carrot feet and beak, mushroom and grape eyes, eggplant body and wings. Auk? Puffin? Penguin? Perhaps it is the inability to identify the exact animal that relegated this to third place. 

And who among us can challenge the winners of the "Decorated Wellies" category?  Not me. Not you. Because not in a million years would any of us be able to decorate plain old wellies as well as this.

Food

I have never before seen cooked pancakes in a grocery store. I bought a pack and I must say they were just fine! Why don't we have these in the U.S.?  Because, no, they are not as good as fresh-made pancakes.  Not by a long shot.  This is like the notion of, "why don't we just dump the canned tomato sauce on the spaghetti and say it tastes just as good as fresh-made?"  Oh that's right - Phil used to say EXACTLY THAT when I first met him. OK, first, that is a scurrilous lie: I never said canned tomato sauce is "just as good", I said it is "plenty good enough."  And so are the pancakes. By Juliet's logic there would be no canned tomato sauce in the U.S. because it's not as good as homemade; but in fact there IS canned tomato sauce in the US because it is "good enough", and there should be packaged pancakes for the same reason. I rest my case. 

Not actually whimsical, really.... Juliet and I sampled many sticky toffee puddings. We are both big fans, and we both think some are much better than others. Here is pudding number 4, served with ice cream. A solid effort but not top tier.

People

Tarbert agricultural fair again. These are tiny kids on tiny 4-wheelers doing tiny laps on a tiny track. 

Would you believe the wind at the top of this hill was so strong that it held me in this position? (Well, you shouldn't, because it wasn't. It was damn strong, though). 

Juliet got tired of posing conventionally for photographs, so she started doing wacky things when I pointed the camera at her. Here she is at the ferry landing...

...and here she is at a "beehive house," a structure of unknown age (we were unable to find information about this specific structure in our guidebook or online, and the basic design was in use for well over 2000 years, until as recently as about 150 years ago).  Phil is demonstrating a sad lack of artistic, cultural, and historical knowledge here. EVERYONE knows that I am doing the legendary - yet spontaneous - "beehive-dwelling-dance," passed down through the ages from one beehive dweller to the next.   Usually prompted by blue skies and sun (which can be a rare occurrence in the Outer Hebrides), and by finding said beehive dwellings after a rather long march through boggy peat, up and down hills, with a disastrously poor trail description in hand.

Happy Hebrides

We will, I hope, write more about the Outer Hebrides soon, but for now this is just a few tidbits. 

For some reason the Outer Hebrides have been on Juliet's list for a long time; much less so for me. The Outer Hebrides are the most northwestern islands of Scotland, out in the Atlantic past the Isle of Skye. To get to the islands we took a 5-hour ferry trip from Oban, where (among other things) we toured the Oban Scotch distillery. We could also have gone by land and train out to the extreme NW end of the Isle of Skye and taken a much shorter ferry trip from there, but the total travel time would have been just as long. 

We spent a total of over two weeks on the islands of South Uist, Harris, and Lewis. Here's a sample of what we saw and did. 

These are brothers shearing their sheep the old-fashioned way, with big scissors instead of electric shears. Usually they hire a professional for this, but this time they did it themselves. The guy in back lives on the island and works at a salmon smokehouse; these are his sheep. His brother, foreground, lives on the Scottish mainland. This is typical of 'crofting.'  As the excellent small South Uist Museum put it, "a croft is a small plot of land surrounded entirely by regulations": the various crofters have rules and organizations to manage the use of the community land, and the government provides subsidies for various behaviors (like leaving cropland un-harvested until after the nesting season of the increasingly rare corn-crake, a kind of bird) and for sheep and so on.  You can't make a good living on the croft alone, so all crofters have other jobs. 

Heading out for a walk, we ran into some horses that are obviously fed by passersby occasionally. Unfortunately we had no apples to give.

Sorry, fella, still no apples.

One of the highlights of our Hebrides visit was a trip to the island of Mingulay, near the southern end of the island chain. Here, Juliet and a Puffin are sitting on the edge of MacPhee's Hill; the low fencing was put there by researchers who are studying the effect of rabbits on the undergrowth, or something like that. Here's part of what it says on a website about this spot: "One island story relates how, in the time of Mac Neil of Barra’s ownership, a rent collector, Mac Phee, was landed on the island and found everyone dead. He went back to the boat and called to the men, to take him off as there was a ‘plague’ on the island, on hearing this the men rowed away and left him to his fate. Every day he would climb the hill north of the village, and signal to passing ships; they would wave back and pass on. He survived and eventually after a whole year Mac Neil decided it was safe to resettle the island.  He made a special grant of land to Mac Phee in way of compensation.  Since then, the hill has always been known as Mac Phee’s hill." 

The Outer Hebrides were mostly deforested by 2000 B.C. (!), and since then have mostly been covered by heather, grasses, and a few low shrubby plants. There are nearly no rivers. If you build a stone wall there, far enough from the sea that it is safe from even the biggest waves, that wall can last hundreds of years. Eventually, sheep climbing on it and rubbing against it will knock rocks off it, and the freeze-thaw cycle will distort it, and it will gradually turn into a heap of stones. And that heap of stones will stand there for literally thousands of years, unless someone hauls it away. We stopped at a big "chambered cairn", basically a pile of stones with a room inside, that is over 4000 years old!  In the photo above, Phil is crawling outside a "beehive dwelling", a sort of conical stone hut...hard to get in and out of, but surprisingly roomy inside (Juliet can just about stand up in there). Some web searching didn't turn up a date on this, but such dwellings can be anywhere from 100 years old to several thousand years (although, given that one of the three structures here is still intact, I'd doubt any date more than a couple hundred years old). All over the place you see remains of old houses. One ruin was thought to be an old, mostly tumbled-down shelter for animals until a visiting archaeologist recently identified it as a 13th-century monk's dwelling.

Although we could certainly have kept ourselves occupied happily for several more days on the Hebrides, we decided instead to go for a bit of contrast, so we hopped on a flight (or rather a series of flights) to Greece. I signed up for the British Airways Executive Club (it's free), which offers a large selection of honorifics. I decided to go with Viscount, 'cause hey, why not? I mistakenly thought this was sort of a minor thing -- hey, you're only a vice count, not even a full count --- but it turns out "count" is very high up there, so even Viscount is above Baron and Earl.  All in all it's disappointing that I wasn't even allowed to board early or anything.

Books To Go

We expected to have plenty of time to read and to make blog posts, especially during our 2+ weeks on the famously drizzly Outer Hebrides. But in fact, while the rest of the UK is under water, we have had great weather on the Hebrides just as we have throughout our trip. With the days being so long, we are out and about for a long time every day and are too tired to read more than a few pages before nodding off. So we haven't done much reading or blog posting.  Still, I have had time to read just a few books about the places we've been visiting. Below, I've given a brief description of  each of the ones I liked. Note that the photos aren't actually clickable to get "a look inside," it just says that because I grabbed the book cover photo from Amazon. 

The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power, by John S.C. Abbott, 1859 (!)

If you have been reading or watching George R.R. Martin's "Game of Thrones" series you may have been thinking "gee, this isn't very realistic, with all of these royals and would-be royals constantly betraying each other and raising armies to slaughter each other, and having people tortured." If so, you should read this book. It focuses mostly on the doings of the grand people, not the lives of the peasantry, and one grows weary of hearing how yet another Hapsburg broke a treaty by invading Bohemia, or how some other grand poobah bribed the Italian states into invading Austria...and on and on for hundreds of years. And, yes, there's torture too. I won't retain any of the names and dates (and indeed have forgotten almost all of them already) but the book gave me a good grasp of the major forces that shaped Austria until the mid-1800s. 

Murder on the Danube, by William S Shepard

This is a pretty lousy mystery in a series; I suspect they are all pretty lousy.  But people don't buy them for the mystery writing really, they buy them because, intermixed with the bad mystery, there is a lot of historical information and travelogue type information...about Budapest and some nearby parts of Hungary, in this case (I read it while I was there). Sample: "Sylvie was delighted with [the town of] Karlovy Vary, 'as long as I don't have to drink any bad-tasting mineral water or bathe in mud,' she had insisted. Like Bath in England there were fashionable shops and arcades. Little by little, the hotels and restaurants were beginning to reclaim their former splendor." Definitely not worth reading unless you are going to Budapest, but if you are it might be worth a go.

The Black House, by Peter May. A much better mystery than Murder on the Danube, this one is set on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides (which is where I am as I write this). Although fictional, the book gives some flavor of what it is like living on the Outer Hebrides. 

Tales from Barra told by The Coddie, by The Coddie as told to John Campbell

"The Coddie " was the nickname of a man who lived on the small, picturesque island of Barra, and was one of the last of the great Scottish Gaelic storytellers (a pastime or avocation that largely died out after radio, TV, and other modern conveniences came in). This book relates a bunch of The Coddie's tales, many of them true stories from the past 200 years or so. Or at least they purport to be true stories: Campbell did some research on them and found that the dates or names are often impossible (for instance, a particular story could not have happened when it was said to have happened, because the Laird at that date didn't have the name of the Laird in the story). But many of the stories conform to details that can be checked.  In any case, true or false they are useful for learning how people lived on the Outer Hebrides 100 or 200 years ago, just as a Sherlock Holmes story tells you a lot about conditions in London in the late 1800s even though the story itself isn't true. Unfortunately many of The Coddie's stories aren't all that interesting, but each one is short and easy reading. It's a fairly good book, though not as good as I had hoped.

Sea Room, by Adam Nicolson. 

This book styles itself a memoir of the man who owns the Shiant Islands. After reading the first 30 pages, in which the author discusses geology, natural history, human history, and other things besides, I thought this was shaping up to be a truly great book, up there with Sand County Almanac, say, or Desert Solitaire. Then I read a bit farther, and the honeymoon was over: I found an error, a false "fact." And, later, another. The problem with these little falsehoods is not that I am learning some things that aren't true, it's that it makes me mistrust all of the other things in the book. I happen to know that a couple of specific things are wrong, but is that because those are the only bad ones, or are there lots of other false notes but I don't know enough to recognize them?

 So maybe it's not a great book; it is still a very very good one. Although the prose can be a bit purple at times (a common hazard in this type of book), in general it is beautifully written. Here's a sample:

Almost 300 Lewis men were drowned in the second half of the nineteenth century, all of them within a few miles of their home shores, some of them watched by their families and friends as the small boats struggled to get home through the surf. If the bodies came ashore, which they often didn't, they, like the boats, were smashed into pieces or rotted beyond recognition. It was the pattern all down the western seaboard of the British Isles: Poor soils drive men to boats in which they drown.

That is a great summary of this aspect of life on these islands, and it takes only three sentences...although many more sentences are devoted to telling a few specific stories.  


(One true story that isn't in this book but that I will mention here is the fate of the small settlement on the island of Pabbay, south of Barra: in May, 1897, all of the dozen or so men of Pabbay were out fishing in the same boat. A squall came up and the boat went down with no survivors: every man from Pabbay died that day. The settlement, which was declining anyway, never recovered, and the island has been uninhabited since 1903). 


Anyway, this is an excellent book, and if you only read one of the above then this is the one to go for.

Eating & Drinking Our Way Through Europe (Or, How Flexitarians & Vegetarians Can Co-Exist on the Road)

You saw it here first with the gnomes; and we KNOW you're hooked.  Since we live to please you -  our dedicated readers - we're back with round two of...thematic posts a la Juliet (roars of approval ensue. We hear you).  Moreover, we're going for the jugular: food.  (Oh you were just waiting for this one, weren't you?...c'mon, admit it...)

Some of you have - by now - been perplexed, possibly even dismayed, at the lack of serious food discussion in our blogs.  Sure, an occasional photo or two (or nine or ten) of us eating and drinking on our travels...but the in-depth analysis and investigation?  The point/counterpoint commentary and debate?  Nowhere.

Never fear; we've been saving up.

See, we take food (and drink) very very seriously, as many (most? all?) of you know.  In fact, the food aspect of this trip was a central aspect of our travel planning.  Let me jostle your memory, and refer you back to an early May Facebook post by Phil, who presented some photos from another bicyclist's blog about eating along the Danube cycle path, when he'd done the same trip a few years ago.  The photos were not quite horrifying, but scary enough to send me (primarily vegetarian/vegan) into some small fits of hysteria about what I might be able to ingest in Europe.

This is what we were expecting.  Nice color range, don't you think?

The volumes of cream sauce, butter pools, unidentifiable gray vegetable substances, and captions containing a wide variety of meat descriptions reminded us, in several cases, of the now-legendary (in various local family and friends' households) Weight Watchers 1970s recipe cards, (http://www.candyboots.com/wwcards.html) (...Oh, you haven't seen these?  Oh really you must.  And dedicate yourself to reading the accompanying captions and commentary.  Make sure you're seated and comfortable, with clear breathing airways.  You'll need all of that.)

OK, so back to our main thread.  As we started out, I had grave, grave concerns about whether I'd be able to find any fresh vegetables, basic salads that weren't submerged in mayonnaise-based dressings, fresh fruit - really the critical building blocks of my culinary life.  Not that I expected Europe to be backward on this score, but in conjunction with those blog photos, we did have memories of our last foray to Scotland, thirteen years ago, when - after a long day of activity and driving - we were trying to find a place to eat.  Anything.  Cafe, pub, supermarket.  Everything closed (a Sunday.)  We were truly ravenous.  Near tears (me), panicked (Phil), we finally came across some small pub that had a three-item menu, including rice and curry.  Manna from heaven (and seriously, how far wrong can you go with rice?).  Until it arrived at the table.  I believe I spat out my first bite.  That bad.  The kind of thing where you simply can't swallow. And may I repeat, I was nearly apoplectic with hunger at that point.  (I am still astonished, in looking back, that they achieved a feat I would have thought impossible: rendering white rice inedible).

FREE buttered toast with breakfast! Haggis, neeps, and tatties! And mushy peas for only 10 pence more than garden peas! We find many menus amusing for one reason or another. But we've found plenty of good food.

So while I assumed some updates in Western Europe's culinary breadth and depth, I wasn't holding out great hope for stupendous food.  Phil, we figured, would be OK: as a "flexitarian" (read: eats what he wants when he wants it, but has conceded that meatless days should be a large fraction of one's total eating days, that larger helpings of vegetables are a good idea, and now gamely eats my salad creations nearly every day...), we were guessing he'd be able to dig up decent options in most places.

Instead, we're eating our words...and a whole range of fantastic, local comestibles.  Because the western Europe we've travelled through has undergone a major food revolution, where "bio" and "natural" and "organic" and "sustainable" - and even "vegetarian,""vegan," and "gluten-free" - pepper the culinary world; where "slow food" and "home cooked" are as common as in many places in the US; where breads and bakeries rival the best of Berkeley, and yes, where "artisanal" does, in fact, mean the employment of those same Tibetan monks that we've run into before, who patiently hand-pick and bless whatever tea or spice we're eating at the moment.

An organic grocery/deli just two blocks from the main square in Linz. They also had a cafe, with a fantastic vegan quinoa/grain/vegetable tart, and a really really good salad (see photo on lower right).  This kind of thing makes me (Juliet) very very happy.

It's been pretty easy to find local food and plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables. And lots of places now tout the "local, sustainable" aspect of their products...special signage, certificates, etc.  

We are, admittedly, seeking out these types of offerings (and staying away from the cafes, restaurants, etc., that only list the less palatable items) - but what we're impressed by is how easy it is to find them.  In grocery stores, in local markets (yep - lots of those!), along the bike paths and hiking routes... And a number of countries in the European Union even seem to have laws requiring that you list where your food/ingredients come from, so you can see that the tomatoes are from Chile (or France), that the meat is from a local farm (or not), and the like.

Here are open-air and produce markets that we came across in Austria, Switzerland, and Italy.  Also some of the most fun places to hang out in cities and towns.  

So yes, healthy eating is on the up-and-up over here, and this has made our traveling significantly tastier than expected.  BUT, as all writers have license to do from time to time, we will now qualify the above statements in some important ways.

First, the - uh - less wholesome options are available in abundance...

For example, heart-stopping rosti-cheese-fried-egg brunch combo at Kleine Scheidegge, just below the Jungfrau (Switzerland).  And yes, that would be a massive fry pan filled with oil, butter, and said rosti (shredded potatoes much like thinly slivered hash browns).  Or maybe you'd prefer a goliath-size helping of saurkraut,  bratwurst, and potatoes?  Austria, Switzerland, and Germany are all very big on this kind of thing.  I think Phil might have tried all of these.  I admit to eating the rosti-cheese-egg combo on the upper left, but under great duress (I was really really hungry after a really really hard, steep hike. So sue me).

Second,  Europeans really like their sugar.  Lots of it. In whatever forms possible, though happily they don't seem to include corn syrup in that mix much.  They go for genuine, unadulterated sugar.  Integrated into extensive pastry creations.  Dosed with heavy amounts of chocolate.  Sometimes only chocolate (well, with sugar, of course).  Usually accompanied by vast amounts of cream and cheese (NOTE: Being a vegetarian in Europe has proved to be pretty feasible.  And still delicious.  But going vegan?  Not so much.  These people BREATHE cheese and dairy.  Morning, noon, and night.  And for snacks in between.)

Petits-fours in Paris, apfelstrudel in Vienna, homemade creme brûlée in the Wachau Valley, a dense poppyseed pastry that literally dripped with honey, and hey...wait a minute..."american pancakes." At a Starbuck's, of course.

That chocolate selection on the upper left?  It's fair trade and organic, so I felt completely justified - nay, compelled - to support that industry.  And the colorful candy/confections store in Zurich had Phil captivated.  He's generally very captivated by sugar and chocolate.

But see how he's breaking up the dessert habit with a nice pot of healthy tea?

Except for the tea stirrer covered in a hefty dose of crystallized sugar. ("But Juliet, just how am I supposed to stir my tea if not with a tea stirrer?") 

Third (and here we venture into beverage territory): we are not always sauced, but wine and beer are a formidable component of the culinary scene in these parts - starting with lunch, and continuing on straight through the evening and into the night.   "When in Rome..." You get the drift.  Seriously, it's like a great cultural bandwagon that everyone has jumped onto.  And it's a very fun wagon.

I mean, we'd be happily bicycling along the Danube, breathing in the fresh air, scents of woodland and early spring flowers wafting around us, bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked, and...and...biergarten.  Or hiking through the alps, a healthy sweat on our brows, hearts pulsing with exertion, building up a good thirst...oh...really?...Wein bar.  Enoteca.  Pinot Grigio.  Gruner Veltliner.  Ambers and stouts.  Well, if you insist...

Miraculously, Juliet has been able to enjoy the beverage scene as much as Phil....we're not sure why, but the wine isn't having the same headache effect over here in Europe as it does back in the States ("Everything in Europe is better."  That's our mantra now.  We'll be unbearable when we return but we'll just keep chanting anyway).  So she's taking full advantage of that trend while she can.

In sum, if it weren't for all of the exercise we're doing on this trip, there's a strong chance we'd look like cute round butterballs by now, despite the many vegetables...but so far the biking, walking, hiking, and running, etc.,  are allowing us to indulge in some truly great meals.

Breakfasts are  an excellent way to start the day, because they're often included in your room price at the little local B&Bs or pensions where we've been staying. Lovely buffet breakfasts spread out across multiple tables (see sample photos below).  For the budget-conscious traveler, it's definitely a boon: "breakfast like a king...dinner like a pauper" - or something like that.  Anyway, we're convinced.

Best part of European breakfasts?  The little Nutella packets.  Served at  a good 80% of the breakfast buffets we've had. "Start your day with chocolate, and everything else will fall into place..."  (Actually, I totally made that quote up, but I think we'll just keep using it...)

And not to beat the proverbial vegetarian horse, but I will say (and Phil would agree here), that hands-down one of the best meals we've had on this trip was lunch at a renowned vegetarian all-you-can-eat-buffet restaurant in Zurich.  We had no idea that this kind of place even existed.  Why we don't have one in San Francisco is beyond me...it would make a killing.

Hot and cold buffet items.  Cuisine from around the world.  Home-made bread.  Desserts.  Raw and vegan options. Salad bar!!!!!  Utterly delicious.  Awesome signage, too.  Posters of endangered species on the outside windows, and an ad campaign where top European soccer (football) stars are caught in poses on the ground, with the caption (translated): "in every football player is a vegetarian..."  The place was packed, too.  Right downtown, big, airy space, and busting at the seams with people...for hours. Quite possible that I will be moving to Zurich for some stretch of time.

And now in the Outer Hebrides and western highlands of Scotland, we're in the heart of the seafood district.  Islands are the rare places where I will occasionally sample local, sustainable seafood (hence the "primarily vegetarian" title earlier on).  It's really good here.  I think the photo speaks for itself on that score...

Before...

...and After.

On a final note, we feel compelled to disclose that we are currently engaged in a full testing and ranking of Sticky Toffee Puddings in Scotland and the U.K.  

Sample #1: homemade pudding/cake in Oban, drenched in sweet toffee/butterscotch sauce as well as custard. Excellent moist texture, with strong notes of molasses.  Reminiscent of warm New England Indian pudding.  "YES!!!" for Juliet.  Phil is ambivalent; unimpressed with deep spice undertones.

 Sample #2: homemade pudding/cake in Oban (different restaurant); lighter flavors in pudding/cake and accompanying butterscotch sauce; no custard.  Large volume of serving portion earns extra points.  Juliet: "Meh." Phil: "Mmmmm...two thumbs up!" (I think it was just that there was more of it)

Current sample size stands at 5 total (as of tonight); some clear winners and losers already.  We'll keep you abreast of breaking developments.  Final rankings and relevant comments will be published upon completion of survey.  Working for all dessert-loving citizens, 24/7.  That's us.

Museums, festivals, blah blah blah

From the posts we've done so far, you might conclude that we spend all of our waking hours outside hiking and biking around, except for the time that we spend eating. That is 90% correct, but of course that means it's 10% wrong. 

For a lot of people, much of the point of a visit to Europe is to go to visit cultural icons: the Louvre, La Scala, and so on. Many people spend most of their days visiting those sorts of places, and might spend a few hours (if that) doing a hike in the hills or a bike ride along the river.  Juliet and I reverse those proportions, but we still go to some of these cultural places or events. Here are a few examples.

Phil visited the Eiffel Tower. They only let you walk up to the second level, after that you have to take an elevator.  If you look up through the tiny, stained window in the top of the elevator, this is what it looks like.

Melk Abbey, seen from a distance.

We spent an hour or so wandering through Melk Abbey. In its current form it dates only to the 1700s, but it has been an important religious site (and famous for its extensive library) since about 1100. In fact, the narrator of The Name of the Rose is the fictitious "Adso of Melk."

Juliet and a vintner, discussing the finer points of Gruner Veltliner. We really liked some of it, and toyed with the idea of importing about 500 bottles, which is a magic volume as far as shipping fees are concerned. 

In the Wachau region we spent a few hours tasting wines, mostly the locally produced Reisling and Gruner Veltliner.  

We went to a giant wine festival in Vienna. About $30 entry, and wine tastings are free.  This is one room out of about 10 this size. You can (and I did) get totally schnockered on good wine, 1/4 glass at a time.

Very touristy Mozart concert in Vienna. Can't fault the performance, though.

To aid my memory as much as to entertain you, I will now list all of the things we did (that I can think of) that fall under the categories of museums/galleries/churches/festivals. 


Phil went to the Eiffel Tower, and visited the Pantheon; we went to a very good Paris art museum exhibit on animals in painting; Juliet went to an organ concert in Passau; we walked through Melk Abbey; did some wine tasting in Wachau region; went to a wine festival in Vienna; went to a Mozart concert in Vienna; Juliet went to an opera in Vienna; we saw the great Chagall stained glass windows in the Fraumunster Cathedral in Zurich; we took the tour of the Oban whiskey distillery; we stopped in all of the art galleries on the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides (all four of them); visited the Tarbert Agricultural Festival (probably will do a separate blog entry about some of the things there). 


I'm sure I've missed a few things, too. And you know what? There's really nothing on that list that wasn't worth doing. As far as I'm concerned we are doing just exactly the right amount of this sort of thing. Hooray for us!