We recently returned from a twelve-day tour of the UK, and it sure was a whirlwind trip! Now that I’ve had some time to process my photos and get back to work, I’m eager to share all the great things we did. In order to make my recap easier to navigate, I’ve divided it up into two parts. This first part will cover all the sights we saw and food we ate during our five days in London, which we used as our starting and ending point for the trip...
One of the foods that I absolutely loved when we visited Japan was onigiri. I'd never eaten these little rice balls before our trip, but soon came to rely on them for a quick, filling breakfast in the morning or for a mid-afternoon snack. It seemed that every corner convenience store had them, and there were tons of different flavors.
When we returned to Stuttgart I tried to find onigiri. The closest I've come is Waraku in Düsseldorf. Taking a 3-hour journey every time I have an onigiri-craving hardly seems practical, so I decided to learn how to make my own...
I don't often get the opportunity to go out for lunch, and so today when Matt and I had a rare Friday off together, we decided to make the most of it by trying Origami, a local sushi restaurant that's been on our list for some time.
I love sushi, but I find that we eat the cute, tiny fish-topped rice rectangles less often here than we did in the States. I'm pretty sure the reason has something to do with Stuttgart being quite far from any major body of ocean water. Of the 3-4 sushi restaurants we've tried in the city, the quality has either been very good and expensive or abysmal (think tasteless, fried frozen, or worse -- fishy!) and less expensive. Despite my past disappointments, I'd heard good things about Origami from from friends and colleagues, and was looking forward to our meal there...
It could be because I'm American that I have a special place on my culinary palate for Chinese buffets. I remember going to one when my husband and I first started dating because we were young and didn't have much money; our local Chinese buffet located in one of America's never-ending strip malls was one of our few choices for a filling meal on a dime. Maybe it's that nostalgia or maybe it's the novelty of finding one in Stuttgart that influenced us to check out New Shanghai Restaurant today for lunch...
In my last post I talked about all the things we saw and did while in Seattle. And so, without further ado, here's where we ate...
We just got back from a whirlwind week in Seattle full of family, friends, and food. Though as my sister-in-law joked before we got there, we mostly based our plans around food. That probably explains why I'm still feeling full and why I'm really, really missing seafood right now. All that aside, we had a fabulous time visiting our family and getting to know a new city (and for me, a new coast!).
Before I launch into our activities and meals, I want to mention a few general thoughts...
I was first introduced to the Pfalz wine region a couple of years ago by a foodie friend of mine. She took us to one of her favorite vineyards so that we could stock up her wine cellar. Since then, I've made it a point to order wines from the region when they're offered at restaurants or to look for the region on labels in the grocery store. And so when that same friend invited me back last weekend for a wine tasting, I was thrilled to accept...
A couple of weekends ago I found myself in Frankfurt am Main visiting with friends. Frankfurt has the biggest international airport in this part of the country, so we make it there somewhat regularly either to see friends arrive or leave from the airport, to go on our own adventures, or to visit our friends who live there. On this occasion, we had a couple of meals from some past favorites, but we also tried brunch at a our favorite Frankfurt bakery for the first time and loved it!
If you're ever in Frankfurt, here are three places that I recommend you try...
It seems like May is the month of holiday weekends, what with the Tag der Arbeit (Labor Day) on May 1st, Christi Himmelfahrt (Ascension Day) last Thursday, and now Pfingstmontag (Whit Monday) this Monday. I love having a long weekend, but it's kind of a pain when the grocery store closes because these days I can't be bothered to plan ahead for meals. This was the case on Thursday, so we decided to avoid the hassle of planning on Wednesday and went out for dinner on Thursday night.
A coworker of mine recommended Tokio Dining to me ages ago, but with Kicho just down the road from us, we hadn't gotten around to it. However, she promised they have the best Katsudon that she's had outside of Japan, and so it's long been on the top of our list for a visit...
My husband and I have long wanted to visit more cities in the north of Germany, especially Düsseldorf. I read last year in a Germanwings magazine that Düsseldorf has an area known as "Little Tokyo" with tons of authentic restaurants and shops. This is in large part because Düsseldorf reportedly has the highest population of Japanese citizens in Europe, thanks also to the bi-weekly flights between the city and Tokyo. With our interests piqued, we decided to use the long Easter weekend as an opportunity to see if the city lives up to its hype.
To get there, we used our Deutsche Bahn cards to purchase train tickets on the ICE. It's only about 2-1/2 hours from Stuttgart to Düsseldorf, and the discount we get with our bahn cards make them well worth it. The train followed the course of the Rhine River, a fact I wish I'd have known before so that I could have positioned myself on the right side of the train as we travelled north. The views were stunning! It seemed as if around every bend we passed another castle and another picturesque German village. Perhaps there could be a Rhine River cruise in my future...
