Salzburg: Days 2 to 4

Well, I won’t lie, we didn’t do a whole heap in Salzburg. It was hot, especially after about 11am, all the way to the middle of the night.

I combated the heat somewhat by soaking my T-shirt then rolling it in a towel so it was lightly damp. This technique keeps you cool for at least an hour outdoors. If it gets really hot I add a wet thin cotton scarf for my head and neck. By then I look like Lawrence of Arabia but with more dripping.

Every morning we started our day with breakfast in the apartment followed by a trip to Kaffee Alchemie.

Luke probably looks sad because I’ve won more wordle games than him.

We tried their cappuccinos, iced cappuccinos and affogatos. Their coffee was extremely flavourful and not bitter or burned, it had a light sweetness and their milk foam was thick, not like the styrofoam- consistency milk froth you get in the UK. If I had two I never felt jittery either, just perfectly awake. Basically I’m crying on the inside leaving it behind ;-).

We did do a few activities in Salzburg after the first day.

On the recommendation of our lovely friends from the Mozart concert, we went to the midday organ recital at Salzburg cathedral. It was worth the €6 just to spend an hour sitting out of the heat, the architecture was very imposing and elaborate and the organ music was… fine. Not my thing but kind of interesting to see live. They had two organists who moved around and played each of the six organs in the building.

At the end we saw our friends (if you’re reading this, ladies please leave a comment, I wasn’t sure how to spell your names!) and they took another photo and I wish I had too. It’s always nice to run into familiar faces in a new city.

We spent some time walking around the narrow alleys of the old town. Most of the shops were luxury brands and had tourist prices but we did go into one cheese store that sold cheddar style cheese but with lots of different flavours.

The most unusual was lavender, which had the colour of blu tac. I ended up tasting some the second time we went in and it barely had any taste beyond cheese, the colour was a bit off-putting though. We did buy some aged sheep’s cheese and used it for our dinner.

The cheese shop also let us try some of their white port, which we hadn’t had since Porto. We bought a small bottle of that too.

We had two meals that I cooked in the apartment – pasta with grated cheese, salt, pepper, olive oil and cherry tomatoes. I feel like it’s my travel go-to since it’s so easy and usually most of the ingredients are already in the cupboard if there’s a kitchen in the Airbnb.

The fresh fruit and vegetable stall around the city sell the most amazingly perfect produce. I bought a big tub of red currants – something you almost never see at home. Luke didn’t want any so I got to eat them all myself.

There were many stores around town selling traditional clothing. Much like in Munich, it’s not unusual to see people wearing outfits like this around town. At around €500 for a complete set, it was out of my budget. I would’ve loved a proper dirndl for multicultural days at school though, a connection to my German heritage.

Luke did a load of washing when we first arrived and repurposed the shoe rack into the worlds smallest drying rack.

We spent two nights eating at a beer garden just around the corner from our apartment. It was a huge setup with both indoor and outdoor spaces, but we preferred sitting beneath the chestnut trees.

The food was very Germanic – meat, gravy, potato-based sides or dumplings, beans or noodles.

We also ate (or rather I ate while Luke watched because he was feeling a bit hungover) at the Afro Cafe, which was also only a couple of hundred metres from our accommodation. It was recommended online as a good place to eat and something different from Australian cuisine. It was good for brunch – I had the shakshuka, admittedly something that’s pretty common at home.

We went back to the Mirabell Gardens and saw a bit more of them. We were interested in seeing more of the palace but only a small part was open… or we couldn’t find any other open sections. The roses smelled lovely.

Outside the university was a funny set of sculptures of giant gherkins. I had a student last year who was obsessed with gherkins so we took a few photos.

One of these cucumbers in not like the other ones.

One thing that should be mentioned if you’re thinking of going to Salzburg, is the fact that they sell Mozart chocolates everywhere. They look very fancy but be warned – they are primarily filled with marzipan so just don’t bother unless you’re one of the 1% of the population that actually likes it.

There really isn’t much else to report about Salzburg. It seemed like a really nice city and there are several hills I would’ve loved to climb if it hadn’t been uncomfortably hot. I know no European Airbnb owners are going to read this, but for god’s sake please put some fans in your apartments. Just a pedestal or desk fan would make life more bearable!

The heat has convinced me that April to mid-June are definitely my preferred months for European trips. Either that or autumn. Go when it’s quieter, cooler, cheaper and just generally more pleasant.

Right now we’re in Frankfurt airport, which surely has to be one of the biggest in the world. Terminal B was approximately a kilometre from Terminal A and staff ride bicycles around!

Next stop: Belfast! Don’t let us down, Lufthansa, we have a dinner booking somewhere fancy.

11Jul2018

First Pizza in Naples!

by Miss Penny Black

I have never really heard anything good about Naples that wasn’t pizza-related. Perhaps a rumour about good museums, but when people talk about the city it is always as something of a cesspool of humanity and actual garbage.

To be honest, this photo could just have easily been taken in Rome or (language aside) London.

Perhaps it was to see if it was really as bad as people say that I decided I wanted to come here. I mean, could it really be more filthy than some Asian capitals like Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh? And of course with Luke’s pizza obsession we were going to come here eventually.

We arrived by train and I was surprised at how new and shiny the main station was and linea 1 was entirely air conditioned too.

Also can I just show you this outfit that I took a sneaky photo of as this lady was getting off the train? Totally irrelevant but what an amazing item of clothing. Where would you even buy something like that? Not that I need to know since I’d never do it justice but… wow. Also I’d have it soaked in massive and undignified sweat patches within about five seconds of getting off the train but that’s a different matter.

When we reached our Airbnb flat the owner told us that the station is so nice because it is only a year old and it wasn’t representative of the rest of the network. Too bad!

Our Airbnb has also recently been done up and has some rather interesting lighting features – three colour-controllable LED strips in one wall and strip lighting around the ceiling. It’s more tasteful than it sounds and it’s actually a spacious apartment too, with lots of food available for breakfast and snacks. Pastries, biscuits, milk and juices. Very nice! We bought a litre bottle of Bombay Sapphire in the Croatian duty free ($35 AUD – bargain!) that we are taking with us from place to place for our evening post prandial drinks.

Also the apartment is on the ground floor, which is always nice! Especially in Naples where there are miles of stairs everywhere anyhow.

The atrium of our apartment block.

Now I have a travel tip for you!

We have gotten into the habit, if there isn’t an ice cube tray in our freezer, of pouring water into the bottom of some glasses before we go out exploring then freezing the whole. This means a nice cold glass into which you can pour wine or whatever when you get home after a day’s hard sightseeing.

So refreshing!

Luke had done some research and made a map of pizzerias that are generally considered top-notch. One was quite a walk from the others so we decided to hit that one first. Plus it had tables so we could dine in. Quite a few Neopolitan pizzerias are just grab-and-go storefronts.

It opened at 7pm so we had time to walk around a bit. Naples street art seems to be a cut above anything we saw in Rome. Which wouldn’t be hard since all we saw in Rome was tagging. Urgh.

We tried to find a bar for a drink but they all seemed to be stand-up affairs. I found a blog that said drinking isn’t big in Naples. What? Italians not big on drinking? This didn’t really fit all my stereotypes of Italian culture. More research will be required.

We got back to Starita as they opened and had already decided what we wanted. We were having their traditional Margherita and their specialty, a deep fried pizza. For this one the crust is deep fried until it is puffy then quickly baked with topping on.

I preferred the traditional, Luke preferred the fried crust but both were excellent.

While I would not go anywhere near so far as to say we are experts, we know a reasonable amount about pizza. Luke helped kick-start a pizza documentary that we have watched several times and if you read our entry on pizza in New York you’ll know how much we love it. I also like making my own from scratch at home so I was keen to get ideas on how to improve it.

Naples is the birthplace of pizza, but from Naples pizza spread via migrants to New York and Boston before being popularised in the rest of Italy. It began as a way for bakers to slightly cool the base of their ovens so that loaves of bread would not burn. To stop the pizza inflating like a balloon (as pita bread does), tomato sauce would be spread on it. This became a cheap early morning food for workers in Naples and then its popularity meant pizza was served all day. Putting cheese on pizza didn’t happen immediately – the Margherita was invented to honour a queen and the basil added to pay homage to Italy’s flag.

In Australia we think of ‘marinara’ as a seafood pizza but here it means a pizza with only tomato sauce and herbs, no cheese. Pizza here is very different to pizza in most other places. It is cooked unbelievably quickly – in as little as a minute – and the sauce is pure pulped tomatoes. The base is charred but the whole thing is a bit soupy in the middle and there isn’t as much cheese as we like to pile on at home. The joy of Neapolitan pizza is in the freshness of the ingredients. For the true traditional pizza the tomatoes must have been grown on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. The tomatoes taste so tangy and salty-sweet that, combined with the olive oil and cheese there is a buttery-richness that is magical.

All styles of pizza are good and pizza is a dish that is reinvented over and over around the world. Experiencing it in Naples doesn’t mean you have had the world’s best, it means you have added a dimension to your appreciation of it. At least that’s my feelings on the subject!

I would love to know what other people have thought of pizza they have eaten in Naples – or anywhere around the world! Where have you most or least enjoyed it?

3Jun2018

Belfast Bits and Pieces

by Miss Penny Black

Belfast is certainly a different city to the place I visited in 2003. Admittedly the amazing weather and longer time I’ve had to see it have played apart, but it can’t be denied that there is a much more cosmopolitan vibe to the place now.

On our last day of driving around we kept things low key and stuck to Belfast, seeing Danny’s new house and a few tourist attractions, starting with a ‘Melbourne breakfast’. Obviously it was avocado with fancy bits on sourdough but also a smidge of vegemite too. Very nice!

Ulster Museum was on my to-do list after I’d seen it online and it was a great place to get a feel for Northern Ireland’s history, from prehistoric times to the current day.

They used to have dragons!

On the very top floor of the museum is a display dedicated to Ireland’s current #1 tourism drawcard – you guessed it – Game of Thrones.

An enormous tapestry (currently 84 metres and growing) tells the story in the style of the Bayeux Tapestry. Having seen all but the most recent season, it was interesting walking along and picking out the plot points.

The signs warning people not to touch the cloth were also in keeping with the theme.

The Museum also has a partially-unwrapped mummy. Danny said it gave him nightmares as a child. I can’t think why.

The Belfast Botanical Gardens are worth a visit if you like that sort of thing, and if you’re there on a cold day I’d definitely recommend a stroll through the heated Ravine building, which contained tropical plants from around the world.

There’s also a Victorian glasshouse with some very interesting specimens.

We took a stroll around the gardens of the big building (um… parliament? Danny, help!) in the very first photo and also drove up to Belfast Castle. It was built in the Scottish Baronial Style in 1862 by the Marquis of Donegal.

A little bit Hogwarts?

It is always nice to see historical buildings being in regular use and this castle is now a function hall and restaurant. The gardens contain sculptures, topiaries and mosaics of cats. We walked around and found a few after having a drink and a sit in the sun.

A post about the sights of Belfast would be incomplete without some photos of the murals that can still be found in various places around the city. Since my knowledge of NI history is far from complete I won’t comment on the political situation except to say that many of the more violent murals we saw years ago have been replaced but there are still a few giant paintings of men in balaclavas with machine guns in hand.

In the city centre there is plenty of (what I think of as) Melbourne-style street art. Beautiful and quirky images that go well with the new bars and restaurants.

The last bar we had a drink in was The Sunflower. Years ago people had been shot in this bar, hence the gate at the door. Now it’s a gay friendly meeting place with ukulele jam nights.