Venturing Through Venice

We spent three fantastic days in Venice. The full album for Italy is available.

We arrived in Venice on the high speed train from Bologna in the late afternoon. From there, we took the very slow water bus down the grand canal to our hotel. The bus was amazingly slow, zig zagging across the canal every 100m or so, but eventually we got there and dropped our stuff off. 

Then, we walked to the other side of St. Mark's square to Locale for dinner with Tom and Ginny. Locale was a multi-course tasting menu with a wine pairing and it was excellent. The wine pairing in particular went very well with the dishes and included a vermouth and soda, an orange wine and a desert wine. Each dish was a riff on a classic venetian dish but updated. 

The next morning, we went down for breakfast at the B&B, which was a complete disaster. The only thing Catherine could eat was the coffee and everything else was pre-packaged breads and spreads. So I grabbed enough to keep me going and Catherine was stuck eating an energy bar.

We then made our way over to Tom and Ginny's hotel where the four of us took a water taxi to a glass workshop on the island of Murano. There, they were working on flowers for a chandelier and then they did a demonstration making a glass horse in one go (about 4 minutes). Then, we went through the shop, which was almost an art gallery. There were many stunning pieces, some practical, others purely sculptural. 

From the glass workshop, we took another water taxi over to Burano. Burano is a fisherman's village known for its brightly painted houses and lace makers. The lacework is painstakingly manual and the end result really isn't that captivating for the effort put in. Each woman specializes in a different stitch so a given pieces is made by 3-5 different people. It's not surprising that it's a dying art. 

The small island was swarmed with people taking posed pictures in front of the brightly colored houses. Instagram is probably the best/worst thing to happen to the island! The houses remind me of pictures of Newfoundland. There are two stories about why the houses are so brightly colored. First, the houses are easier for the fishermen to find in the fog of the lagoon when they return in the wee hours of the morning. Second, they were just drunk and thought that it would be a great idea. It's hard to tell which story is real, but the parallel to Newfoundland doesn't help settle the matter.

For lunch, we had some delicious food at the Black Cat. It started with Prosecco from the tap and a full plate of appetizers consisting of various seafood. For the main Ginny and I had the go fish rissotto, which was the main reason we came to the island. It's made using a fish broth of little go fish that come from the lagoon. They used to be the garbage fish that you'd catch by accident. Then, it's rice and not much else and it was spectacular. Full of flavour, very creamy and the rice was the perfect texture past el dente but not mush. Tom and Catherine had the spaghetti and clams, which was also excellent and tasted of the sea and garlic. 

After lunch, we wandered through the shops on the island and then eventually made our way back to the dock. From there, we took the water bus back to the main island in Venice. It was a much slower trip than the water taxis, taking 40 min. Water taxis are speedboats, while the busses are much larger and designed to carry many people. So it's not that surprising, but we were definitely glad that we had the taxies earlier that were setup by the hotel. 

Back on the main island, we slowly made our way back to St. Mark's square on foot. Along the way, we stopped for some window shopping and at a few bars to have spritzes and cicchetti. Cicchetti is the Venetian equivalent of tapas and tends to be very heavy on the seafood. There was also a lot of olive oil and even some veggies like artichoke hearts from big artichokes.

We had dinner at CoVino. It's a super small restaurant (only 15 seats) with two seatings a night. In Venice, they typically don't expect to turn a table over. Once you have the reservation for dinner, the table is yours for the night. CoVino is an exception because of its size. They were saying that it's gotten so popular that Venetians can never go there for dinner because it's always booked out at least two weeks in advance by tourists and a Venetian would never book that far in advance. It was another prix-fixe menu with a really eclectic wine selection. The food was excellent but the portions for different dishes were very unpredictable. I had some roasted clams with tomatoes to start. My main was a seafood pasta that filled me up and then for desert, I had watermelon soaked in absinth that was very refreshing. 

After dinner, we strolled our way back to the hotel through St. Mark's square at night. The square was lit up with candles in every arch casting magical lighting over all the tourists. It was very lively with four different restaurants dueling it out with their string quartets playing Vivaldi and other classics.

On our last in Venice, Catherine's joints finally caught up to her and we had to take it easier. We had breakfast at a cafe near the hotel where Catherine could get some eggs and I had some pastries. Then we did a quick visit to Ca' Rezzonico which was a trader's house and is now the main repository of 18th century art and furniture in Venice. It even has a transplanted apothecary with herb jars, alembics and all the other tools of the trade of an 18th century apothecary. After a quick visit, we went back to the hotel so that Catherine could rest up her joints.

Around lunch, we ventured forth going towards RosaRossa, a pizza place that Catherine found online with gluten free pizzas. It had the best gluten free pizza either of us has tasted, so Catherine glutted herself while I had the spaghetti nero, or spaghetti with cuttlefish and ink. It's a classic Venetian dish and has an intense briney flavour that can be a little overwhelming. It would be perfect for an appetizer, but was honestly a little much for a whole plate. 

After lunch, we walked over to the Rialto bridge, which is both beautify and packed and then made our way back to St. Mark's square. There, we waited in line to see the St. Mark's Basilica which was a little nuts. The inside is dripping in gold, mostly in the form of mosaics showing stories from the scriptures. The floors were intricate geometric mosaic patterns that were stunning, but usually overlooked under people's feet. Finally, there was a treasure trove, litterally. A ton of relics and treasures that were stolen from Constantinople in the sack of the 4th crusade. The Venetians were bastards to convince the crusaders to do that sack! For a long time, the Basilica was the Doge's personal chapel, which was also criminal given its size and treasure contained within.

After seeing the Basilica, we stopped for a quick coffee and then went into the Doge's palace. Most of the main floor burnt down in 1483 so the rooms were rebuilt and re-decorated after that using the full wealth of Venice. There was some amazing artistry. Most of the work of government was done there and different rooms were for different assemblies. There were many assemblies like the council of 10, the naval council, the court and the council of all citizens. They had a very complex form of government that survived for 1000 years. Most of the visit was about the art, but it made me want to learn more about how their government was setup. Actually, most of the museums in Venice are about the art that's been produced in the city. We weren't able to find the museum about the history, government, or how Venice is constructed, which I found a little odd. 

After the Doge's palace we met up with Tom and Ginny for dinner at a pizza place we passed the day before. Catherine's second pizza of the day wasn't as good as lunch, but it was still quite tasty and cheap. It was a great low key way to finish up the trip.

In the morning, we woke up before dawn and took a 5am water taxi to the airport. Of course you can take a boat to the airport! It was a little magical seeing the city in the wee hours of the morning when the lights are on but the city is covered in a quiet blanket where all you can hear is the lap of the lagoon. 

Exploring Emilia-Romagna

We spent the first chunk of our time in Emilia-Romagna in the Po river valley home to some of the best food in Italy. The full album for Italy is available.

We started by taking a train out of Switzerland to Tirano Italy. The train ride was spectacular winding its way down the mountains by many gorgeous glaciers. From Tirano, we took another train to Milan. It was a slow going, cramped train but had some nice scenery as it made its way down Lake Como. In Milan, we split with Ginny and Tom as they rented a car to go to Lake Garda, while we continued on by train. We debated popping over to the Milan cathedral as it is supposed to be one of the most stunning in the world. However, given the amount of travel we were doing, we decided against it. Instead, we just took the next high speed train to Bologna. From the train station, we took the bus to the airport to pick up a rental rental car and then drove to our agriturismo near Reggio Emilia. 

It was my first experience driving in Italy and I was to find that it is fairly stressful. The rural roads are barely larger than a lane but in both direction with sharp ditches on either side. It's a little antsy passing somebody when you're both going 60kph. The freeways are more chaotic than I'm used to because each lane has a different speed limit, 30kph different and of course people don't actually follow that limit. The net result is that there is a very large variance in speed of cars so there's a lot of passing. In between the freeway and the rural roads, there are a ton of roundabouts. I got used to them fairly quickly but it made the driving feel slow because you were hitting a roundabout every 3-5 minutes and had to keep track of where to go at each point. 

The agriturismo was very nice. Called Verdenoce, it's a renovated barn with large rooms in the middle of a vineyard. We were on the top floor in a larger room than we paid for. Since we were only staying two nights, it probably made sense to give us that room to fit in other guests staying longer. Breakfasts each morning were great and consisted of eggs, bacon twice as flavorful as what you get in the US, some dehydrated zucchini drizzled with balsamic and oil and a large assortment of pastries & bread.

After dropping off our stuff at the agriturismo, it was fairly late, so we went out for dinner. We went to Ristorante Mazzalasino which was listed in one of our guidebooks. It's a locals hole in the wall restaurant just on the edge of the town. We were the first people there for the evening and had to stick our heads into the kitchen for them to open the door. Then we had some chaos trying to order because they didn't speak English and eventually had to call in one of the off-duty waiters who did. The food was excellent and very cheap. It was cooked by the matron of the family who was very friendly and accommodating. We started with an antipasta plate composed of many different cured meats from the area. Then we had some pasta. Catherine had some gluten free past that they cooked specially for her, while I had a sample of different pastas. It included raviolis of pumpkin where the pumpkin flavour just punches you in the face and others of spinnach/ricotta. For the main, we had a donkey stew, which is the speciality of the house and was great. For desert, I had a cake dripping in amaretto. Everything was accompanied by local lambrusco. In North America, we think of lambrusco as a sweet, sparkling, red wine, but the version that is drunk in the upper Poe valley is dry, low alcohol and refreshing. It was a lot of fun. Total cost for this feast: 50 euros for the two of us.

In the morning, we got up early as we had a tour scheduled on the other side of Parma (about an hour away) that started at Antica Corte Pallavicina. Antica Coreta used to be a toolhouse on the Po river in the 1400s. It's been restored and now operates as a hotel, a Michelin star restaurant (where everything is grown on premise) and producer of Culatello di Zibello.

Our tour started by going to a parmesan reggiano factory. They were finishing up making the cheese for the day. It has to be done in the morning to meet the DOC requirements. The milk is trucked to the factory the night before and sits in a vat overnight. All the milk must come from cows in the area fed on grass. In the morning, it is pumped into very large inverted copper cones where it is seeded with the previous day's production and warmed to separate the curds from the whey. Each vat produces enough for two wheels of cheese. After separating, the curds are pulled out of the vat and squeezed into molds to form the wheel. The wheels are then soaked in a 50/50 saltwater bath for a week and then aged in a barn for 18 or 24 months. During the aging time, the cheese is cleaned with brushes and turned regularly so that it doesn't get holes as it hardens. When we were there, the consortium inspectors were on-site grading the cheese and applying the parmesan reggiano seal if they met standards. To grade the cheese, they take the wheel off the shelf and hit it with a small white hammer. Based on the sound, they know how solid the cheese is and thus its grade. 

From the cheese factory, we went to the restaurant's farm. It's used exclusively to provide produce for the restaurant except for the meat that is aged. There is a climate controlled aging house for the first few months that the hams age. Culatello di Zibello is a cured ham like Prosciutto di Parma but includes only the meat of the ham instead of the whole leg like Prosciutto. Once the leg is deboned, the meat is salted and massaged with wine and then stuffed into a pig bladder and wrapped in twine. The meat is then aged for at least 12 months, close enough to the Po river to have high humidity from the fog coming off the river. This allows the beneficial mold to grow. The resulting meat is amazing and has very deep flavors. 

After leaving the farm, we went back to the castle, where the culatello are aged for most of their life in the basement. When you first enter the basement, you're assaulted by the smell of the mold. The Japanese lady who was taking with the tour with us thought it was absolutely disgusting and almost wretched. It's interesting because there are some fermented Japanese products that smell vile to me, but this cellar smelled pretty good. I guess your tastes in fermented foods is very cultural. In the cellar, there are hundreds of the meats hanging from the ceiling. Each one is about 8lbs and sells for around $300-$400. Some of them have been tagged for specific people or restaurants. We saw one tag for Alain Ducasse, the famous French chef. 

After visiting the cellar, we had a little bit of time before lunch at the restaurant, so we did the self walking tour through the flood plain near the castle. It was nice to get outside even if it was disgustingly hot. Along the way, we saw their black pigs. It's a species that was traditionally raised in the area but has almost been driven out by a white pig that grows faster. The chef at the restaurant is trying to bring them back both for tradition and because the resulting culatello has even more flavor.

Lunch was included with our tour and was in the less formal osteria version of the restaurant. It included their sweet sparkling red wine, which wasn't very good, but somehow worked really well with the culatello. The meal started with a large plate of meats, parmesan and pickled vegetables. Of course, the culatello was the star of the show. After that, I had some delicate spinach/ricotta ravioli while Catherine had a ratatouille risotto. The risotto was different, but it worked really well. The main was game hen in balsamic vinegar. Finally, for desert, I had a pastry, while Catherine got a ginormous bowl of fruit. It was just big wedges of apples, pears and oranges. We would find out later that in Italy, you aren't expected to eat the whole fruit bowl (which would have been impossible), just take what you want. It's unclear if it gets re-served to other patrons.

After stumbling out of lunch, we drove to Parma. We saw the church, including a gorgeous baptistry and then walked around town doing a little shopping for Christmas gifts. Parma's a small, quaint, town.

In the evening, we returned to the agriturismo where we got a recommendation for dinner. We ate at an Argentinean steakhouse, but it was still Italian so you could get pasta. So, I had a guitar string tagliatelle and ragu. The pasta is square in profile because it's made by making a sheet of fresh pasta and then pushing it through metal wires like guitar strings. Catherine had a fantastic steak with arugula and a balsamic vinegar sauce. On the side, we had a bunch of roasted vegetables and salad.

Our next day was focused on Modena. We drove into town in the morning and made our first stop the church. Like most medieval towns, the church is the center of life. This church includes an adjoining tower which acted as the watch tower for the town. We climbed up inside the tower, which was interesting because the stairs are on the inside of the wall but the middle of the tower is all open. From the top, there is definitely a great view of the town. Back on the ground, we tried to find the carving of a hermaphorodite on the outside of the church, which is famous, but we couldn't find it. There are a lot of other interesting figures though. From the church, we went across the palace to look at some historical rooms with paintings in them from local artists. The rooms are part of the town hall.

We had lunch at Trattoria Il Fantino, which is a low key, but very busy place. I had some piadina, which is a local Emilia-Romagna flat bread. They were served in a basked with a bunch of accompaniments including lard, a soft cheese, arugula, sliced meats and ribs braised in wine. You slice the flatbread in half and then stuff it with your choice. Each piadina was about the size of a dollar pancake. Catherine of course couldn't each the piadina, so she just had a plate of the ribs and some potatoes. We washed it down in more of the local dry Lambrusco. Very reasonable for lunch. 

From lunch, we went to Acetaia di Giorgio, a traditional balsamic vinegar house. It's the oldest house in Modena, starting commercial production in the mid 1800s. It is actually a house. Traditionally, families would make their wine in the basement and their vinegar in the attic. They only make the highest grade of vinegar, labeled Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena. It is made only of grape must that is first cooked down. Then, it is aged in a solera of barrels for 12 years or 25 years for the extra old designation. The barrels are left open so that during the summer, the vinegar slowly evaporates and condenses into a rich, tongue-ringing syrup. Each barrel in the sequences gets a little smaller because of this evaporation. Each year, some of the vinegar is removed from the oldest barrel and then replaced with vinegar from the next barrel in line. This process is repeated and then new must is added to the first barrel. The barrels can be made of different woods and so producers use different woods to bring more complexity to the flavours. The barrels are not charred the way wine or whiskey barrels are and so they can be used forever. Acetaia di Giorgio only makes 2000 bottles of vinegar a year, each of which is only 100ml large. We tasted a number of their vinegars. The 25 year was definitely more complex but there was a larger difference between the vinegar made in juniper barrels vs. the mixed barrel version. The juniper was spicier. 

After our tour, we drove to an agriturismo just outside Faenza surround by kiwi and grape orchards. This agriturismo is a restaurant and working winery. It's a little weird because they had tractors running around beside the pool and tennis courts they built for guests. When I booked the stay, they said that their restaurant would be closed so we got some recommendations from Fabio in Faenza since that's where he grew up. It turns out that we could have eaten at the agriturismo, but we went into Faenza anyways. In Faenza, we walked around town. It was very lively, especially in the main square. We also looked at some of the ceramics shops which the town is famous for. We went to La Baita for dinner. It's a deli/wine shop during the day and restaurant at night. The sommelier was very knowledgable about the wine. The area primarily grows sangiovese for the reds and so is very distinct than lambrusco territory further up the Po river. The most interesting thing we tried was a white made of Albana. It was apricoty and floral with a touch of minerality. 

Next was a morning in Ravenna. We drove into town relatively early so that we would have enough time. Ravenna is known for its mosaics. On the outside, the churches looked like the Byzantine chapel I saw in Istanbul: flying buttresses made of simple looking bricks. The insides are why the town is a Unesco heritage site. Inside, there are jaw dropping mosaics from the 800s that are still crystal clear and have lots of gold. There's a huge variety of scenes but of course, all of them are stories from the good book.

Ravenna is also home to a number of mosaic workshops. Some just create simplistic reproductions of some of the famous pieces in the churches, but others are much more unique and have true artistry. We browsed through some of them between churches. For lunch, we stopped at Osteria dei Battibecchi right across from Dante's tomb. It's a relaxed place and we took our time eating on the square outside the restaurant, complete with a bottle of prosecco.

After lunch, we went back to the car and drove to the Bologna airport where we dropped off the car, then took the bus into town and checked into our B&B. We stayed at the Christina Rossi B&B which is run by a brother and sister about our age. I think they owned the building and rented out rooms on the upper floors, while serving breakfast in their living room on the first floor. It was an interesting setup and was quite comfortable.

After checking in, we went to the two towers to meet up with Fabio, one of my roommates from Pittsburgh. He lives in Bologna and now works for a mining equipment company. He was fairly late because he ran into some serious traffic getting home from work. So in the meantime, we just watched the people, mostly students, bustling around the square.

Before dinner, Fabio gave us a whirlwind tour of downtown. There are many churches, the most interesting of which is the basilica, which has had a few foiled bombings in the last few years. The reason: it contains a picture of Mohammed being tortured in hell. The town has a lot of arch-covered sidewalks, apparently because buildings were taxed based on their square footage of the ground floor. So, people would build out over the sidewalk! No taxes, more room. He also took us to the university pub which serves bad wine but is an institution as old as the university (which was founded in 1088). It's packed every night and fairly often you can see the chancellor of the university or the mayor of Bologna hanging out.

The madonna in the church of
Santa Maria Maggiore in Ravenna. She is
depicted with a swollen face
and is thus considered a place
to pray for those with chronic health
issues.

Fabio couldn't join us for dinner as he had to get home to his wife and daughter, but he dropped us off at a classic Bologna restaurant. We had a great bottle of red wine Fabio recommended from near Faenza. For a start, we had a meat plate including a large portion of the local speciality: mortadella. Frankly, it was good in the same way a good hot dog is good, but it was still Bologna, which isn't my favorite. Next, I had tortellini in broth, which was divine. The broth was clean and flavourful and the tortellini were little pockets of meaty goodness. For the main, I had a veal dish which was basically a croque madame, but with a veal patty instead of ham. It was tasty, but was a very heavy dish with a heavy sauce. For desert, we had a very sharp lemon sorbet, which acted as a great digestif to cut through the heavy food.

The next morning, we had our cooking class. It was a private class with three dishes. We specifically wanted to learn how to do fresh, gluten-free pasta so we did a tagliatelle with ragu, a chestnut gnocchi and poached pears for desert. We made the tagliatelle using a gluten free pasta flour and super rich eggs. The flour was heavy on the starch, so it was dry and you used less of it, but it also had a lot of psyllium husk and a little xantham gum. Those two binders (along with the quality of the eggs) were probably the key. Our instructor actually said that the eggs were special pasta eggs. I know that in the US some chefs will add extra yolks to get a similar effect to Italian eggs. The ragu was all about the meat. There's a touch of tomato paste, but other than that, it's just sofrito, some ground meat (pork and beef), a rich chicken and beef broth and some salt. No pepper. And of course a couple of hours of low heat cooking. We made the pasta and rolled it out using rolling pins, which was a first for me. It wasn't that hard using a pasta rolling pin because it is so long and has enough weight that you barely push down on it.

The chestnut gnocchi  was made of just waxy potatoes, chestnut flour and eggs. We formed them using a fork to get the ridges and pick up the sauce. They were very easy to make. The sauce was a two part one. The bottom of the dish was a parmesan cream, made of just those two ingredients warmed up. Then the gnocchi was tossed in a porchini, broth and onion sauce. Having two sauces was an interesting approach and it worked very well.

For desert, the poached pears were done in red wine spiced with warm spices, thyme and bay. The herbs added another layer of the flavour which was really nice. It was served with a lemon pudding, but we didn't cook the corn starch long enough and it was very thick. We could have done without, or with a very light lemon curd to contrast with the richness of the pears.

Of course, lunch was eating the food we had just prepared. Can't go wrong there. After that, we took a cab to the train station and then took the high speed train to Venice for the last stop on the trip. 

Pondering Pontresina

The second half of the week in Switzerland was based in Pontresina, in the Bernina Valley and just a few miles from St. Moritz. See the full album.

We started the week arriving by train in the morning and going to our hotel, the Grand Kronenhof. It's one of those very old, high end European hotels with clinking china, amazing workmanship and floors that creak with age. Staying there was definitely a splurge by Catherine's parents.

We arrived too early to check into our rooms, so we changed into hiking clothes and stored our bags. Then, we took the hotel shuttle to the Punt Muragl funicular. The funicular starts its trip going through a forest, then it comes around a corner and pops out of the tree line before arriving at the restaurant and hotel at the top. We had a quick lunch at the restaurant where I had the Grisons soup. It's a soup served all over the valley in the mountain huts made of barley, sausage and a little cream. It's great fuel for a hike! Everybody else had rosti, which is shaved potatoes that are fried almost exactly like hashbrowns. They are then topped with cheese, or a sausage.

Our hike for the day went along the ridge back towards Pontresina. In the first half, we hiked up 300m to a hut and had some glugwine. Then, we continued along the cliff slowly making our way down to the Pontresina chairlift. Some sections on the way down were a little tricky and included cables on one side and a nice long fall on the other. Along the entire hike, we were graced with spectacular views of St. Moritz on its lake and two glacial valleys visible across the Bernina. As we hiked, the clouds came in and out across the mountains creating incredible lighting to see the scenery. Along the chairlift on the way down, we were treated to a series of wooden carvings of animals in the area. It wasn't a long hike, but it was definitely had a high reward to effort ratio.

For dinner on our first night, we dressed up and went to the main dining room at the hotel. It is very old school with jackets required, more silverware than you know what to do with, and the courses are presented under silver lids that are lifted by the waiters in a choreographed dance. The food itself was traditional french and thus high on technique. It was good but we had better meals on our trip. At the end of the meal, we ordered some mint tea, which caused the wait staff some consternation on how to serve it. They decided to serve each portion with a pot with the leaves in it along with a small silver pitcher of hot water. Of course, since everything was silver, they had to include little cloth covers for the handles so that you don't burn your hands. I learned that the little pitcher of water is for cutting your tea. After a while, the tea steeping in the pot will get really strong, so when you are pouring later cups, you can cut it with fresh water. This makes sense for black tea, but not so much for mint, which caused the debate by the wait staff. Of course, we learned this from Bob and Susan after Catherine and Margaret just used the pitcher to refill the pot to get more tea.

They next day we took a bus to the Sils tram on the other side of St. Moritz to do our hike. Catherine decided to sit this one out and meet us for lunch instead at the top of the Silvaplana tram. The hike started at the top of the tram and followed a path that walked by a number of cute alpine lakes. We took a little accidental detour and climbed up to the top of a chair lift instead of cutting across the side of the hill. That ended up being frustrating because we could see the tram stop that was our destination at about the same elevation, but we had to walk down and then back up. That final upward slope was exhausting! It was going up the ski path, so it was fairly steep and consistent. We ended up spreading out a lot and being at the front, I got to see a number of marmots so I got some pictures. When we got to the top, Catherine was waiting there patiently and we instantly ordered some food so that it would be there when everybody else stumbled in. The food was not very good, but at that moment, it didn't really matter.

After lunch, we took the tram down the hill and the bus back to the hotel. After stretching out, we went to the hotel's spa. It was smaller than the one is Scoul, but just as ridiculous. The main pool ended in these ginormous glass windows that looked out on the mountains. The jacuzzi pool also had various water massage stations that you could use to loosen up specific muscles, or, you could just lay down on these metal chairs and have bubbles come up under you, turning your whole body into jelly. They had two steam rooms, one with eucalyptus oil in the air and the other with saltwater. Both were great for my mild sore throat. The spa also had a relaxation pool which was mostly in the dark and had soothing patterns projected on the ceiling. The pool itself was circular and there were a number of stations around the circle. At each station, you lie with your head at the outside of the circle on a stone bench and then put your feet on a metal tree so that you are lying on your back almost floating. Your head is just partially underwater so that your ears are and they have soothing music playing through the water. I don't float that well so it wasn't as relaxing as it could be, but it was still pretty wild setup.

For dinner that night, we went to the restaurant in the hotel steinbock. It served traditional mountain food and is known as having the best rosti in the area. The rosti is huge! Each plate is a full cheft's skillet and about an inch thick, crisped to perfection. For my main, I had a venison ragu with chestnut spaetzle that was spectacular.

Friday started out as a cloudy, slightly rainy day so we spent the morning lounging around the hotel. In the afternoon, Margaret,Tom, Ginny and I tried to get raclette but it's a dish primarily served in the French part of Switzerland. There is one restaurant in Pontresina that serves it, but they weren't open for lunch and were completely booked at dinner so we couldn't even pop in in the evening for an appetizer. I guess I'll have to go to the French side on some other trip.

After missing out on raclette, Catherine, Bob and I did a short afternoon hike. We took the chairlift up and then walked up a valley full of hundreds of marmots to the closest hut. The hut was run by a very friendly Swiss woman who bakes a cake or two every night and carries them up to the hut to sell each day. Today was a carrot cake that was a lot lighter than American carrot cakes. It was almost a corn/carrot cake, which is a combination we should definitely try.

The large furrow shows how the glacier is a
small fraction of its old size.

Friday dinner was at a pizza, burger and pasta place near the train station. They had a very large menu including a lot of game meats so I ordered some roe deer in a juniper sauce, while others had pasta, pizza and burgers. 

Saturday was our last day for hiking in Switzerland. It was a crystal clear blue sky day and our hike started out by taking a horse drawn carriage up the Roseg valley to the hotel/restaurant at the trailhead. We had a quick coffee stop and then started our hike up the valley. Catherine and Susan did a more mellow hike that stayed along the valley floor to an alpine lake at the base of the glacier while the rest of us hiked up the ridge for 1000m to the Surlej mountain hut before cutting across to the Silvaplana tram. The Roseg valley is pretty spectacular. It comes out of the confluence of two separate glaciers. You can see how much the glaciers have receded because the old glaciers' extents can be seen as gigantic scree furrows down the mountain side. Very clear evidence of a changing climate.

For dinner on our last night, we had probably the best meal in Switzerland. It was at the Krostenbuli restaurant as part of the hotel. Their food is primarily local dishes but done with a modern presentation and bold flavours. I started with an ossobuco ravioli, had a main of artic char with a cognac sauce and then a desert of passion fruit panna cotta with pineapple and coconut. We also drank some really interesting local white wine and then cleared them out of red wine from the winery in Lebanon that Margaret visited when she was there for her friend's wedding. It was a great way to end the first phase of the trip.

Scouting out Scoul

The first week of our trip was spent hiking around the Engadine valley in Switzerland. See the full album.

We landed in Zurich in the evening and then took a cab to the hotel. Near downtown, things started to look really familiar and then I realized that it was the same location as one of the pedestrian detection datasets I used during my thesis. After starting at those videos for so long, of course I could recognize the real thing! After unpacking, we met up with Catherine's family, who had arrived earlier and went out for a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant where I had a chicory risotto.

The next morning, we took a train through to mountains to Scoul and got there around lunch. We checked into the GuardaVal and then had a quiet lunch in the sister hotel and then went for a quick hike. This was my intro to hiking Switzerland style. You take a chairlift, gondola, tram or bus up the hill and then hike around and see the scenery from high up. In this case, it was a quick walk where we went up the gondola and then walked to the top of the Ftan chairlift and back. Catherine and her parents took the gondola back down, but the rest of us rented these mountain bike foot scooter hybrids and took them down the hill. Wheeee!

We had dinner at the hotel's restaurant, which was a stuffing, multi-course affair with an excellent wine pairing. It was delicious but took over 3 hours so we were ready to hit the sack by the end of it.

In the morning, we took a local bus to the Svizzer National Park. The road to the trailhead was very narrow and windy. At one point, it went across a gigantic scree field that looked like it gets washed away and re-graded every year. Only the Swiss would think it's perfectly reasonable to have a local bus run a regular route along there!

The first part of the hike was a slow ascent through the forested park to an Alpine meadow. Catherine joined us for most of it and then turned around to catch a taxi. She didn't want to push her joints too much. In the alpine meadow, there was a viewing area where people sit down with their binoculars and try to find wildlife like the Chamoix. We didn't see any there, so we continued up over the ridge into the next valley. This took us out of the national park and instantly we were surrounded by cow patties. This would be a theme when hiking in the Alps. You share the trail with the cows with their bells clanging away.

We went down the side of the ridge and came upon a hunting cabin where there were a couple of hunters who had caught a Chamois. They brought out their scope and showed us more Chamois eating on the side of the mountain on the other side of the valley. They also showed us some marmots hanging out near their den.

After the cabin, we headed down the valley and came across a herd of sheep with their shepherdess. They also had bells and were quite cute as we walked through the flock along the trail. The last stage of the trail into Tarasp included stops interpretive telling the story of Snow White (or at least a local version of it), including little wood vignettes like a table with 7 bowls. At the end, we caught sight of the castle in Tarasp up on the hill, which of course was supposed to be the castle from the story. 

We got back to the hotel fairly late, so there wasn't much time between stretching out and dinner. For dinner, we took a bus to Sent and had dinner at the Aldier. It was delicious, traditional mountain food. I had veal in butter and herbs, while Catherine had some delicious lamb. We traded bites.

For our last day in Scoul, we took a bus to Ftan and took the chairlift up into the hills. We then walked over to the Alp Laret, a family mountain cabin. They served some amazing food! Catherine had a buckwheat cake with fresh berry cream, while I had the soup of the day which consisted of two big dumplings (the size of matzo balls) made of bread, ham and herbs, served in a clear ham broth. From there, we walked up the hill and along the alpine meadows, seeing cows everywhere. We were originally thinking of going to an alpine lake, but we wanted to get down in time to go to the baths and it was cloudy so we just went along the meadow Chamanna Naluns where we stopped for another snack. This time it was mostly french fries and sparkling apple juice. Then, we took the gondola back down into Scoul. Catherine made it the whole way on the hike!

Snow White's Castle

After peeling off my clothes and stretching out, I went down to the baths. Catherine had done it the day before so she described what to do. They are huge! They're somewhat affiliated with the hotel, but are also open to the public. They consistent of a huge series of pools and each one has a board detailing the temperature, salt content and any specific rules. One was outside with a lazy rive and pods to get water massages. The main inside pool included jacuzzi space both sitting and lying down as well as wading space. There was also a pair of hot & cold pools colored with red & blue light so that you can go back and forth between them. One room had the decor of a roman bath and was filled with saltwater denser than the red sea. I still couldn't float, but other people could. Finally, there was a series of steam rooms and saunas that you are supposed to use in various stages of undress. All the pools were packed by people enjoying their bathing and relaxing.

After the baths, we went to dinner over in Sent again. This time, we went to a pizzeria run by an Italian couple. They were hilarious and energetic so it was a nice low key dinner. They even had gluten free pizza crusts to that everybody could get their pizza fix in. After dinner, we went back to the hotel's bar and had fun trying small samples of various Swiss spirits and liqueurs. The bar explicitly tries to carry very local products, but there were some from other areas of Switzerland too. There were a couple of new drinks that I hadn't had before. Marc is a Swiss brandy made from local grapes and then sometimes aged a little. There were also a number of sweet liquors made with local mountain herbs. Finally, there was a good selection of Schnapps including apricot, pear, cherry, vielle prune and apple.

Basquing in Bilboa

Arantzazuko Bascillica

The pictures from the trip are visible in the album.

Our last stop in Spain was the Bilbao area. We stayed in a Casa Rurale called Ametzola about a half hour outside of the city nestled in the hills. It's run by Mikel who originally turned part of it into a B&B in order to pay for the restoration of the building. It was originally built in the 16th century and is a very large, 3 story house just like every other old rural house in the area. Originally, each house held one, 3 generation, family. The bottom floor was the stable where the animals were kept. The second floor is where the humans lived. Finally, the top floor was for storage, mostly of foodstuffs and hay. Mikel has 6 guest rooms, which were mostly empty when we were there, while he cooked us breakfast and dinner each day, which was absolutely delicious, but more on that later.

On our way from Rioja to the Casa, we made a detour to the Arantzazuko Sanctuary. It's another stop on the Camino, south of San Sebastian. Originally built in in the 1500's, it's a bascillica and sanctuary for travelers up in the gorgeous mountains built on the spot where somebody had a vision of the Virgin Mary sitting in the hawthorn bushes. It's burned down twice in it's existence while both times, the altarpiece of the Virgin survived. In it's most recent incarnation, it was rebuilt in the 1950's in a wacky avante-guarde Spanish style. The outside is is a blocky structure covered in stone spikes meant to symbolize the hawthorns that are endemic to the area. It reminds me of Thwomp from Mario. The inside it just like famous architecture from the era where it's quite dark, while everything has strong lines, sometimes filled with organic curves. The whole building is nestled into a compound of dorms that is much more traditional. There is also a meditation space just up the hill from the church that follows a poem about running water, hawthorns and strangers.

Inside the Bascillica

From Arantzazuko, we drove to the Casa Rurale, settled in and had dinner. Dinner started with a potato cod soup, then the main was veal cheeks braised with potatoes, carrots and PX sherry. Finally, desert was a bowl of local yogurt and local apples. Mikel makes amazing food, mostly using family recipes and he definitely doesn't take shortcuts. The veal was made by first pressure cooking the veal by itself for an hour. Then, the potatoes and carrots were both poached separately in olive oil for many hours. Next, they are combined with the juices from the meat and the PX sherry and slow cooked for another couple of hours. Finally, in the last hour, the meat is added back in. Delicious, but time consuming.

San Juan de Gaztelugatxe Hermitage

The next day was a rainy Monday. All the museums were closed so we decided to go the hermitage San Juan de Gaztelugatxe out on the coast. It's a couple km walk from the parking lot down to the ocean and then you walk up a series of staircases up the rocks until you reach the hermitage perched on the top of the rock that's jutting into the sea. Along the way, you'll see the footprints of John the Baptist in the rock and be treated to some amazing scenery. Once you get to the top, you ring the bell three times and make a wish.

Stairs on the way to the hermitage.

From there, we stopped for lunch at the restaurant by the parking lot. They definitely take advantage of their location! Then we drove to a nearby town of Mundaka. It's a beautiful little port town with a beach, but because it was raining and a Monday, it was quiet and there wasn't much to see. So we didn't spend long.

From there, we went to the next town, Gernika. Gernika has a famous market every Monday and we figured that it worth trying to see it. Unfortunately, our timing wasn't great because the market was done by noon, so there really wasn't much to see. After that, we made one more stop. Near Gernika, there's a painted forest. In the 1980's an artist decided to paint some trees such that if you line up your view just right, you'll see an image painted across a number of trees. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see it. When we got there, it turned out that it would require a 7km hike. It was already getting later in the afternoon and importantly, Catherine had already done a lot of walking and didn't think that it would be a good idea to push it that far. So, we just headed back to the Casa to relax and have dinner. Dinner started with a goat cheese and zucchini soup, followed by some roasted duck breasts and finished with flan.

On our final day in Spain, we went in to Bilbao. We started at the river market, which is one of the bigger indoor markets in Spain. It was a little underwhelming even if it was good market. It is smaller than Kensington market in Toronto and didn't  have the variety of vendors that that market has. It was mostly just basic provisions, which is what you'd use if you lived there, but there wasn't really anything too unique.

From there, we wandered around the old part of town looking at shops for gifts and maybe souvenirs. There was a wide variety of shops lining the narrow, winding streets from higher end clothing stores, to weapon stores to your stereotypical souvenir shops. It's a beautiful area of town and was fun to explore and people watch. We finished by having lunch at the pintxo bars on the main square. These were not as extravagant as the ones in San Sebastian, so there was a lot less for Catherine. She ended up eating a number of slices of tortilla, that were flavoured differently at least.

After lunch, we walked through the newer area of town over to the Guggenheim museum. The Guggenheim is a great museum. There aren't many pieces showing at any one time, but every gallery has a theme, so it's reasonable to go through in an afternoon. Admittedly, some of it was modern art with a lot of bloviating, but some of the pieces were really fun. In particular, there was one exhibit designed for a corner of the Frank Gehry building. It was a series of 8 or so pillars of LED lights where messages are moving from the ground to the ceiling. The messages were from an event about AIDS from when the piece was built. You can walk between the pillars and get a very different view. The other amazing piece was the Matter of Time. It's a series of gigantic steel sheets that you walk through. Each piece is a part of a conic section and they are put together such that as you walk through them, you have an illusion of space contracting or expanding around you. It's hard to describe since it's one of those things you have to experience. It's worth going to the museum just for that piece.

Around the outside of the museum, there are a number of other large pieces that are part of the park along the river near the building. Just like many cities, it's right downtown and used to be an industrial area but now, it is being rejuvenated.

After walking through the park, we headed back to the B&B for our last dinner in Spain. It was a special one because Mikel made a traditional basque delicacy of cod collars. The collars have a lot of collagen and are slow cooked. So they have a chunks of gelatinous texture. It is served in a olive oil and cod fat emulsion. It was absolutely delicious but could be a challenge for some people. It was a good way to end the trip.

Red Wine in Rioja

A vineyard sentry hut.

We arrived at our hotel in Abalos in the evening. Abalos is a very small town of 200 people with over a dozen wineries, one hotel, three bars a bunch of buildings owned by the Marquis and not much else. Our hotel was a nice little casa ruales (like a B&B) with 9 rooms and a bar out front which has a cast of locals each night enjoying 80 cent glasses of wine. After unpacking, we had dinner at the bar, which consisted of 3 different wines, getting progressively more complex, and some tapas. Every Friday night, the bar does free tapas and as a result, it's super busy with locals and people staying at the hotel.

The next morning, we had a tour of the vineyard followed by a tasting with lunch. It was part of a special program at the hotel where the owner, who has a small winery on the side, took us out to his grapes and we talked about how he grows them. The main difference is that he uses a traditional pruning system that creates 3 main vine trunks as opposed to putting them on a trellis. As a result, they must be picked by hand, but you can get more vines per acre. This year, they had a hard frost right after bud break at the end of April, so the yield is going to be super low. That likely means that the grapes will have a much more intense flavour, so it'll be an interesting vintage to watch down the road.

A >500 year old wine press.
Bring your own feet!

He also showed us these stone huts on the side of the road and a traditional wine stomping ground cut into the rock. The stone huts were for the vineyard sentries. Around 1890, phyloxera had hit a lot of Europe, but it hadn't hit the region yet. The French had already figured out how to graft the vines onto North American rootstock, but it wasn't necessary yet in the Rioja. That being said, vines take a number years to start bearing fruit, so some farmers were starting to transition their vines so that when phyloxera arrived, they wouldn't be wiped out. Of course, these new vines were expensive, and so some unscrupulous souls decided it's easier to just dig up your somebody else's vines. To combat the thieves, the growers and wineries hired sentries to guard the vineyards and the huts were built to given them shelter.

For lunch, we had a vertical tasting of his wines with the 2008, 2010 and 2011 vintages. All were excellent, but you could definitely see the difference in age. His wines are a very low production so he only makes one wine per year and then it's sold exclusively in the hotel. Eventually, he wants to grow it into a bigger winery that sells elsewhere, but it's a long, slow process.

The church in Abalos

After lunch, we drove to Haro to do some more tastings. There is a group of wineries all clustered in the same spot, so it's easy to park at one and walk to the others. We ended up going to López de Heredia and Roda. Roda was really interesting because we were able to do a vertical tasting of one of their reservas with samples from 1995, 1998, 2002 and 2010. It's possible because they have a corovin system that uses a needle to go through the cork and then injects argon into the bottle to force the wine out. This ensures that no extra oxygen gets in. Surprisingly in the tasting, there wasn't that much difference between the 1995 and the 2002. The old wines were surprisingly fresh and definitely didn't taste like a 20 year old wine. They were starting to get tawny and get a touch of those leathery notes, but the fruit and spice was still the dominant note. In Rioja, they typically age their wine a lot, with the grand reservas requiring at least 5 years of aging. This works great with the tempranillo because it has structure that can hold up for a long time.

After the tasting, we returned to the hotel for dinner. Food is cooked by the owner's wife and she's one hell of a cook. She goes in to San Sebastian for cooking classes each year at the culinary institute started by Ferran Adria and it shows. We had appetizers of avocado and tomato terrine, a steak main and dessert was a cheesecake for Catherine (the best she's ever had) and a chocolate molten cake for me, which was great.

Vineyard run by the hotel owners.

In the morning, we went to a tasting at Miguel Merino with a couple from Russia. They also had excellent wines, but only started making wine in the mid 1990's, released their first vintage in 2002 and only recently started to make money. It's a brutal business to be in.

Sumptuous San Sebastian

Our first day in San Sebastian was mostly about walking. We started the day by heading to the main market downtown. It's a large, indoor, food market with specialized stalls. Some sold charcuterie, some sold meat, some sold fish, some sold fruits and vegetables etc. We ended up getting roped in by a stall that sold dried fruits and turkish delight and tried a number of interesting creations. The best of which was dried, green pomello rind.

Catherine's feet had been hurting a lot, so when we started walking, we switched shoes. It made a big difference, so, near the market, we went into an athetic shoe store and bought her some more comfortable shoes.

Amusement park overlooking
San Sebastian

After than we went in to gourmet food shop and found some pimente d'Esplette and rosemary honey. The pimente d'Esplette is larger chili flakes made from a pepper in the French Basque town of Esplette. It's AOC specific. We knew about it because a grower in the Anderson valley produces it after learning about it in Basque country. However it's quite expensive. Since it's similar to the Turkish chilies I found in Istanbul, we were hoping that we could get large quantities on the trip, but it was only available in small jars and still relatively expensive. It's amazingly delicious though, so we did get a jar.

After shopping we hunted for some lunch in the form of pintxos. They are the Basque version of tapas. It's a little different than further south, like Grenda, where you order a drink and they will give you a simple tapas for free (e.g. bread smeared with fresh tomatoes). San Sebastian pintxos range from a simple piece of ham on a piece of bread, to a tower of ingredients on the top of the bread so high it needs to be held together with a long toothpick to warm dishes, served in small portions. When you walk into a bar in the old town, the counter is covered with creations, while if you want something warm, you can order it from the bartender. Two of the traditional drinks are txocoli (an acidic, low alcohol white wine) and cider poured from a meter up into a wide glass in order to express the carbonation. Most of the space is standing only, but there are a few bar stools around. The idea is that you get your snack, a drink, and consume quickly before heading home after work. It's way more healthy than a bag of potato chips! Our first sampling included some incredibly fresh anchovies served on ham and topped with a fried green pepper, a jaw dropping langoustine ravioli, and some perfectly cooked squid with caramelized onions.

After lunch, we meandered over to the beach and walked along the 6km crescent. There were hundreds of people enjoying the perfect day. Some were sun bathing, some were surfing, many were just walking in the surf, either stridently or leisurely. The boardwalk is actually on one of the arms of the Camino de Santiago, so there were even some hikers going by. It's a gorgeous protected harbor with perfect sand. I can see why it's just a tourist destination to enjoy the beach!

At the other end of the beach, we took the old funicular up to the top of the cliff. Up top, there is this bizarre, semi rundown amusement park. It was built in 1914 and was surely the height of fashion then to go on the flume ride with a view of the city, or to play carni games. Half of it was closed, but some parts were still opened, so you could play some of the games, or go on the mini roller coaster.

For dinner on our first night, we had a special treat! We went to Akalare, one of the three star restaurants in San Sebastian. The city has the most Michelin stars per capita in the world and Akalare was an experience. It's not one of the super avante guard restaurants as the dishes are quite recognizable. However, they do surprise you at times. We chose to go here because there are three different tasting menus that you can choose from and so we could each order a different one and try twice as many creations. Expert tip: do the wine tasting! The somellier put together one of the best wine tastings we have every had. He did an incredible job matching the dishes and delighting us. It also wasn't very expensive relative to ordering by the bottle. The pairing wasn't listed in the menu or the wine list, but ask for it. Every other table was ordering two or three bottles, not getting as good a variety or pairing, and paying more that we did. The highlights of the meal were:

Spilled yogurt desert

- Oyster leaf and hake. It's a succulent piece of hake with a delicious sauce, but the unique piece was a garnish. It was garnished with an oyster leaf. It's a green from Greenland, Newfoundland or Norway that tastes exactly like an oyster when you eat it. I'm going to try and get seeds to grow it in the garden.
- Pungent leaves with fois gras. It's a dish that looks like a plate of leaves with morning dew on it. The dew is actually a lemongrass jelly. The "leaves" at the bottom were actually fois gras shaped like leaves and colored with an herb dust. The real greens were some of the most pungent I have ever tasted.
- Pork shoulder with garlic 3 ways. The pork was cooked medium rare while the garlic on the dish was 1) a bitter, green garlic sauce 2) a slice of black garlic and 3) not really garlic, but it looked like a roasted clove and was made of a foam in a candied shell.
- A coconut egg. It looks like an artistic sunny side up egg, but the white is a block of hard coconut foam that melts in your mouth, while the yolk was a passion fruit and coconut custard shaped into a ball.

Fish with sauce twirls

It was a ridiculously filling meal. To the point that we couldn't finish some of the later dishes. Especially the wine. We didn't roll out of there until 1am, 4 hours after we arrived.

For our second day in San Sebastian, we slept off our food coma and then went to the San Telmo museum. It's a museum of Basque culture and history. It was a well done museum with good use of interactives. It talked a lot about how the Basques are the industrial engines of Spain from the ship building era where they were the primary ship builders and sailors, to more modern times where there is a lot of heavy industry and manufacturing. The church attached to the museum was painted with a sequence of modern impressionist murals that was very different than churches I'm used to seeing.

A small pintxo spread

For the rest of the day, we wandered around the old town going into shops and trying pintxos. We also did pintxos for dinner, but closer to the apartment where we were staying. One highlight was a squid covered with a black chestnut, ink sauce. Another was a desert made of three cheeses that were sweetened and put in a dish for spreading. We finished with some 3 euro glasses of PX sherry, which shouldn't have been that cheap: it was over 20 years old.

On our last day in San Sebastian, we did a cooking class at Mimo. It's a tourist cooking school in the basement of the Maria Cristina Hotel. As a class, we made a 5 course meal and also had an opportunity to get a couple of tutorials. Our teacher was very good and focused on highlighting the ingredients while at the same time, explaining what is going on, how we are manipulating the temperatures, liquids, etc. From an overall standpoint, there were two interesting recurring themes: first, use lots of olive oil and second, only add salt at the end unless it's in a cooking liquid and will get absorbed. Otherwise, you're going to change how the dish cooks. For instance, when sous videing meat, if you add salt, then it will extract moisture from the meat as it cooks, which you don't want.

Mural inside the church in the San Telmo museum

The tutorials he gave were about octopus and dealing with fresh fish. They received some gorgeous Hake that not only had crystal clear eyes, but if you run you hand along the flesh, it is firm, not mushy. It was line caught and handled well. If the fish is caught in a net, or handled harshly, it can get bruised, which makes it not flake properly. You can tell if it's bruised by running your hand down the fish once it has been descaled. The octopus tutorial was really interesting. When you think about well cooked octopus, most people think of it being soft, but he argued that it needs some tooth to it and should have collagen around the main muscle. The collagen is usually cooked away. To get the collagen, but still breaking down the tough muscle, you first freeze the octopus. As the ice crystals form, they break down the muscles just like whapping it on a rock did in the old days. However, this forces liquid out and you need to add it back in. So, you do a sequence of quick dunks of the raw octopus in a flavourful liquid. It will suck the liquid right up and the collagen will blossom. Then, you cook the octopus at a simmer until it's done. Too long and the collagen will melt away. To hot and the muscle will turn rubbery. It was the best description I've seen on how to cook octopus.

As for the actual dishes we made, it started with sauteed chantrelles and a sous vide egg. He showed us cleaning the chantrelles with a damp towel, which worked really well. Then, they were cooked in a dry pan at very high heat where you throw in olive oil at the end to finish the cooking. This carmelizes them, cooks them through, but doesn't release all the water.

The next dish was a fois gras and apple puree with a coffee, chocolate dust. We processed raw fois, which was a first for me. There's just so much fois everywhere in this city. It's nuts! It needed to be deveined, rolled into a cylinder, frozen, then sliced into rounds, deep fried and finished in the oven. It's the process from Mugaritz. The apple sauce was super simple. Just roast whole apples in the oven with butter in their core and take the resulting drippings & apples and blend.

After that, we had a dish of bean soup with clams. They were fresh, local beans with a texture similar to canelli beans, but smaller. The new thing for us was how to cook the clams. He showed us that people usually overcook clams & mussels. To avoid overcooking, use a shallow pan and heat up a small amount of fish stock. Put the clams in. Do not put on a lid, because that will steam them, which you don't want. When they go in, they will close tight and try to survive, but as they warm up, they will start to open. As soon as a clam starts to open, pop it out of the pan. It's done and will be perfectly tender.

The Miramar Palace. A traditional
stop on the Camino.

The mean meat of the meal was lamb, first cooked via sous vide and then broiled in the oven hot. It was served with some melted onions (made with lots of butter) and a fresh rosemary/thyme/mint sauce. It's a combo we need to use more often, especially since it's in our garden year round.

For desert, everybody but Catherine had a custard creme pie. The shell was a shortbread shell pressed into the pan, while the custard was a standard egg yolk custard, thickened with corn starch and steeped with cinnamon and lime. Apparently, cinnamon is the only spice that the Basque use when flavouring deserts and they use a cinnamon that's closer to the Mexican canella than the Vietnamese cinnamon.

At the end of the class, we ate all the food, with a pairing of wine along the way. Then, we hopped in a cab to the car rental place to rent a car and drove down to Rioja for the next stage of the trip.