And Then There's the Food

I realized that I've been neglectful in talking about what we've eaten. This is probably a relief to some of you. But I do advertise this blog as an eating, drinking, and traveling odyssey, and I've focused pretty heavily on the drinking and traveling. And since I'm trying to make Klauser and Sue guest-blog our weekend's travels, I'll tell you what excessive and delicious things we consumed.

Phil cooked on Thursday and Friday, giving our guests some Belgian treats. He fried some cheese (kaaskroketten), without setting off the smoke alarm. Then we feasted on Carbonnade a la Flamande, a Flemish beef stew made with beer (of course). And I made pannekokken, or crepes, with apricot jam and a homemade chocolate sauce. Friday Phil fried those little shrimp croquettes (again without bringing down the sad little apartment manager who looks at the smoke billowing from our apartment and gives the typically Belgian shrug when we point out that yes, the exhaust fan is on and yes, the balcony windows are wide open. It is not our fault, we say in our flawless Dutch. It is the fault of the apartment). And he made fish with leeks in cream sauce, a dish we discovered 25 years ago in Liege at a restaurant beside the train station.

Saturday we spent in the Ardennes. We had a huge plate of Ardennes ham and cheese at the Maredsous Abbey, and we stopped on the way home at a charming little roadside restaurant that had apparently been a coach stop for many hundreds of years. We took the menu du marche and feasted on smoked trout salad, jambon d'Ardennes, what we thought was squab but apparently was guinea fowl, and homemade pasta with prawns.

Yesterday we went to Holland, ending up in Haarlem, where we nearly killed ourselves with rijstafel, the Indonesian feast that features dozens of small dishes, almost none recognizable and some exceedingly fiery. The restaurant was lovely and we ate EVERYTHING.

And this morning Phil made an omelet with Ardennes ham and Flemish cheese. Feeling full yet?

So you see we haven't been suffering for lack of nourishment, in case you were worried. Quite the opposite, in fact. Phil is making waterzooi, a chicken and cream stew, tonight. After that we will stop eating entirely for a week or two. Otherwise we will have to buy all new clothes.

By the way, I've finally figured out how to enable comments by everyone on this blog. So comment away. But be nice! There may be young children (whose parents haven't noticed them googling "beer" and "voyeur") reading what you write.

The Calories Mount

I've forgiven Slovenia for the youth hostel. Both Ljubljana and Bled were so beautiful that I can't hold it against the country.

In Ljubljana,we walked across all the great bridges -- the Dragon Bridge, the Butcher's Bridge, the triple bridge. We went to the baroque cathedral.

We took the funicular up to the castle and saw the Alps far in the distance. Dinner was all game all the time -- venison and wild boar with cherry sauce and truffle polenta for Phil, and for me a pasta dish with venison. Chased it down with beer-flavored schnapps, a very local speciality, which I would not necessarily recommend.

And yesterday we drove to Bled, which despite its violent name is a quiet and lovely resort town in the Julian Alps. It features an island in a lake on which there is a baroque church (yes, another baroque church! The place is lousy with them). We decided to row out ourselves. Though the boat owner had to go with us for the first quarter mile to keep us from drowning ourselves or others, Phil got the hang of it eventually.

Ended the day with another wonderful meal (sausages and pork with mushrooms), which we tried to counterbalance by walking around the lake (6 kilometers). I don't think it worked. Especially when you consider that we had a really big piece of cake when we were done.

In the morning we visited Bled castle, where a gentle yet persuasive Franciscan friar talked us into buying a bottle of castle-made wine. The town, lake, and Alps are as glorious in cloud as in sunshine.

We arrived in Budapest this evening and found our hotel, a real bargain right in the center. Sadly, parking costs just about as much as the room. Yet another fabulous dinner and a compensatory stroll around the city after dark. Tomorrow, the baths. Be afraid...