World Brunch Restaurant

While traveling I dreamt up the menu for my fictitious World Brunch Restaurant. Fine brunches from places we’ve been. Would you patronize my restaurant? Stay tuned for blogging on our trip to New York City next week.

UNESCO score: 5

Just for fun and by way of summary, I counted up the number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites we visited...

Tunisia: Medina of Tunis, Carthage Ruins, Medina of Sousse
Barcelona: Sagrada Familia Cathedral, The Parque Güell

A total of 5.
I see the Tower of London is one so (if we cared) we should have gone there.

The Golden Jet

We are now back in Toronto … and the normal routines.
At the checkin in London we noticed several passengers had hockey sticks -- almost like we were home already. Turns out these weren't just any hockey players but former NHLers! I am pretty sure one of them was Bobby Hull(!) aka The Golden Jet.
He didn't have equipment being 67 (I looked it up). He was wearing a "WHA" leather jacket. In the security queue he noticed a boarding pass that somebody had apparently dropped and turned it in to security -- what a guy.

Two stone of whiting

There are pelicans in St. James Park. A sign says they “eat an amazing two stone of whiting each feeding”. Might be amazing if we knew what they were talking about! Translation from crazy brit: “28 pounds of fish”.

A taxi driver told us London was having a drought this month. Needless to say it rained on us yesterday and today.

London Pics Two

London

Now in London. Since Marry Poppins is R’s fav movie we tried to get tickets for the West End show but it was sold out. As we arrived at the theatre the matinee was letting out. There was a girl fan dressed as the title character – very cute.
Another show we noticed was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest staring Christian Slater – doing his Jack Nicholson, I suppose. I looked up a review and it was OK amazingly.
So instead we went to Ice Age 2 (movie) for a mere £41 (C$83) for 3 tickets, pops and popcorn.

First London Pics

Not so Good Friday

Apr 14
A crazy day of hassles. We had to move out to an airport hotel since all the city hotels are full for Easter. So we took many trains out to the airport hotel then returned to the city for a few last hours then many trains back to the hotel! Yuck. However somehow in all that we managed to hang out a kinda Boheminian terrace (called Iposa) while R. played in a playground inches away – a long time goal. (Also small press resto/bar H Original)

Bar-fa-lona

Here are the Recent Barcelona Pics.

Is shopping a sport? If you give somebody money of equal value to the item being purchased has anything really happened? We (they) shopped. At Custo Barcelona amoung other places.

Montserrat

A day trip by train to the Montserrat Monastery. It’s in a rather spectacular location –- top of a mountain.

Interesting people we saw today: a monk at the monastery, on the subway we stood beside a fellow who is almost certainly a drag queen by night (clues: red nail polish, plucked eye brows), at the table beside us at dinner (at keik) a woman cheek-kissed some friends and discussed her new nose job (clues: it was a bit puffy and the kisses were careful). Makes Almodóvar seem like no genius at all. By the way, his new film “Volver” is in megaplexs here.

Comments Approved

Everyone: Sorry was I so slow approving your comments.
I'm still learning about the blogging.

Güell-ing Day

Apr 10
Walked to Güell Park. It’s a mega tourist attraction but it’s also cool. Designed by Gaudi. No admission charge – a pubic park. I had a hard time deciding what to photograph since everything looked so great. The famous mosaic lizard was continuously bathed in flashes from tourist’s cameras. It was good, in a way, that my camera’s battery decided to tell me today that it was running low - I had to be selective.

Next, we ended up walking the entire height of the city down to the Aquarium. R. loved it. CircleMed payed extra attention to the Mediterranean fish. All the kids yelled “Nemo!” in their own language at the clown fish swimming in anemone.

On the Metro (subway) a couple boxed us in and attempted to pick pocket us. The woman had her hand in her sweater as she tried to unzip C.’s purse. But nothing was taken and of course we had minimal money anyways.

Barcelona Two Pics.

Back in Barcelona

Apr 9
We’ve moved back to Barcelona. Since all the reasonably priced downtown hotels are full we selected one less central. I like finally being away from areas where tourists are common and many restaurants have English menus. There is a subway stop nearby and the area has mostly middleclass low rise apartments. I guess it could be compared Toronto’s High Park area.

As today is Palm Sunday, many kids are walking around dressed up and holding (you guessed it) palm fawns. We will try to see the Good Friday procession.

At dinner I almost ordered steak “capaccio” until C. warned me that that means raw. Maybe those English menus aren’t so bad ;-)

Sitges Sun

Apr 8
Took a while but I have to admit I might be a bit into Sitges. The weather was warm and sunny so we headed to the beach. We’d bought tickets to all the museums but I suggested that we just hang out the beach and skip the Romantic Museum which includes a very exciting doll collection! Quite fun playing in the waves and sand – and people watching. We ate tapas at the (probably) overpriced place right on the beach. R. now likes olives and squid so the trip isn’t a waste.

Ontarians

Overheard at dinner… we heard an East Indian British family talking to a white Canadian family at a restaurant in English. The Brits asked “where in Canadian are you from?”. “Ontario” was the reply. The silly Ontarians asked “Where did you learn to speak English?”. Arg we cringed. The Brits didn’t create a scene – they just answered “England”.

Sitges

Took the Barcelona subway to the train station and then a train to a nearby beach town called Sitges. Will stay here a few days. Sitges Pics.
I don't know if I like Western Europe -- too perfect (and expensive!). I think C. likes it.

Getting the hang of Barcelona

There are more tourists in some blocks of Barcelona than all of Tunisia. But I have to get over the idea that I'm not unique any more.

We visited the famous Barcelona icon - the crazy unfinished church by Antoni Gaudi (Sagrada Familia Church).

I have to say something about the regular restaurants that are on nearly every corner. I really like 'em. They have beer on tap, fully stocked bar, but also fresh OJ, tortillas (quiche), sandwiches, tapas, etc. And reasonably priced! Sure beats the Tunisia's local joins -– or back home.

Dinner Tuesday at Mosquito - a bar/restaurant that's just my style -– casual, fusion Asian tapas, acid jazzy music, cheap. I don'’t ask for much, do I?

Barcelona Pics continued

Barcelona

Apr 2
We've noticed Barcelona is different than Tunis - no kinding eh. Girls/women have midriffs and there are more Segways, motorcylists with helmets and street performance art. And - yikes - things cost tons. Luckily this is a fairly short visit. Barcelona Pics.

Bye Tunisia

Apr 1
We spent the day hanging around Tunis trying to find ways to spend our remaining money. We visited the zoo (about C$1.25 for the whole family – dirty cheap) and on the patio at the fancy five star hotel – beers were only C$2.50 each - cheap. The government run handicraft store was closed. We had a problem ;-)

We walked past an entire block that was fortified and guarded. The public wasn’t allowed to use the sidewalk. What could that be? A small sign reveled it was the TV station. Of course, when there’s a coup d’state the rival faction always takes over the television station. I have no photo because pics of that sort of place are illegal - even thought it would improve the story here.

You can see my last Tunis (and Tunisia for that matter) pics.

We caught a late flight to Barcelona on AirEuropa. The other passengers were Spanish people returning from holidays in Tunisia. How do I know? They clapped when we landed. We got to the airport hotel at the very un-kid-friendly time of 1:30am!

The never-ending bus ride

Mar 31
We “checked out” of our Jerba apartment by leaving the keys in a nook in the wall.

Then skedaddled to the bus station for the 8:30 express bus to Tunis. The bus arrived but it was already nearly full! People jammed on anyways. C. was pushed by an aggressive (normal) woman behind her. The woman actually extended her arms shoved. And there was nowhere for poor C. to go. Things weren’t looking good. Would we have to stand who whole way? Perhaps using Kung Foo to defend ourselves as we did? We then learned there was a second bus.

The ride took an enormous 9.5 hours. There were far more stops then we expected. For example, there was a lunch stop and about half-an-hour later a dessert stop at a place that sold a variety of sweets. It was hot and I felt bad about limiting how much water R. could drink but –hey- there was no washroom on board.

Of course, we made it to Tunis and we can feel pleased about saving a couple hundred bucks versus taking the plane. Coming from France Tunis didn’t seem cosmopolitan but now coming from the South it actually does. There isn’t tons of sand blowing around the streets for starters.

In a bookstore I flipped thru a book in French that teaches English. The book cautions new English speakers not to confuse “poodles” and “puddles”. The sentence “Don’t let your poodle step in a puddle” is offered.