Cultural,cuisine.... and cakes

one of the night sights in Vienna

oberlaa cafe

Summer by Arcimboldo

My day has started very early today and I am very lucky as the sun is shinning brightly with the temperature around 7 degree Celcius. I have decided to start my day by walking to Naschmarkt. It is the biggest open air market in Vienna and you can find almost everything from exotic fruits to spices.... almost everything. I saw some durians, rambutan, mangis and I even bought half a kilo of buah mata kucing.

I later walked to the Kuntshistorisches Museum ( Fine Arts Museum). This is the treasure of Austria. The museum is located in one of the royal palaces and of course as the royal palace of the Austrian Habsburg Empire, it is definitely grandiose. I chose to see only the picture gallery which consists of the masterpieces of European paintings of the Italian, Flemming, Spanish,French and German starting from the 15th Century like Canaletto, Vermeer,Titan, Van Dyck, Durer to name a few.

I came here to see Giuseppe Arcimboldo, an Italian artist who was the imperial court painter. He was the designer for weddings and tournaments for the Emperor (could he be called the wedding planner?). The most famous painting is entitled 'Summer' dated 1563. That painting is considered as 'strange' and comical to certain extent....take a look at the photo. The beauty of the paintings is so overwhelming especially with the Flemming paintings as big as more than 5x6 metres... like the painting of Frans Snyders with the theme of 'treasure of the sea'. That painting shows that how brilliant the artist was to paint 'still life' of belangkas,sturgeon,cuttlefish,lobsters.... i have counted and there are almost 30 types of sea creatures in that painting and they look so real, you can actually touch them! (the painting is almost 400 years old)

I left the museum with my heart filled with artistic emotions but I am ready for my..... cake adventure. I went to the Cafe Oberlaa... a historic cafe and I tried the schoko vanille torte which means chocolate cake with chocolate and vanilla mousse. Again the Austrian cake has won my heart and the taste of the light chocolate mousse together with the vanilla mousse filling really made me smile throughout the day.....

The Art of giving gifts.....Vienna

Cafe Central

One of the palaces

Talking about the art of giving gifts...I am a bit lousy in this matter. However, I think the giving gift should be fun. So, this holiday season, I personally think that it is appropriate that I should receive gift (especially from the beloved ones) something without 'physical material'....so, I decided that going on a short winter break to Vienna is an ideal gift for me.

Vienna, compact royal city with so many royal palaces in so small square meter area (as compared to Paris, for example).However, my idea to come to Vienna is to taste my real 'sweet tooth' buds. Vienna is full with antique and modern cafes, konditorei and pastry shops. Sacher torte and apple strudel are their forte but I think there are plenty of other pastries and cakes to try.

This is my second day in the city and after going to a splendid Impressionist exhibition in Albertina, I decided to take a coffee break at the Central Cafe. Central cafe is a historic cafe which was built in the early 19th century. The setting is very luxury with velvet sofa and high vaulted ceiling with huge chandeliers. I am trying the truffle torte (simple layered hazelnut cake) today.... with strong coffee and cream.... the taste lingers in my mouth for quite a while.

Sub zero temperature

Beautiful view at Monte Fogliame with the snow on the ground and blue sky.

We are experiencing sub zero temperature at the moment. Frost is everywhere and the road is very icy. Yesterday, after lunch my friend and I decided to take a drive to the hill area which is called Monte Fogliame. It is absolutely beautiful, with the snow on the ground and the sunny and blue sky. I drove all around the hill and the Lake Vico too. The view was absolutely spectacular.

The whole Europe is experiencing sub zero temperature and thick snow is causing the train Eurostar (London-Paris-Brussels) to suspend their service for the third day . The thick snow is sweeping through out the North European countries with North of France, Belgium, Poland and the Netherlands are badly affected.

My kitchen garden is covered with frost. Surprisingly my endives and red raddichio are saved with freezing cold. It looks like they love this cold and icy weather!

COLD.....br,br,br...

The cold is here. The temperature goes down very fast and faster as usual as Christmas approaches. Early in the morning, the mercury goes down to -1 and seldom goes up to 5 during the day.

The Siberian cold air is sweeping through out Europe and The Eiffel Tower was closed 2 days ago because of heavy snow. We have to bundle up with layers and layers of clothes/sweaters..... and my poor feet are as usual very cold too despite thick socks and proper shoes.

However, when the sun shines I could feel the softness of cool air in my lungs and nose, that really feels good.

Brainless creatures....

I have received 3 small containers full with brainless creatures last weekend from a friend of mine, Santhia. He is an Indian Malaysian who is currently working in an Italian company near Rome. Together with his wife, Mag, we met to have lunch in the center of Rome (it was quite a nice Lebanese food) before he gave me these priceless presents... worms.These brainless creatures are very essential to the Earth. They work wonders through their digestion and reproductive system with their main role to enrich the soil. Without these worms the quality of soil can be absolutely poor.

Apparently Santhia has been breeding these worms for quite sometime in his compost box. When I first went to their house for Deepavali dinner, I saw the soil of his strawberry vases is absolutely black and the plants are full with flowers and fruits and from far I could see that they are very happy.Immediately I knew that he has worms inside those pots (he has many of them)!

After quite a hearty Lebanese lunch that afternoon and together with a good cup of cappuccino, I rushed back home with 3 containers of worms in my bag.When I arrived home, straight away I put one of them in the flower bed. The next day, I transfered another one to my compost box and with some high hopes to get more worms, I am breeding the rest of them in a big black vase with some kitchen waste.

Santhia is absolutely a nice person and he really has 'green fingers' and gave me a lot of tips on roses like putting blended banana skin around the roses to encourage more flowers! Surely I will not forget to do that in March and I hope by February, I will have more worms in my garden. Thanks again Santhia and Mag!

The Leaning Pisa Tower

We had the opportunity of taking the children to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa last weekend. Luckily enough, the weather on Saturday was very pleasant. It had been raining non stop for a few days before that. The journey to Pisa took less than 4 hours since we took the highway to get there. Since we were around Pisa around 2.30pm, we decided to go to Lucca. Lucca is such a pretty walled town. The wall is about 5 meters thick and circling around the town. There is one thing that is really surpising to me in Lucca.... the cost of parking the car is 10 cent per hour! If you want to park for 3 hours and more, it will cost you only 30 cent! It is such unbelievable! The cheapest parking in the town around Rome is 50 cent for half an hour.

We spent a night in Pisa and took the children to see the tower the next day. The tower is really spectacular... coming from the entrance suddenly you see it right infront of you, the white marble tower which has been the landmark of Italy for centuries, leaning to the right..... that is beautiful! That tower has been tilting right after the fifth year it was built in the 13th Century. This is due to the clay soil underneath the tower as the location is also near the river. The tower became famous also because of the gravity test done by Galileo Galilei. There were numerous restoration works to the tower and i think it has turned 'bleached white' because of that!