137 Pillars House

Sitting big, future altering exams is like being sucked dry by a vampire.  By the time you put your pen down and push your chair away from your desk, you barely have the energy to drag your depleted body home, turn on the t.v. and veg out for a month. 

To sleep, to sleep, perchance to dream

My parents dragged me to the airport and a few hours of comfortable (ha!) economy class travel later we arrived at Suvarnabhumi International Airport (Bangkok). Suvarnabhumi International Airport has the longest name and the longest terminals of any airport in the world.  We covered 12.4km to get to our connecting flight. By the time we arrived in Chiang Mai I was almost in liquid form.

In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans

137 Pillars House was the perfect hotel to get back into a solid form.  Surrounding an old colonial teak house, this small hotel (30 rooms) was beautifully and thoughtfully landscaped. The rooms were large and cozy.  I finally had the chance to veg out: which I did by the pool (with its green curtain of vegetation) and in the room with my dad listening to music during an afternoon rain.

Outdoor showers: sensuous experience or chance to get wet with bugs. Discuss.

After a hard day of doing nothing, you wake up as hungry as a horse.  Hotel breakfasts are usually not worth getting up before noon for.  In this case, the breakfast was worth getting up at 6:00am to devour the entire menu in one sitting.  For breakfast you have a choice of Asian, Western or healthy.  Not really understanding why you would choose granola over Eggs Benedict or Pad Thai for breakfast, I never chose anything from the healthy menu.

Breakfast in Teak

In addition the staff was amazing.  Thanks to Greg's (the concierge) advice  I spent a great afternoon shopping at some very trendy young thai fashion designers' in Bangkok.

Paris in the Spring

I've been ignoring this blog for a long time.  I wish I had a good reason for doing so, but I don't.  Since my last post I have stayed at some great hotels and eaten at some fantastic restaurants.  I wish that I had blogged about those places.  

I was going to restart my blog with a review of an Ethiopian restaurant in town but I've discovered that don't like Ethiopian food. Instead I'll blog about my parent's recent trip to Paris.  

My parents reguarly travel without me, abandoning me alone in the house.  So when they told me that they were going to Paris without me, this was not surprising.  They did make a big deal of insisting and showing me "evidence" that this was the first trip that they have taken without me.  They also went on and on about there being a cast of thousands staying with me or calling me on an hourly basis (spying on me, really) while they were away.  This was of course entirely beside the point.  So now I have to write about how much fun they had in Paris while I sat at home eating cold soup out of a can and dodgy luncheon meat. 

They are tastier in Paris

They stayed at the Keppler Hotel  on 10 rue Kepler (the loss or addition of the "p" is very confusing).  They said that it was wonderful hotel "furnished beautifully with an impressive eye to detail, spotless, quiet and staffed with friendly, knowledgable people".  

Paris and good food go together like abandonment and tears.  So anyways here is a list of all the places they ate at: 

• Le Chateaubriand : "Young chef, we had the tasting menu with the wine pairing, ate these fantastic fried shrimp marinated in passion fruit and the dessert included a raw egg yolk encased in caramelised sugar.  The wines were unusual and perfect."
• L'Office : "I had a wild mushroom consume and beef with polenta.  Excellent!"
• La Marine: "Fun brasserie next to canal St. Martin.  Great scallops and oysters."

They also hung out at the following bars:

• Frenchie Wine Bar : "Small, extensive selection of French wine, amazing nibbles, great staff."
• Curio Parlour Cocktail Club : "Imaginative, well crafted cocktails."
• Experimental Cocktail Club : "Speak-easy style bar, cool cocktails for cool hip people like me and my friends." (meh!) 

I'm sure that they a lot of fun but I am equally sure that they would have had more fun with me.  In any case they came back with three cans of cassoulet from Le Comptoir de la Gastronomie.

Abu Dhabi Hotels: Qasr Al Sarab

Temporarily not so empty

When I told my father that camping was my least favorite sporting activity he pointed out that camping is not a sporting activity.  Have you ever heard of a German Olympic camping team, he asked.  Notwithstanding my protestations we went camping on New Year's eve in the Empty Quarter.  The Empty Quarter is a desert that covers 650,000 square kilometers and consists entirely of sand.  No rocks, a couple of shrubs and temporary visitors like us.  And that is it.  By the way, this sand is not the grainy sand you find on the beach. This sand has a consistency which is slightly less fine than flour and it gets in everything.  It took me two weeks before I stopped finding sand in my clothes.

Did I hear the dinner bell?

After we set up camp we started cooking.  Cooking was a collective effort and all of us pitched in.  We had Indian potato salad and Asian coleslaw.  My mother brought ripe avocados and insisted on making fresh guacamole.  All the men where involved in cooking the steaks over a fire (the wood came from a sustainable wood farm in Norway, if you must know).  For dessert we had chocolate brownies (which where perfect), christmas cookies (which I helped make) and dates.  Finally, what camping trip is complete without roasted marshmallows.       

A mirage

After a  long and painfully cold night, our reward was a night's stay at Qasr Al Sarab.  I was so excited to get to the hotel and get 10 tons of flour grained sand out of my hair.  Unfortunately, my shower  was postponed for another three hours due to the hotel mismanaging our check in.  We got our rooms after my mother and her friend staged a sit-in at the reception.  Usually this kind of delay doesn't bother me.  But having to sit in a restaurant for three hours which was too busy to give us a table was too much for me and I went and joined the sit-in.

Balcony 

Our room was very pretty.  It seems that all of the rooms were set up to look over the dunes at sunset.  They even have a "sunset" lighting feature in the room.  Be warned, no amount of pushing the "sunset" button will accelerate the sunset.  The bathroom is very large.  It has to be given the size of the bathtub.  The tub is circular and has a diameter of over 5 feet (based on me lying in it and stretching).  We felt guilty about filling up such a large tub in the middle of the desert.  In any case, my pre-bath testing concluded that it was not a bathtub built for a long soaks.  

Your room is to the left

Qasr Al Sarab is built like a small city.  It consists of three different areas: a hotel, a group of luxury villas and a smaller group of super-luxury villas.  The common areas were lovely and very well designed.

The Qasr Al Sarab falaq system

Rooms with a view

Sand

The walled city of Qasr Al Sarab

One of the pleasant surprises of Qasr Al Sarab is the quality of the food.  We ate at the Gahdeer (their poolside restaurant) that evening.  I had lamb chops which were amazing even for a region where cooking lamb is an art form.  My father had the seafood grill which included Gulf shrimp and Omani lobster.  Again, cooked absolutely perfectly.  In fact, everyone was pleased by their selection.  When I took a bite of the crema catalana my grandmother ordered I knew the Chef had to be Spanish.  He is, in fact a Catalan.

The real surprise was the breakfast.  I had more poached egg toasts with avocado and wrapped in smoked salmon then I care to admit.  The eggs florentine were also wonderful (and a rare find in this region).  The salad bar lent a brunch feel to the breakfast and that is how it turned out for us, as we clocked in about 3 hours at the breakfast table.  We actually stayed while they were setting up their lunch buffet.  It was a seafood bar on ice and the variety and quality was outstanding (of course my Dad says, the Chef is a catalan).  We had to leave before trying the lunch buffet (and we couldn't justify it given the amount of food we had for breakfast) but we will certainly try it next time we come, if we can get to our room in time.

Ice Cream Barcelona: Planelles Donat

Barcelona is a city that is not famous for its ice cream. After years of in-depth study, I have come to the shocking yet obvious conclusion that there is no Spanish equivalent of gelato. Ice cream and gelato found in Barcelona are the same ice cream and gelato which can be found elsewhere. But that doesn't mean that you can't find good ice cream. Planelles Donat makes good ice cream. Located at Avinguda Portal De l'Àngel 7, Planelles Donat is another Barcelona food institution which has survived almost unchanged for generations.

Step 1: Get Ice Cream

Step 2: Buy Turrons

Step 3: Repeat

Ice cream is not one of my favorite foods, so I can't tell you if the ice cream at Planelles Donat is the best ice cream ever or just really, really good. They serve the typical ice cream flavors (chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, pistachio) but they also serve more unusual flavors like turron, stracciatela and rum and raisin. If ice cream isn't your thing, then try drinks such as granita, milkshakes and orxatas (none of which I've had).

Getting ice cream is just a pass time while we choose turrons to bring back with us for Christmas. Turrons come in many different kinds, such as:

• the fruity one (which I don't like);
• the burnt cream one you put in the freezer until Christmas day (which everyone likes);
• the really hard almond one you smash against the floor to break it up into serving sizes (which everyone likes to smash);
• the marzipan one (good if you like marzipan); and
• the soft nutty pasty one (which I don't like but everyone else does).

Planelles Donat makes excellent turrons and currently there are two or three in our freezer. Family rumor has it that my grandmother gets turrons delivered to her from family in Barcelona which are better than those from Plannelles Donat. She has never shared them with any of us and she even denies she gets them. Until we wring a confession from her we will happily make do with our turrons from Planelles Donat.

Restaurants Barcelona: El Xampanyet

Abandon all hope of leaving sober all ye who enter here

El Xampanyet is one of our favorite places in Barcelona. It is located on C/ Montcada 22, up the street from the Picasso Museum in the center on the tourist section of Barcelona. Notwithstanding its location, El Xampanyet doesn't grovel for tourist money by making bland Disneyland Spanish food. This place is very animated with both locals and tourists overflowing onto the street. El Xampanyet is famous for its house cava which is lighter than normal cava. Poured from 1.5L bottles the cava is perfectly chilled and refreshing morning, afternoon and night (or so my parents tell me).

Worth every Euro

The only food they serve is tapas and they are simple, fresh and delicious - their anchovies are famous. The father, mother and son team behind the bar are extremely friendly.

There are few places in Barcelona where having tapas could be more enjoyable.

Restaurants Barcelona: Els 4 Gats

Els 4 Gats is lovely restaurant located at Carrer Montsió, 3. It was originally established by a Modernist painter and was where other Modernist artists would hang-out during the early 1900s (including Picasso who had one of his first one-man shows there). The 4 Gats is in a building designed by Josep Puig i Cadafalch, an architect responsible for some of the most wonderful buildings in Barcelona. Inside, the restaurant walls are covered with Modernist paintings by artists such as Ramon Casas, one of the original owners. Both the interior and the exterior of this restaurant is beautiful.

2 of the 4

It is the beauty of the place that makes us excited about going to Els 4 Gats every time we are Barcelona. And it is the beauty of the place that makes us really want to like the food. But.... Unfortunately the food is not great. It's not bad but it doesn't seem that they put a lot of effort into preparing it. In a city like Barcelona where (outside of tourist areas) eating well is not difficult there is little reason for eating at Els 4 Gats. Go have a coffee or a drink, enjoy the very beautiful space but eat elsewhere.

Restaurants Barcelona: Dulcinea

At last!

Finally after three years of one thing after another stopping me from having churros and chocolate at Dulcinea (Carrer de Petritxol 2) this year was the year. Every time we went there was always a reason why I couldn't have churros and chocolate:

• the churro machine was broken:
  
• they were working on summer hours and we were too early or too late;
  
• we got there on time but they had run out of churros; or
  
• we got there on time, they had churros but we were on our way to have a seven course meal with family and my parents refused to allow me to have churros and chocolate before dinner.
  

You can eat 3000 calories of chocolate and churros and still be thin.

Dulcinea is famous in Barcelona for its churros and chocolate which consists of a large cup of melted chocolate (thicker than hot chocolate but thinner than just melted chocolate), a plate of churros (deep-fried dough) and a plate of freshly whipped cream. It was amazingly delicious: not too sweet, not greasy, just perfect.

A window to a garden of earthly delights

Dulcinea is the only place in Barcelona to get churros and chocolate. And this has been the case since my grand-parents were kids (according to my grand-parents). This is definitely a case where being persistent and struggling to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles is worth it.