Foodie Nightmares

Last week a put a tweet out asking for ideas of what to base this post on. My favourite was the suggestion to compare all the different types of cakes I've tried throughout my travels (for anyone who doesn't know, that is A LOT of cake). I originally started out by making a post with all my 'Foody Favourites', a list of all the amazing food and drink I've tried whilst travelling, as I wanted to be indiscriminate to all those crazy cake-haters out there. However, I've been ill recently and had a particularly bad night last night, so in an attempt to make myself and you lot giggle (and probably cringe a little too) here's a low down of my foody horror stories from my travels thus far.

Bus ride from Lima to Cusco, Peru - Chicken, Rice and Jam?

Imagine this. You arrive in a new country, a new continent in fact and you're just about to embark on a 24 hour bus journey. You're tired and frustrated because the bus company have messed you around so you had to pay for your ticket twice. You're throwing up from altitude sickness because you're around 3000km higher up than you're used to and you've not eaten a proper meal in a few days because you've been struggling with changing your dollars to soles. All you want is something bearable to eat that will fill you up. And this arrives. Because I'm an idiot and chicken is like my kryptonite, I decided that the pinkish bit in the middle was nothing to worry about, 'they must just make it like that' in Peru. I wasn't even brave enough to touch the jam thingy. As you can imagine, it all came back up rather swiftly.

Nashville, Tennessee, USA - Cheesy Fries

You'd expect Americans to be the experts in Cheesy Fries, but this cheese was possibly the worst I'd ever tasted. It was the glue-your-mouth-together-and-burn-your-tongue-but-not-in-a-good-way kind, that was more sickly than yummy. I can still taste it to this day... *shudders*

NYC, New York, USA - Large Chicken Nuggets Meal

This one is more of a rant at the RIDICULOUS portion sizes served in the USA. Here I'm sat with a large McDonald's consisting of 20 chicken nuggests, a portion of chips double that you'd get in a large meal in the UK and a drink so large that four of us struggled to finish it. It's insane. As someone who hates waste I had to soldier through and finish everything, feeling rather frumpy afterwards. Darn my, 'when in Rome' attitude.

Nice, France - Mussels in Curry Sauce

I'm sure this one doesn't need to much explanation as the description of the meal itself sounds unappealing to almost anyone who has tried mussels before. Unfortunately, Tom hadn't. In his defense, he did manage to work his way through a pretty impressive amount of them.

Bus ride from Copacabana, Bolivia to Juliaca, Peru - Bag of Cheese and Potatoes

You'd think that from our initial experience with Peruvian bus food we'd have learned our lesson. However just two months later, here we are again. This was a moment of desperation, we hadn't eaten for almost 16 hours and weren't going to get to eat for another four. So when these STREET VENDERS - I know, I know - got on the bus we decided to spend our last two soles (about 50p) on this bag of mystery food. Our logic? Well there was no meat in it, so we figured that there was no harm in trying. And the cheese was actually alright. But if you've never tried cold, hard and uncooked, potatoes before... then don't. Even starving hungry we could hardly stomach these.

Braunschweig, Germany - Apfelglühwein

Whilst on an exchange in college, we visited the Christmas markets with our partners. They were lovely enough to buy us all some of their locally brewed apple mulled wine as they wanted us to sample something typically German. As we're all terribly British and therefore far too polite, we pretended we found it delicious, whilst secretly pouring it on to the floor or feeding it to another friend whilst backs were turned. It turns out however that we were perhaps a little too convincing, as they then preceded to buy us more. Selina, if you're reading this, I'm sorry :P

Arica, Chile - Pizza, apparently.

Whenever I see these pictures I can't help but chuckle. I showed them in a presentation I was giving to some of the classes I used to teach and the gasps of horror and the looks of disgust on the children's faces at the fact that this was allowed to be called a pizza, will forever accompany these images in my mind. It was also possibly the most expensive meal I ate in South America, around 4000 pesos, equivalent to about £5.30. Doesn't seem like a lot but for a backpacker on a tight budget, it's a bloody fortune.

Nashville, Tennessee, USA - Some kind of Burrito at Taco Bell

Now you might be tempted to suggest that from the examples I've given you already, that it's clearly safer to stick with what you know or chains with seemingly good reputations. No. Taco Bell is easily one of the worst places I ate in the USA. The taste was bland and uninteresting and it's one of those places that makes you feel so bad about yourself that you find yourself seriously considering giving up food and living solely off weight watchers smoothies for the rest of your life. It also has errr... other negative consequences. I'll let you use your imaginations on that one.

Atlanta, Georgia, USA - Coca Cola World

An all together different experience which I wrote extensively about in April, was our trip to Coca Cola world. Besides the trip being a rather terrifying one, it turns out that their brainwashing techniques actually work. As more of a Sprite girl myself, Coke has never really appealed to me, however I found myself ordering it impulsively for the next few weeks without really knowing why. Once again I am warning you, steer clear of that place.

Milan, Italy - Limoncello

Let's just say that the night we drank this three of us ended up vomiting, a lot. It is not worth buying Limoncello at 2.99 euros a bottle, even if you are on a tight budget. Especially if you intend to play drinking games with it. Never again.

And that's about all I can think of for now. It'd be cool to hear of anyone else's stories so comment and let me know. I'll need more ideas for blog posts too, so keep them coming. Also, I'm a big fan of comments and I don't get too many at the moment ;) *hinthint*

If you were disappointed and wanted some actual advice on where to eat on your travels as opposed to where to avoid, the 'Foody Favourites' post has been completed and archived, so if it's requested I'll just put it up. Otherwise I'll bring it out one day when inspiration is failing me.

...and what's to come

The past few months have been an absolute BLAST for me. I'm currently at University in London studying German and Hispanic Studies (with a little French on the side too). It's incredible. I've also been mega fortunate with my flat, as somehow I've been placed in with all international students. Seriously it's like a dream come true, it's like I'm constantly in travel mode.

Just to emphasise just how multinational my uni friends are, here's a low down of my flatmates. (This probably isn't interesting to most people, but this is my blog, so you're just going to have to deal with it. Just skip a bit further down if you want to jump to the exciting up-and-coming travel plan bit... :) )

So this is my first term flat...

There's me and my fellow first year Josie (Switzerland), then exchange students Ellen (Aus), Adriana (Mexico) and Gustavo (Brazil). I MISS YOU GUYS ALREADY :'(

However, we're lucky that the Newbies are awesome too...

This is the gang boogying to Thift Shop in Winter Wonderland... (left to right) There's Brett (exchange from the USA), Caitlin (Spain), another first year who moved in just before Christmas, Josie (who's stayed, WHOOP) and Steve (exchange from Aus). The others are friends from Uni, Mexican and American if you must know. There's also Shaynah (USA) but I don't have a pic with her yet :(

Also if you don't know what Thift Shop is (and you should) here's the youtube link:



The plus side of having a completely international flat is that the exchange students want to constantly be travelling the UK and Europe and I get to tag along/invite myself because I just can't be in one place for too long. Plus despite being in travel mode, I still have a base camp in London where I can relax and feel at home.

Unfortunately it does mean that I'm still making amazing friends and then having to watch them leave again and again. Which, by the by, doesn't get easier, no matter what people tell you, especially for a particularly emotional girl like myself. However I have come to terms with the fact that no matter where I am in the world, I'm always going to be missing someone. Sounds kinda sad but if you flip it, I also know that no matter where I am in the world, I'm always going to be with someone I care about :) Which is pretty awesome.

And now for the exciting part, this years travel plans (so far!):

February reading week in Madrid and Salamanca with the Hispanic Society. This is, as well as an opportunity to get a little silly on alcohol with the course mates, mainly an opportunity to improve my rather terrible spoken Spanish. As it's my degree, it's probably important for me to learn to do it well :P

St. Patrick's Day weekend in Dublin with all the flatmates. I'm FINALLY getting to Ireland and I'm super excited.

Then finally a week or two in Croatia with friends from home travelling and attending Hideout Festival. Which is a festival. On a beach. With real sunshine and waves and sand and EVERYTHING. Here's the promo video if you're wanting to know more...



Best get working on that Bikini Bod if I don't want to do my usual in knee length board shorts and a men's XL t-shirt...

Catch up...

Between my first year of university starting and an all together hectic four months I really haven't had chance to blog about well... anything it seems.

Since my last post I've also visited Budapest (at the end of the trip I didn't finish documenting) and spent a weekend in Amsterdam at the beginning of November. If I tried to write full posts on those and tried to get you properly up to speed I know I'd just end up falling behind again, plus my travel journal is at home and I'm at uni. Combine that with the absolute worst memory in the world (hence why I write everything down) and you'd get a rather shoddy recount of events. So in pictures and captions, here's the highlights of those last two adventures:

Budapest

The Roman Baths. So chilled out it's unreal, we spent a whole day there and with more time would have spent more.

This is a MUSICAL fountain. It played classical music and then the water 'danced' in time. Amazing.

This is from the day we went adventuring up a big hill (which perhaps has a proper name...) and had this incredible view of the whole city from the top.

We went out every night (if I remember rightly) to various different ruin bars, all with a pretty cool vibe. We also spent one night in a club, then got lost trying to walk back at 5am. Good times :P

Amsterdam

The red light district was actually really pretty and very different to how I expected. So clean and well kept. However a tip to female travellers; if you don't want to spend every evening oggling at prostitutes, don't visit Amsterdam with 4 boys.

In a coffee shop. We spent a fair amount of time in these. And I discovered I just don't really like weed. Ironic eh?

We did the Van Gogh mile and saw lots of art because we're just cultured like that.

Recognise these chicies?? The lovely dutch girlies I met whilst doing the trek to Machu Picchu in June. So good to see them again :)

On the last day we visited the gorgeous Botanical Gardens. I also went to Anne Frank's House, which was incredible.

And to finish it off here's the boys in front of the Central Station.

...and with that, my country count is now up to 25.

Vienna Day 2: The Heuriger and Flex

Our second day in Vienna wasn't particularly eventful but we had fun all the same. The weather was pretty horrible so we decided to go and spend the day at a place called a Heuriger, a wine tavern typical to east Austria where it is traditional to go and taste the wines of the season. We spent around five hours there, drinking wine and playing cards. It was the chilled out day we needed after being pretty much none stop up until then.

As we were all already quite tipsy, we decided we might as well carry on and see what Vienna's night life had to offer. There was a table football competition in the lobby that Pete, Tom and Jake decided to take part in which resulted in us meeting a load of people from the hostel to go out with that night. As the people were from all over europe, this meant I got to learn bits of new languages, namely icelandic, which I found very exciting. We headed to a club called 'Flex' which is usually an electronic club but it turns out it had a special indie/rock night on, with loads of english music, so that suited us perfectly.

The bathroom wall was made entirely out of sweets... :D

As we were foreigners we also got a chance to go on the stage with the DJ set, which was pretty cool!

There was cool graffiti all over the walls near the club as it was down by the river side, so we wanted a picture with it.

Turns out that Vienna is a really good night out, if you know where to look! It appears that most of the clubs do electronic and dance music, which really isn't my cup of tea, but on the whole austrians are a really friendly and helpful people (or so I found anyway) so it's always worth asking around. Also if you want to practise your German, I've found that unlike other european countries, they will let you have a go and not reply in English as soon as they detect a slight hesitation or accent.

Vienna Day 1: Rathaus Film Festival

Once returning from the Jazz Bar, we managed to get around three hours sleep before waking up to various phone alarms. Our bus was at 6.30am but we still had to find out where we were getting it from and some people still hadn't packed. Luckily we still had time to munch on Burger King bacon and cheese sandwiches that Ben and I, as we are wonderful human beings (and the only ones with any czech money left) decided to treat everyone to.

Our bus company was AWESOME. The journey from Prague to Vienna is about four and a half hours, for which we paid 16€. For that price we got complimentary hot drinks, reclining seats and individual TV screens, with games, music, TV shows and movies (both in English and Czech). The company was called the Student Company, if anyone is interested in travelling in or out of the Czech Republic, I'd definitely recommend them.

When we arrived in Vienna we were rather sleepy, so after a few hours of relaxing and settling into our new hostel, we decided to go and visit the Rathaus (town hall). As Lauren has a friend who lives in Vienna, we had a big list of all the best things to see and do whilst there. It was really useful as our hostel was rather a long way out of town, so we could decide on our heading before leaving, rather than wandering around aimlessly, which is much easier to do when you are closer to the centre. I'll post it as a separate post after this one, if anyone is interested in having a look :)

The Rathaus is a really grand and beautiful building. Somehow we had managed to time our trip so we arrived during another festival, this time the Rathaus Film Festival. Although this meant we couldn't get a full frontal view of the Rathaus, as there was a giant projector screen propped up in front of it, there was a really cool atmosphere about the place. They had various international food stalls behind where the films were screened and big posters advertising what showing was on each night. We settled on returning later on to watch an opera in german called 'Der Freischütz - Hunter's Bride', but first we decided to explore a little more.

Unfortunately the Cathedral wasn't as spectacular as we hoped as there was a great deal of scaffolding with a billboard stuck on the front, obscuring a large portion of it from view. It was still pretty impressive though, so I'd like to see it once they've finished the cleaning, or whatever they're doing.

The open air opera (that's what we've decided to call it, so we sound extra cultured) was pretty incredible, even if we didn't understand much of what was going on. We resorted to making up our own story lines and guessing what the characters were saying and therefore found the whole thing thoroughly entertaining. We probably should have picked something that was showing in english, but then that would have been cheating wouldn't it?

N.B. We also sampled the curry wurst. Unfortunately I have to say that it's not as good as in Germany. Sorry Austria.

Prague Day 3: Pedalos and The Bohemia Jazz Festival

Since our two previous nights had been rather heavy we decided that we'd take our last day in Prague a bit easier, so we wandered down to the Danube and hired pedalos. (They're easy enough to find, just look for the island in the middle of the river, the bridge is near to Goethe Institut on the city centre side.)

Walking down the river we saw a girl stand on one foot, put her foot over her head onto her shoulder and the smile through the arch it created to pose for a photo. Since it made such an impressive photo, Aimee and Ben decided that they would also give it a go.

The weather was lovely so after a heading to a cafe for some refreshments, we decided to have a dip in the water. Coming off the end of the island in the middle is a little beachy area, where there were people sunbathing, but no one actually swimming. However as there were no signs to say no swimming, we went in anyway. Little did I know that this would prove to be the end of my supposed 'water-proof' camera. After being in the river for about half a minute, Ben decided it would be a fantastic idea to tackle me into the water and the pressure somehow managed to water log my camera for the second year in a row. Though this time at least I got three days worth of pictures, last year it broke half way through the first day in the Mediterranean Sea.

It just so happens that we managed to be in Prague for the beginnings of the Bohemia Jazz Festival, which tours all around the Czech Republic throughout July-August. After our walking tour on the first day, we had already learned that the term 'Bohemia' had actually originated in Prague and along with a lot of the influences for this style of music. There were acts from all over the world and although we only briefly got to see one of the acts called 'The Baker Suite' (from Australia) it was pretty cool to enjoy the atmosphere that the festival had created.

One of our holiday traditions is that on our last night in each city/country, we go out for a traditional meal and sample some of the local cuisine. Having no idea about anything to do with czech food or where is good to eat, we just picked a place close to our hostel that said 'Traditional Local Food' on the outside and hoped for the best. I tried venison for the first time, which was in a curry type sauce with an assortment of dumplings and it was DELICIOUS. The Czech really do know how to make a hearty meal. However be warned about the sneaky waitresses, who told us that bread and sauces were free but then decided to charge four out of the seven of us for using them! The cheeky so and so.

After dinner we all headed out to the city centre, where the Jazz Festival was coming to a close for the day. Tom bought a CD of The Baker Suite and managed to meet the band in person, getting his CD signed of course. We then headed of to one of Prague's underground jazz bars. I don't think I've ever felt so cool. The band were pretty good and they were clearly having a really great time whilst performing, which for me makes all the difference when watching a live act.

Prague Days 1 and 2: Free Walking Tour, Drunken Monkey Bar Crawl and Prague Castle

Eurotrip 2012 amazing!! For those of you who don't know I, along with 6 friends, have just spent the last 11 days in Prague, Vienna and Budapest. Unfortunately, whilst I was away I couldn't really blog because the silly blogger people have updated the site and now my rubbish phone isn't compatible with it. So I shall update you in the next few days with a post all about our adventures in each place.

We spent the first 4 nights in Prague, which is a breath-takingly beautiful city. I would recommend anyone to visit, even just for the architecture.

On the first day we went on a free walking tour with the company all dressed in yellow (if you're looking for it on the plaza, they stick out a fair bit) which took us all around the big sites of everything on our side of the river (the side without the castle on it) and lasted around 2 and a half hours. Our guide also gave us the history of Prague in 10 minutes and was extremely knowledgeable about the city. It was a great way to start our trip as not only did we get to see a lot of things we otherwise wouldn't have thought to visit, but it also gave us plenty of ideas of how to spend the rest of our time in Prague.

Little did I know that Prague is actually the birth place of my all time favourite german author, Franz Kafka!

As it was a first night in Prague (our flight was delayed the day before so we only arrived at around 1am) we decided to have a big one and did the Drunken Monkey bar crawl, which was just 375CZK (around £12/15€) for 2 and a half hours of open bar and then entry into 4 clubs. So of course we had an epic night! It was also a great way to meet new people, as it was majority tourists. I even met a guy who is on my hispanics course at Kings College in September, small world eh?!

Absinthe shots on tap? YES please.

On the second day we wandered up to the castle where we enjoyed some lovely panoramic views of Prague. The castle itself was rather lovely, as were (what we assumed to be) the parliament buildings that we passed a long the way.

As you may or may not know, I am a very clumsy person and that evening when we headed back to the hostel I managed to add to my list of stupid things I have done. This time I managed to collapse the underside of a top bunk bed on top of myself by kicking it (because I'm an idiot) and it hit my head rather hard and I got a lovely big lump right in the middle of my forehead. This also caused me to go quite drowsy and tired so I didn't manage to make it out with the others to 'The Biggest Club in Central Europe'. At first I was a bit gutted to be missing out, as I hate to miss out on anything and this was completely my own doing, however I was informed in the morning that a more fitting name for it would be 'The Shittest Club in Central Europe' and therefore was not to bothered. Plus I felt a lot fresher than everyone else the next morning.

So that's a very brief outline of our first two days. I've decided to give each place more than just one post, as I'll just end up missing out too much, so keep an eye out over the next few days for more info on Prague :)