Category Archives: City trip

City trip, Europe, Foods Foods Foods, Spain

Rainy Madrid – food food food

9 May, 2016 jpcorp Leave a comment

One of the (many) things that connects us is definitely our passion for good foods (and our struggle to stay in shape 😉 ). We love a (very) good glas of wine, fresh fruits of the season, local products at farmers’ markets, aged cheese, iberico jamon, a good piece of steak, and lots of seafoods. Anything that satifies our tongues will win its way straight to our hearts. A good meal is one of the most simple pleasures in life that you can really afford every single day, so why not?!

After Saigon, Madrid is probably our second most favorite city for foods simply because you can find great foods everywhere, in every corner of the city. Our absolute highlight of this trip must be our 9-course dinner at LUA. Even though it’s granted 1 Michelin Star, it’s surprisingly affordable (€60 for the menu and €28 for wines pairing), they even put our water and espressos on the house (which most Michelin-starred restaurants normally take advantage of and charge people a lot for) so the whole experience was very pleasant. We enjoyed every course and generally had a very good time.

But you don’t need to visit a famous restaurant to have a good meal in Madrid. In fact, our most favorite place to eat would be in the local Mercados (markets in Spanish), of which there is one in every neighborhood. In Mercado de San Fernando, we had 3 different kinds of tapas from a Spanish lady, 2 dishes of sushi from a Japanese couple, plus wines & beers for a total of €20. What not to love, right?!

We read about La Carmencita being a really popular spot for brunch of the locals so we immediately wanted to check it out. We actually went here the day after our 9-course dinner at LUA, never thought we would feel hungry for foods again but we did ;-).

But the most fun place to eat is definitely the infamous Mercado de San Miguel. It is touristy yes, it is a bit pricey yes, but you also get what you pay for, and have fun eating it side-by-side with hundred hungry others fighting for one of the chairs at the few tables they had there. If you’ve never been there, imagine a giant food hall with stands after stands selling small portions of dishes (called tapas in Spanish) running from local to international for between€2 and €5 each. So firstly you grab a (big) glas of wine at one stand (red wine for him, sangria for me), then go around from one stall to the next (while sipping eagerly on your wines) trying one tapa to the next and before you know it, you’re full and tipsy and beyond happy ;-). It’s really fun. And the foods are very eye-catching as you can see in the pictures followed. We came here twice and loved every second of it.

food-1-6 — Mercado de San Miguel, built by the same architect that designed Tour Eiffel

Less famous is the Mercado de la Cebada, but with much better seafoods choices. Here, you buy seafoods by the kg, have it prepared (simply boiled then springled with sea-salts and olive oil on top) by the vendor, grab the complimentary beer or wine (yes, complimentary because the vendors don’t have the license to sell alcoholic beverages) and eat them right there. It was a long walk for us to get here, but we’re glad we did.

And the cherry on top of our whole culinary experience was this little restaurant right here where we had the most delicious plate of Paella we’ve ever had, anywhere! On Sunday morning, we fought the rain to visit some local center for foods, crafts, and arts we read about. We should have known better (but we obviously didn’t), due to the heavy rain, all food vendors were closed for the day. Having had nothing for breakfast, we were desperately walking around the suburban neighborhood trying to find just anything to satisfy our hungry bellies when we came across this tiny diner. It was a small family-run business, the husband was the barman/ waiter/ everything-doer while his wife running back and fort from the kitchen to bring out new pans with yet another new dishes; the locals coming in and out watching football on the screen, obviously knowing each other by name. This was a very happy ending of our very rainy Madrid story.

City trip, Europe, Foods Foods Foods, Spain, Weekend getaway

Rainy Madrid – the city

4 May, 2016 jpcorp Leave a comment

This is our second (unsuccesful) effort this year, after Mallorca, to try to escape the bad German weather. Magically, mother winter has managed to follow us to Madrid, leaving Munich very warm and sunny over this long weekend so we ended up baring the cold and the rain the entire time we’re here… (In case you wonder.. No, we didn’t have any luck coming back home because, of course, the bad weather followed us home!).

Upon booking our flights, I started imagining us sitting outside everyday drinking one sangria after another and taking long walks in t-shirt and sandals. But none of that happened, to our (mostly my) despair! Anyway, after swearing like a hundred times (me) and trying to make plan B (him), we think we managed to make the best out of it (we even went to the Museum Reina Sofia though we’re not museum people at all, but what else should we do?!). We spent lots of time in bed ;-), managed to see a bit of the vibrant city (enough to like it), and ate a whole lot. You can really say the foods has saved this trip. Madrid is definitely one of the best city for culinary experience in Europe that we will for sure come back for more.

city-1 — Sunset dinner with panorama view on our first night

city-1-10 — Crystal Palace in Retiro Park

city-1-12 — Basilica of San Francisco el Grande

city-1-13 — Basilica of San Francisco el Grande

city-1-15 — In front of Museum Reina Sofia waiting in line

Asia, City trip

Muscat, Oman

25 February, 2016 jpcorp Leave a comment

My second business trip to the Middle East within 2 months. We were invited to a conference also to have some follow-up meetings with the partners we met in Tehran in January. It was an even shorter trip this time so there was very little time for sightseeing. The only attraction I managed to see was the Great Mosque, for which I had to get up at 4am German time to be able to get back before the conference started. But it was really worth it.

Once again, I was overwhelmed by the friendliness and hospitality of the people we met – very similar to our trip to Tehran in January. Hassan, an Omani business man I met by chance at lunch, made sure the hotel staff bring me some Halwa, a typical local dessert – very tasty, to try because they served mostly only Western foods at the hotel. He also took a few of us on a nice drive along the coast outside the city and introduced us to some “nature wonder”. We were surprised as we made a stop in the middle of the road in the middle of nowhere with not much to be seen. As he put the car into neutral gear, magically, the car started rolling up-hill, no joking!, as if there were some kind of force pulling it forward on the ascending road. I’d heard about similar things about some force of gravity from the earth beneath us, but seeing it in real life was really funny. We then tried again with laying a bottle of water on the street and same thing happened (see the video below). Guess mother nature always has some surprises in play for us.

During the conference, we stayed in the Al Bustan hotel which was a spectacle in its own right: the grand foyer, Swarowsky chandeliers, 3 infinity pool, palm garden, and endless beach. Hence it’s no surprise to find out it is owned by the Sultan himself and he does pay his visit to his president suite every now and then.

oman-1 — This is what you see when you enter the hotel

oman-2 — Close-up of the fountain in the middle of the hotel’s foyer

oman-3 — The hotel’s infinity pool at night

oman-4 — The hotel at night looks better than at day time

oman-10 — The Muscat city administration building at night

oman-9 — A “Fisherboat Memorial” in front of the city’s admin building

Getting up so early in the morning to visit the Grand Sultan Taboos Mosque was definitely worth it. It opens for non-muslim visitors only from 8-11am. I was lucky to be there by 8am because the place got very crowded as I left around 8.45. Having been there before everyone else gave me the opportunity to fully immerse in its peacefulness and tranquility that made the whole experience even more unique.

oman-13 — Impressive building, the floor was so splendidly polished that it looked like a pool

oman-15 — A corridor leading to the minaret

oman-16 — Same corridor from a different angle

oman-21 — Standing in that room for the first time is truly breathtaking. This picture doesn’t do this chandelier justice, in fact it is 8x14m in size and 11 tons in weight!

oman-23 — View of the big chandelier from below

oman-22 — This is just one corner of the more than 4200sqm big prayer room. The carpet in the room is made of one piece, weighs 14 tons and is made of 1.700.000.000 knots!!

oman-31 — Another corridor on the other side of the main prayer room

I took the following pictures during our sightseeing tour. It’s a very rough, dry and rocky landscape but also fascinating.

oman-39 — It was a lot of fun doing that little sightseeing tour with Hassan (left) and all the nice colleagues from Iran Fara Bourse. Would have been nice if we had more time to explore the city and get to know each other better.

And finally here’s a video of the water bottle rolling up-hill:

Oman has never really been on our destination wish-list but now it certainly is. Cant wait to see more of this country.

Asia, City trip

Tehran

8 January, 2016 jpcorp Leave a comment

It’s “sunday” in Tehran, actually friday Jan-8. I got to the hotel around 3am and after a short night and breakfast in Espinas hotel, I started to explore downtown. Tehran is the capital of Iran. It’s elevation is 1189m and it has 9mio inhabitants, the wider region 16mio! Here’s some pictures of places in walking distance to the hotel:

tehran1 — The mosque at Palestine Square, unfortunately there’s some construction going on

A typical piece of "street art", you find many of such pictures on walls or houses, mostly with a political or religious message — A typical piece of “street art”, you find many of such pictures on walls or houses, mostly with a political or religious message

Going through the streets, the impression I got was that most of the buildings have a rather grey look (probably even more due to the rather grey weather), requiring maintenance and some have obviously even been abandoned.

Typical street leading to the North with snow-covered mountains in the background

However, beside the mosques there are many colourful spots like this back-entrance to a shopping-mall:

And here’s the paradise for everybody having a sweet tooth: a store full of cookies, sweets, dried fruit and nuts:

A taxi brought me to Golestan Palace (palace of flowers), the oldest historic monument in Tehran, the construction of the oldest buildings started in the 16th century as part of the former citadel. Since then it has continuosly been extended and renovated by the various emperors who used the buildings as their residence and for represenational purposes. This history ended with the disposal of Schah Reza Pahlavi in 1979. Nowadays the palace is mostly used as a museum.

The first thing you see inside the palace are the walls that are beautifully decorated with tiles. Each arc is differently styled:

There are many buildings in the area of the palace and you have to buy tickets separately for each one at the entrance.

... and the corresponding building — … and the corresponding building

I didn’t visit the ethnological museum though. The first building I entered was the Emarat-e Badgir, the “Building of the wind towers”. It has been constructed in the early 19th century and has 4 towers that were constructed to provide cooling for the main building: