Travel Notes
Travel Notes
22 Cities in a little over 5 Weeks
6/9/25 -Overview
Bruce and I are now three weeks into our five week holiday in Europe, and I am writing your from a small river boat cruise on the Danube. We chose a lesser known cruise line to Americans that is geared towards German speaking travelers. Mostly because it was cheaper. There are roughly 125 people on this ship and I can tell you there are exactly 9 of us that are English speaking based on who showed up to the English version of the preliminary safety meeting at the beginning of the cruise. We are on Duolingo during all our down time trying to absorb as much of the language as we possibly can, trying and parcel out the discussions being had on the boat. It is few and far between but when we do successfully understand what is going on, it is an exciting moment for both of us. Bruce is fairly fluent in Spanish, and I know a bit of French from 4 years in high school. But with German, we are on the same beginner learning level, which has been fun for us as a couple to share the struggles and wins of learning a new language together. German words are fun puzzles to try and parcel out, and we have had some good laughs on what we think a word means, with our own immature sense of humor applied as the filter.
It is hard to believe that we already have traveled to so many cities and countries within this last three weeks. This is not our standard way of travel. Typically we find one city in a foreign country, and park it there to absorb the culture, the language, shop the farmers markets, experiment with cooking the food, and live and explore the neighboring cities through day trips. But this has been a rather aggressive agenda for us, so to finally sit still on a cruise ship has been a nice reprieve, where we actually have 6 day where we can unpack and hang our clothes and have a home base while visiting multiple countries and cities as we float down the Danube.
This trip has been a different agenda for us. It has been more of a scouting trip to narrow down countries we want to come back to and spend extended stays in. We are getting older, and dream of living over seas for extended stays in different countries into our retirement years. This trip was to celebrate our friend, Ciara’s 50th birthday on the front end and have her show us her home town of York, England and home country, Ireland. We then broke off from the group a we shifted the focus to exploring a bunch of different countries and cities and see what cultures interest us, just so we can narrow down where we would want to spend further time in the future.
To date we have been to London, York, Dublin, Clonmacnoise, Galway, Lahinch, Kilcummin, Killarney, back to Dublin, Amsterdam, Cologne, Lintz, Koblenz, Rüdesheim, Mainz, Passau, and Vienna. You can imagine with a travel itinerary like this it has been a little more difficult for me to explore the local cuisines as throughly as I would like to. And the first 10 days of our trip we were with a large group, so options are a little more limited on what we can do for meals given the size of our party. The first part of the trip was a bit glutenous, where a good part of our diet consisted of Fish and Chips with Curry Sauce, Ham and Cheese Toasties, Sweet Pea and Mint soup, so many crisps of all flavors, fried foods, and unlimited amounts of Curly Wurlys, Flakes, Fruit Pastilles, Wine Gums, and Crunchies. All to be washed down with lots of Guiness, local Irish ciders, and Jamesons, and our new favorite shot, Baby Guiness, which is coffee liquor topped with a float of Baileys. And when we decided to stay in with the group, it was pizza or chinese food, because it was easiest to feed 14 people at the house we were staying in.
Needless to say, once we broke free from the group, and left for Amsterdam, we had to reset our diet to a more reasonable one with more vegetables and salads and cut back our food intake significantly, just so our bodies could recover. So in Amsterdam, food was not the focus. Most of our day was spent walking through the town, and half a day was spent at the Rijks Museum. We did get to experience Bitterballen there, which was delicious. Basically the Dutch’s version of a croquette served with a spicy mustard. And we had a lovely Ramen dish for dinner, and Indian food for lunch. Amsterdam is a diverse city with every type of cuisine available, so we were just to excited to eat anything that didn’t have a potato in it.
It really wasn’t until Germany where we started to feel somewhat reset, but then came down with a nasty cold that limited our appetite. So even though we were in Germany, all we we wanted was Tom Kha Gai soup or Chinese noodles. Just comfort food for our colds. But we did get simple veggie dishes that were so simple and so spectacular. Like German whole grain sourdough rustic breads dressed with a sweet salty tomato compote, topped with perfect red juicy tomatoes, frisee lettuce, and basil. The breakfasts are super hearty with dense whole grain and multi seeded breads, that stick with your the entire day. Served with slices of meats, cheese, tomatoes and cucumbers. You don’t need lunch with a breakfast this hearty. Which helped us extend our pocket cash a bit further, occasionally skipping lunch, and opting for an early dinner instead. We took one way trips on day boats working our way down the Rhine to get to Passau (which is where we would board our river cruise boat). They offer full service of beverages, and full meals that you can order at any time during your trip down the Rhine. I didn’t have high expectations on the quality of food, as typically when on a day boat for tourists, they don’t need to put a lot of effort into the quality, because you have captive audience. Past experiences in boats like this have been basic cuisine, with limited offerings. This was entirely different, with beautiful healthy salads, soups, hot lunches of wursts and kraut, warm potato salad, schnitzel, and lovely bottles of Dry Riesling wines for purchase. Far surpassed my expectations, and it was truly delicious and felt like a nourishing meal. The one thing I derived from the Germans, is that everyone is very intelligent, well educated, and everyone at every level of job, whether it is waiter, front desk manager, housekeeping, chef, or captain of a ship, they all takes pride in their role. They are true professionals in every sense of the word. There is no dialing it in. They are 100% present and take their jobs very seriously. And it is a trait I can relate to, and respect when I see it in action. It does not go unnoticed with me. It actually inspired me to be even more present than I have been. It is easy to get run down from life hardships or even just physical exhaustion, and to lose focus on your day to day tasks. It is human nature. But that is why they invented vacations. To take a step back from the day to day and help you refocus your priorities and hone in on what is important. And visiting another culture that demonstrates such pride and excellence in everything they do, is the perfect reminder of staying present and in the moment. As someone who’s a workhorse by nature, I have to force myself to take these occasional breaks to remind myself of this, otherwise I will just go and go until I break myself physically and/or mentally, as I have demonstrated in the past. It has taken many years for me to learn this about myself, and am a constant work in progress in finding balance in what I aspire to achieve for my business, and how much my aging body can actually achieve. Mentally I am still 33 years old, living in a 53 year olds body. It is a midlife struggle that is very real.
As I sit on the sun deck of my cruise ship writing this, it is the first time this trip I have been able to take pause and reflect on what I am learning along this journey, and how I want to apply these learnings at home when I head back to the kitchen. So far, rather than culinary inspiration which I had hoped to pull away from this trip, so far I have found it be a more inward focus of what is truly important to me, where I want to spend my time and focus, and how to improve the quality of what I put my hands too. How do I make myself better, but also keep in mind my physical capacity as I get closer and closer to retirement age year by year. I don’t have all the answers yet, but the wheels are turning and in motion. And while I am not yet ready to come home, I am excited to apply this new lens to what I plan to do next once I do.
Our journey continues and I will keep you posted on what new adventures present themselves to us along the way. I hope you all are having a lovely start to your summer, and look forward to seeing you all when we return. Thank you for all your continued support of Ali’s Eats, and your patience and understanding of my need to occasionally shut down and recharge. We are a part of such an amazing community, and am so grateful to each and every one of you. I feel unbelievably lucky to have found such a magnificent community of people to reside with in our little corner of the world in Murphys. If you would like to see photos from my journey you can go to my Facebook page; https://www.facebook.com/alison.bonfantine.
More thoughts to come....
Sincerely,
Ali
