Geneva (not my favorite!)

We took the train from Verona to Geneva via Milan. I really want to like this place and if circumstances were different I'd have loved Geneva, but it just turns out that we had to make the best out of a shitty situation that is no one's fault. We were supposed to stay over at Deron's friend David, but he contracted stomach flu at the last minute. Hence, we had to put up at a severely overpriced hotel near the train station which looks like hotel 81 but was 400 usd for 2 nights. And David was nice enough to come over the next day, and brought us to the lake, over to his place in the hills for lunch (which was lovely) and up the mountain to see the whole expansive view of Geneva. It was great, truly. We just didn't appreciate the sky rocket prices in the city! A starbucks plain coffee, no milk, no nothing, you buy a venti cup for 8ish francs! Which is like 12 usd! WTH. And I was grumpy and tired the first night, and Deron went to buy a bottle of water, a bag of chips and a bag of cookies for 15 francs! Geez. I don't know how people survive over there.

Went to this interesting restaurant for dinner. It originates from Paris, and features only 1 pri fix menu with one salad, one steak in beurreblanc sauce and pommes frites, for like 50 francs. And that's all they serve! It's like the french gourmet version of in-n-out. Deron didn't like it cuz it was super crowded, loud and hot, and he claims that the meat wasn't good quality meat, but I enjoyed it. After all, you can't really complain much about a semi rare steak smothered in butter, can you? :)

Glad to leave Geneva, the train station was super confusing, almost missed my train to Nice. Urgh.

 The lake at Geneva. It really is quite stunning.

 Up on the mountain which has loads of un-identifiable bugs!

 Deron with his pulled-up-too-high white socks, the Tom Sawyer look! :P

 We tried walking to Old Town and we got lost. This is the furthest point that we got to so we wanted to document that. Ha!

 The delish salad! It was really one of the best tasting salads. The secret is in the dressing.

The steak smothered in herb butter. Apparently the sauce is a family secret. Oh well.

So that concludes my Geneva part. Onto Nice next! :D

Verona

Went to Verona next! I have to say, I didn't really care for Verona, but the things I like about it is the hotel we stayed in. It's a modern italian farmhouse, and I really like it because the restaurant served one of the best meals we had in Italy, which is surprising because this hotel is tucked in the outskirts of Verona, away from foot traffic. We went to Juliet's house, and it was really nice. Hoards of people of course, but the walls were scrawled with declarations of love. We had to put our mark down, as which deron said sarcastically, an immortalization of our love. Hehe. It was fun taking pics on the balcony! And the opera house was really pretty, reminds me a bit of the colosseum in rome. And the highlight of the trip was when we had dinner at this really fancy restaurant near the opera house, which was playing "Il tivoli" that night, and when we were having dinner, the waiter and waitress burst out in the first part of the opera! And they were super awesome! Turns out that they were music students from the university (Verona is really well known for the opera degrees, apparently), and they do the singing bit often. It was great. :) 

 The opera house.

 Me posing with the walls of scribble of love!

 The balcony!!

 Happy!

 I liked this passage a lot, decided to take a picture of it.

 That's us! In weak ballpoint pen. Probably going to last the whole of a day.

 The castle in Verona

 The plating at the fancy restaurant. Super cute.

 The waiter and waitress singing italian opera! It was super awesome! And the pasta with saffron and lobster was really good. Fresh pasta, delicate seafood flavor, and the lobster was great.

 Deron's gnocchi with gorgonzola was really nice. It had the heady and sweet taste of gorgonzola but not the stinky taste. It was really delicate, and light.

 The mushroon pasta with fresh shaved truffles was pretty good. The pasta was infused with the mushroom taste, but the truffles didn't help much.

 The courtyard of our hotel.

 Part 2.

The front of the hotel. It really was a beautiful hotel.

 Deron having a cuppa at the cafe.

 Me waiting for him. Heh.

 Friggin' awesome pasta. The pasta was not just one note, with a great shrimp flavor, and had a slight sweetness to it. It was really really delicious, and the tomatoes were fresh and juicy.

The roasted rabbit was the highlight. It was wrapped with "pink lard" which turned out to be proscuitto. The fattiness of the bacon leaked into the rabbit meat, making it tender and moist and sooooooo flavorful. I loved this because it respected the natural taste of rabbit, enhanced it and made it delicious. Most places that serve rabbit braise it in a red wine sauce, which is good too, but the sauce usually masks the meat taste. LOVED it. And the potatoes were delightful, crispy outside and very moist and soft inside.

Europe

I'm going to try to write down highlights of each stop in my europe trip... so here goes!

Venice
Arrived in Venice hot, sweaty and annoyed. Our flight from Chicago was late (surprise surprise American airlines), and we had half an hour to clear customs and get on a train to our boarding gate in Madrid. We arrived with 10 minutes to spare, all thanks to running like a maniac, only to find out that they already booked us on the next flight because our luggage can't make it on this flight in time. The next hour was spent in line (extremely slow service, welcome to europe!) even though there was only 4 people in front of us. So when we finally stumbled to our b&b (4 season's vivaldi) in Venice, we were exhausted. The room was roomy, very italian with narrow stairs leading to the bathroom. Very local. The window overlooks foot traffic on a bustling street. Thinking back, it was a pretty awesome room, even though to get to our room, we had to climb a total of 84 steps. All I can say is, Venice is not built for handicapped people or people with strollers. Bridges everywhere, no cars. It was crazy, but in a good way. We walked around a lot, to St. Mark's square and to the far end to the beautiful park with a cool museum. We had pizza under the stars, and really great pasta. Had the best table white wine, a mezzo (0.5L) for 5 euros, can't get better than that. It's at Patatinas. Yum!

Posing next to our town car, ready to board!

 Hot and sweaty and pissed at Madrid.

 At Patatinas! With 5 euro white wine!

 One of the best gnocchi (with semolina wheat) and crab. Yum!! The gnocchi is soft with a very distinct herb taste. Mmm!

Spaghetti with seafood. The spaghetti was al dente with infused flavors of mussels and seafood. Thinking back, this was really good. 

 On the Rialto Bridge!

 Fancy gondolas!

 St. Mark's Cathedral.

 Picturesque area of local living quarters.

 The gorgeous park at the far end of the island.

 A display piece on exhibition linking the two towers together.

 SPRITZ! It's a light summery cocktail, you can choose bitter or sweet. The bitter tastes terrible.

 Antico Dolo. The food is really nice here.

 Very black squid ink linguine. The squid was super tender, but I'd rather the linguine in another sauce, seriously.

Hef approves of this place!

Okay that's all for my Venice trip, will start on Verona tomorrow!

Ikko!

OMG. The best Japanese place (other than Okan, but they are different) in Irvine hands down!!!

They are expensive, but some of their food items are to die for. Not going to gush too much, but I'll just put up the pictures...

I started with the tofu mousse with ginger noodles in a light caviar soy sauce. It was the best ever. The tofu mousse blends with this ridiculously light but flavorful sauce, and with the caviar exploding in your mouth, it's like heaven!

Live giant orange clam....the sashimi was soooo sweet. Mmmmmmmmm. I've never liked clam but this is in a class of its own.

Possibly the best looking uni that I've had. It was sooo creamy, and the chef glazed it with some sort of sauce that accentuates its taste. Mmmmm.

MY FAV! Chawan mushi with uni sauce and black truffles. Omg. The egg melts in your mouth, enveloped by a layer of uni and black truffles. What more does a girl want!

Home made black sesame ice cream with black sesame past in hot coffee. The bitterness of the coffee blends in with the sweetness of the ice cream to perfection. Mmmm. The far side is black soy ice cream, which is good too, but too subtle for my liking.

Pomodoro is awesome!

Deron and I decided to venture out and try a new Italian restaurant that we've never been, and it's awesome!!! It's called Pomodoro in Point Loma. It's delish and it's so affordable!

Had the burrata salad. Blew my mind. I think creativity wise, it's not the most whimsical dish I've had, but it's a solid dish! A glob of burrata melty cheese on top of sauteed spinach with fried garlic bits and cherry tomatoes in an olive oil sauce. It's really awesome.

Deron had the homemade gnocchi in a cream sauce. It's so good! The gnocchi is home-made and soft but firm, and the cream sauce is on the light side with hints of speck. The sauce is delicious and the gnocchi is too, sooooo good.

Had the BEST black ink linguine ever! The linguine is fresh pasta and cooked al dente and cooked in this seafoodish cream sauce (which is again not too heavy, and soooooo flavorful) with leeks and bay scallops. What really tops this dish was the huge perfectly cooked shrimp which was sweet and just sublimeeeee. AHHHHH. Soooo goood.

Okay, I'm done drooling over this place. :)