Zurich to St Petersburg

No blog this week - I'm in St Petersburg!

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Zurich - Eating Out

Service at Casa Ferlin (copyright Casa Ferlin)

I’m now in the manic phase as my time gets nearer and nearer to when I return to Egypt. On top of this, there are a lot of changes taking place where I work, so it’s all quite exhausting.

Consequently, there’s not been one working day last week where I actually cooked myself a main meal. Monday was my birthday (happy birthday to me – this means it’s about 5 years since I made the decision to live in Egypt, doesn’t time fly?). I didn’t have anything planned so I was very British and got myself a curry to take home so that I could just pig out in front of the television. I couldn’t go to the Malabar, which is my favorite curry place in Oerlikon, since it was closed on Mondays. As a result, I ended up trying the Indian Palace, which I’d seen several times from the bus/tram but had never tried before. I don’t think it was as good as the Malabar but it was still tasty and suitably spicy (this can be a problem in Switzerland sometimes since their taste isn’t as adjusted to Indian food as the UK palate), so I’d go back. And they had a peshwari naan, which is quite unusual over here, too. They gave me a free mango juice while I waited and I was able to inspect their outside area, which I didn’t even know they had.

On Tuesday I ate out with my team at work for lunch – it was hard to find a time where we were all available (and even then one person had to opt out at the last minute), but it was good to have the chance for us to catch up. We went to an Italian restaurant across the road – options are limited near work (well, we have quite a few options, it’s just that I’ve been everywhere on multiple occasions), so the meal itself wasn’t so exciting.

However, Wednesday was a birthday meal at Gustav’s. A group of us have been trying to book there for over a year now but somehow we always cancel. It was a little bit the same story this year, since yet again one of us ended up not being able to join. Anyway, it was worth the wait. We took the three-course surprise menu; it started with gazpacho soup, which I don’t normally like but this was very good. The main course, I think, was selections of pork cooked in different ways (one was suckling pig). It was all beautifully presented even though they insisted on putting some cheese on top of the courgette. For dessert I think we had a peach mousse, but it was quite delicate – the almond shavings were lovely. We also had a chocolate cake as a birthday offering. We were able to sit outside because the weather is still good here and the courtyard was very cosy. I’d recommend it.

Thursday evening was another day of fine dining, this time at Casa Ferlin (I find the name very forgettable, which is a bit unfortunate!), an Italian restaurant that I’d never even noticed before quite near Central. It had received good reviews on tripadvisor. It was more upmarket than I was expecting; the interior was very nice (on the old-fashioned side) and all the waiters wore suits and served the meals with aplomb. We had a very nice white wine to go with the food (I had a salmon pasta dish, but they’re famous for the ravioli). It was another good find.

And then on Friday I was at Neumarkt. I’ve been there several times over the years and is probably much loved due to its courtyard with cobbled stones and trees. Even though I knew the place, I somehow managed to walk into the wrong restaurant, so was a bit surprised when they didn’t have our reservation. They then pointed me to the restaurant on the other side of the square. Whoops. I have memories of the menu being a bit sparse and little for me to choose from, but I think they’ve changed since then as there were a number of things I could have selected this time. I ended up with Zueri Geschnetzeltes (the local traditional food) since I won’t be able to have it again for a while.

Next week is my last week and then I’ll be off to St Petersburg, so there’ll likely be no blog next week. I’ll be back the following week, which will be my last blog this year from Switzerland (unless I decide to come back for a couple of weeks at some point). It’ll be my tales from Egypt again (inshahllah!).

Zurich - Holiday in Colonia de Sant Jordi (Mallorca)

Cabrera (National Park)

I was away in Mallorca over the last week – hence the absence of my blog.

My main reason for choosing this precise location was due to the existence of the BEST centre. I’d searched for swimming coaching holidays and I came across the BEST centre, run by two former Olympic swimmers. It holds various family and training holidays and has a ten-lane open-air 50m pool with viewing underneath so that you can see the strokes from all angles. And the weather would be warm and sunny and the pool temperature warm. Plus there was the sea and open water swimming options.

I had been thinking of doing one of their Masters’ training weeks (1 hour group training in the morning and 1 hour in the early evening), but was a bit worried about it being too much and feeling too stressed in a group. And, more importantly, these holidays weren’t taking place in early September and I didn’t really want to go any later since I’m off to St Petersburg at the end of September (it’s a hard life).

In the end, Steph decided to join me, and we ended up having three private lessons of one hour. By booking our hotel via the BEST centre, they allowed us to practice there as well in our free time.

We stayed half board at the Don Leon hotel (all options seemed to be half board), which included a 5-course meal in the evening with appetizers and main course served at your table. Each evening, there was a choice of two for each of the soup, appetizer and main meal courses, plus the option of a vegetarian or Mallorcan dish every day for the main meal if you pre-ordered. The food quality and service were both very good.

The first evening, I chose lamb, and then the following day I had a steak, and then every morning after that I was eagerly predicting chicken (my favorite). As the week wore on, each day it remained absent from the menu (other than once on the Spanish speciality, which you had to order). We did have duck (which was delicious), but I found it astonishing that we never did have any chicken (although the food was so good, I didn’t feel inclined to complain).

The BEST swim centre tended to be either busy with teams training or empty apart from one girl who seemed always to be there swimming up and down in the middle of the ten-lane pool doing either crawl or backstroke. I’m sure she could have been a motif in a movie…

There were photos up of all the Olympic swimmers who had trained at the centre. I had to ask Stephanie if she knew what the “dayer flimpics” were, and it turned out to be the deaf-lympics and not dea-flympics (written as deaflympics). Doh.

Our lessons were useful but tiring, so I’m still wondering whether the Masters swimming is really for me. They hold an open-water swimming festival at the end of May, which I’d quite like to attend but I think the water will still be too cold for me at that time of year.

There’s still a lot for me to improve on in my swimming, but the lessons were helpful for confirming that my recent change to my stroke timing had been the right thing to do, but needs a bit of tweaking and I still need to extend my arms more (among other things). To my surprise, the pool water was salty (yes, I unintentionally swallowed some!).

Leaflet design was a bit lacking in Mallorca. We went to a nature reserve for the day but the leaflet didn’t mention anything about the nature or what you did on the tour. Maps seemed to have forgotten to include the legends to explain the symbols, and the leaflet for the little train seemed to forget to mention that you had to pay and was a little ambiguous about where it stopped.

This all caused amusement rather than being a complaint as such. The weather was amazing, the sea was just the right temperature (you didn’t feel the need to squeal as you got in), the town was larger than I was expecting, and the hotel was great.