Five hours of foodie decadence at Pizarro Fine Dining in Groß-Gerau…

On Thursday afternoon, Bill finally got home from his latest TDY trip. I was delighted to see him, especially since he was sporting a white beard. He said he’d quit shaving while he was working the nightshift in Bavaria. I think Bill is adorable when he has a beard, but I don’t enjoy kissing it, and he doesn’t like the upkeep. So, within a few minutes of his arrival home, he shaved. Then we started talking about future food and travel endeavors… 😉

I showed Bill a few places I found for a potential long weekend. We’re overdue for a trip outside of Germany. He said he’d see what he could do for time off, not to include the two days he’s taking to recover from sixteen days straight of non-stop work. I’ve mentioned before, Bill is not a night person, and he’s no longer a spring buck. He gets things accomplished, but it comes at a price when the job is done. I like this, because it means I can plan elaborate short trips, which often turn out to be our most memorable.

Before we make any serious plans for a long weekend, Bill wanted to go out to dinner. There was a time not so long ago when we used to go out to eat all the time. Nowadays, we’ve kind of lost the desire to get dressed up and go out to a restaurant. I think it’s a combination of us getting older and the pandemic, which got us used to hanging out at home all the time. Also, today happens to be the one year anniversary of the death of our beloved beagle-coonhound mix, Arran. While we wanted to celebrate him, we also miss him a lot.

Now… about Pizarro Fine Dining in Groß-Gerau…

At the time Bill proposed a night out, I was all for it. He went on OpenTable.de and found a new restaurant in the nearby hamlet of Groß-Gerau, which the GPS tells us is about sixteen miles from where we live.

Bill started reading about Pizarro Fine Dining on OpenTable, and then Googled the restaurant. He noted the solid five star ratings people on Google had given the place. He also noticed that the restaurant was mentioned by The Michelin Guide in 2023.

Pizarro Fine Dining has kind of a unique concept. Instead of having people come in and order what they want a la carte, they offer a set “Nuna Inka” menu, which is a tasting menu of different fish dishes coupled with healing herbs. They also offer “kitchen parties” and “daytime champagne matinees” every other week. Additionally, they have wine events, and are available to be booked for business events or parties. The next wine event, according to Pizarro’s Web site, will be held on May 10, 2024.

Last night’s fully booked dinner was the Nuna Inka menu. For 125 euros per person, patrons are welcomed into the restaurant at 6:30 PM, given snacks and an aperitif, and then at around 7:15, the first course arrives. Diners are welcome to pair the tasting menu with wine– alcoholic or non-alcoholic. Bill really liked the fact that there was a non-alcoholic wine pairing, which made it possible for him to fully enjoy the experience without worrying about drunk driving. Additionally, patrons are welcome to purchase a glass or a bottle of wine, and stick with that instead of having the pairings. And, of course, there’s always still or sparkling water. Pizarro has a whole beverage menu with all of the choices.

Yesterday afternoon, I was feeling kind of tired and didn’t feel like getting dressed up and putting on makeup. Nevertheless, I made myself go, because I’ve been cooped up alone at home for weeks. Besides, this blog needed some fresh content… and boy did we get “fresh” in spades last night!

*Probably the Rathaus. We will have to go back and explore.*

Five hours of food…

We arrived at Pizarro Fine Dining at 6:30 PM, parking our car at the handy public lot right across the street from the restaurant. We were greeted personally by Chef Julio Pizarro, and his friendly and capable waiter, who impressed us so much last night by speaking almost perfect English. It’s not that we’re surprised he spoke English so much as that our language is so pervasive in Europe now, and we don’t even have to ask people to do it. To be honest, it kind of puts us Americans to shame. There were only a couple of times when the English word for something escaped the waiter’s memory. Fortunately, ten years of living in Germany this time has made us both pretty proficient in restaurant German.

We had a seat at a table in the corner. My back was to what appeared to be a wine library. I took note of the music, which was a delightfully eclectic combination of jazz, world music, and 70s era pop. I found myself repeatedly “Shazaming”, when it was quiet enough in the restaurant. I’ll be adding more to my personal playlist, thanks to our visit to Pizzaro’s! Aside from the music, I also enjoyed the lighting, which became colorful after the round of snacks. With each new course, the lights changed, which added to the unusual ambiance.

Feast your eyes on the parade of very fresh food we ate last night… As you can see, it was very heavy on fish, which I enjoyed very much. In fact, I commented to Chef Pizzaro that it was a real pleasure to have such different cuisine in Germany.

This meal was– no lie– one of the best I’ve ever had in my life… and I have had a lot of good food. Every course practically exploded with different flavors and textures. There wasn’t a single course that offended me, and the only time I needed any kind of change was with the optional Wagyu course (25 euros per person). I don’t eat mushrooms or truffles, and that course had both. Bill enjoyed his the way Chef Pizzaro created it, while I just tasted the plain beef. Oh my GOD… that beef practically melted. It was so tender and flavorful!

While this was a long evening with lots of food and wine, I was neither stuffed nor drunk when we left there at about 11:30 PM. In fact, I remarked to Bill as we were eating that I was feeling markedly better, physically, than I was when we came into the place.

Remember when I mentioned that I was feeling kind of tired and not wanting to venture out anywhere? Well… I think there really were some healing qualities to the herbs in those dishes. Because after I had the first dish, following the three rounds of “snacks”, I literally started feeling better, physically. It was kind of cool. And I didn’t know the dishes had any healing herbs in them when I made that comment, as I didn’t read up on Pizzaro Fine Dining before we went on this culinary journey.

On our drive home, Bill and I kept talking about how amazed we were by the food and wine experience we’d just had… and how we’re definitely going to have to go back another time. But– word to the wise– this experience is not cheap. When all was said and done last night, we’d spent almost 500 euros, before the tip!

We’ve dined in some pricey establishments before, but this one was probably the most expensive of them all. But that included nine courses served at a leisurely pace, wine pairings, two bottles of water, the Wagyu supplement, a glass of 2001 Pauillac to go with the beef (16 euros), coffee and petit fours. The only option we didn’t add on is a cheese course (15 euros). We could have spent significantly less if we’d wanted to do that. But we were having such a good time, I just wanted Chef Pizarro to take our money.

Thanks to the relaxed pacing of last night’s dinner, we had the chance to chat with the chef, who personally brought out some of the food. After immediately pegging Bill as an American guy who works for the Army, Chef Pizarro told us he’d gone to college in Michigan. He landed in Groß-Gerau because his wife is German. What a gift it is for those of us lucky enough to live close to his restaurant! As we were leaving, we thanked him profusely once again, and promised we’d be back for another visit. And now, I’m spreading the word to others, in case anyone else wants to meet Chef Pizarro. Just be sure to make a reservation and bring your credit card or lots of euros!

I would not call Pizarro Fine Dining a child friendly restaurant, although there was a table with two well-behaved children in attendance last night. Dress is casual elegant, although I did see people in jeans. Chef Pizarro doesn’t do substitutions, except for pescatarian, which must be requested at least 24 hours in advance. Vegetarian options are also not available. If you have allergies or intolerances, you can let the chef know and he will make adjustments for that reason. My advice, though, is to just let Chef Pizarro take the wheel. He really is a wizard!

*We’ll have to visit Groß-Gerau again and check out this town…*

The featured photo is another shot of the Hamachi ceviche, which was my favorite of the courses… although that beef was certainly a contender!

Champagne Bucket trips, Regent Seven Seas Cruise Lines

July 2… time to go HOME.

On the morning of July 2, it was time to start the process of ending our big trip of 2023. Again, I can’t say that I was sad about it. I love going on vacations. I enjoy traveling– seeing new things, buying new stuff, meeting people, eating different foods, and drinking different beverages… especially the adult varieties. But it all has to end eventually.

I missed Noyzi. I craved having access to my washing machine. I worried about the pile up of mail. I even had fond memories of my bed, which really needs a new mattress. And, even though not that many people want to read my blog posts about our travels, I was really itching to write and upload all of the photos I took over the two weeks we were gone. I prefer to write on my desktop computer, which is at home. So, home was where we needed to go.

Bill checked out of the hotel, while I went to the handy self check-in kiosk in the hotel lobby. I printed our luggage tags and boarding passes, and we made our way to the luggage drop off point, which was actually a pretty stout walk within the airport from the hotel. It was especially rigorous, since we had heavy bags. I was thanking God that I booked business class on the plane, because it got us into the short security line, and we were able to get through and into the SAS Lounge (which also serves Lufthansa passengers) in no time.

The Copenhagen Airport has a pretty decent lounge, although I didn’t make full use of it. I just sat in a nice chair and drank sparkling water while we waited until it was time to make our way to our gate. Once we got there, we found it backed up with a lot of passengers and not enough seating. Typical! 😉

I was a little worried that maybe our plane would be like the one we flew out of Bergen on… two by two seating in a very narrow aircraft. But it was a nice spacious plane, with three seats per row. Since we were in business class, we had an empty middle seat, and we even got served “breakfast”… which was mostly stuff I don’t eat. But they did have warm croissants and orange juice, which was fine for me. I also appreciated the chocolate they gave us afterwards!

The flight was perfectly lovely, and we landed on time in Frankfurt. It took forever to get our bags, and I think we might have even been the only ones who checked baggage. We were the only ones we noticed from our flight waiting for bags, which took over a half hour to get to us. While we were waiting, we encountered more Americans. One was a woman who looked a little annoyed when I sat down in a chair near her luggage. She changed her tune when she started wondering aloud about transportation and Bill helpfully piped up with local insider info. She asked us where we were from, and we answered America… but now we live here in Germany, and boy has it changed us in profound ways.

I don’t know what the woman and her husband were here for. The way she was dressed and the amount of luggage she had suggested that maybe she was going to go on a Rhein cruise or something. But those usually start in Basel, Switzerland or Amsterdam, Netherlands. They do pass through the Rheingau, though, and I often watch them and think… maybe I’d book one of those if I didn’t live so close to so many of the stops!

We found the Volvo and drove home, quickly unpacked, and I started doing laundry. I turned on the robot mower to deal with the very high grass. I checked out our rain barrel, which was full of nasty critters I’ve been killing all week. And I’ve been writing on this blog for a solid eight days. I’ve still got some more to write about, but the actual blog series on our big Nordic trip is over now. I hope some of you enjoyed it.

For those who are curious… This trip ran us approximately $22,000. We don’t usually come close to spending that much on a vacation, and we spent more than we had to. This was not an economy trip, by any means. We were also gone for two weeks, traveling in style in a very expensive area of the world. So…

*Cruise was about $12,000 or so… Concierge E on Regent Seven Seas Splendor, which is a luxury class, all inclusive cruise ship.

*Business class plane tickets from Frankfurt to Oslo, Bergen to Stockholm, and Copenhagen to Frankfurt, probably about $2,000 or so.

*A compartment on the train to Bergen from Oslo, about $500

*Hotels for eight nights, about $2,000 or so. Those, we paid at the hotel, rather than ahead of time.

*Trip insurance for a year about $1,000 (covers all trips all year)

*Food, booze, shopping, transportation, tickets to activities etc. about $4,500

I also haven’t factored in how much Noyzi’s boarding was. We had to prepay that in cash before we left.

If we’d wanted to, we could have pared down costs considerably. This summer, we really just wanted to enjoy ourselves. We definitely aren’t alone. Europe is teeming with people this year, and prices are pretty high. I’m happy to report that most of these costs were paid off before our trip started. We just need to work on paying off the stuff I didn’t pre-pay or pre-book.

It was a special pleasure to visit Finland and Latvia, two places I had never been to before, and learn about other places I’d never heard of, like Visby and Bornholm. It really was a good time, albeit very different from our usual road trips south!

So, that about does it for this series. I have to close now, as workmen have just shown up to replace the windows in my house. Hope to see some comments at some point!

Champagne Bucket trips, trip planning

In case you needed a reminder… Scandinavia is EXPENSIVE.

The featured photo was taken on a day cruise we took in Oslo, Norway, back in 2009.

It’s not so often that I travel blog during the work week. We have the pandemic to thank for that, as it made taking normal trips a lot more difficult for the past couple of years. In 2023, things are pretty much back in full swing. I expect Europe will be, once again, teeming with people this summer. In fact, I expect there will be more people than ever.

A week ago, we did a champagne bucket draw, and Finland won. That meant planning a trip that included a stop in Finland. I marvel at the changes our plans have undergone within about ten days. We went from planning a Helsinki based trip that would include land based stops in the Baltic countries, to pulling the trigger on a luxury cruise, with a week in Norway beforehand.

When you see the words “luxury cruise” in my blog post, of course it goes without saying that this trip is going to be pricey. We are going to sail on Regent Seven Seas’ newest completed ship, Splendor, in June. An even newer ship, Grandeur, will be sailing this year, but I don’t think she’s had her maiden voyage yet. So, as of this writing, Splendor, which was built in 2020, is Regent’s newest. This will also be the newest ship we’ve ever sailed on, as we usually opt for either SeaDream or Hebridean Island Cruises, both of which offer luxury on much smaller and older vessels.

One of many Regent Splendor cruise ship tour videos on YouTube.

I chose this particular cruise on Regent mostly because of the itinerary, which includes a stop in Helsinki, as well as most of the Baltic locations we wanted to visit, along with a couple of other stops. It’s not our first Baltic cruise, though.

Our very first cruise was on Royal Caribbean’s Vision of the Seas, back in 2009, and that was also a Baltic cruise. It was only four nights, and included stops in Tallin, Estonia and Copenhagen, Denmark, with embarkation in Oslo, Norway, and debarkation in Stockholm, Sweden. On that trip, we spent a couple of nights in Oslo, which we both really enjoyed. The cruise was loaded with Norwegians, and we found that we really enjoyed their joie de vivre. 😉 Later, we encountered a friendly bunch of them on our second SeaDream cruise and vowed we’d visit Norway again. So that’s why we’re doing a week in Norway, too… and staying longer, so we can see more of Norway than just the city of Oslo. Below are a few photos from our cruise from Norway to Sweden in 2009… As you can see, I need to take more photos of beautiful Norway, at the very least! That was before I had an iPhone.

When I saw Regent’s June 23 Stockholm to Copenhagen cruise, I knew it was a no brainer to book it, because I was finding it very difficult to plan a land based trip including Finland and the Baltics… And yes, before anyone comes at me, I know there’s a large body of water we’d have to cross to get to the Baltics. I was planning a few days in Finland, then a ferry ride to Tallin, where I naively thought we could arrange train travel or maybe rent a car or something… At this writing, a train route is being constructed to make that vision come to fruition in the future. As of now, though, it’s just not convenient. 😉 I also realized Bill wouldn’t want to be driving so much, and I wouldn’t want to be flying so much.

The cruise solution was simply more practical, and it was available during the time we wanted to travel. And– we had the money to pay for it, thanks to a big tax refund. Even better was the fact that the sailing I found was on sale… which was a damned good thing. In fact, I should have waited another week, because the price went down again, and it was quite a significant drop! Some people would probably tell me to cancel and rebook, but I’ve already had lots of words with my bank. Oh well… you win some, you lose some.

Anyway… last night, we were trying to decide how long we wanted to stay in the places we’re visiting before the cruise, and how we wanted to travel to them. It didn’t take us long to decide to visit Bergen, which is a very beautiful city on Norway’s west coast that offers enchanting scenery, fresh seafood, and lots to do. However, from Oslo, it takes seven hours to drive there or take the train. We could also fly; that takes just an hour. But if we fly, we’ll miss the incredibly beautiful scenery on the way, and have to deal with everything that flying entails nowadays.

I thought maybe we’d drive and stop somewhere on the way, maybe do some exploration. Unfortunately, renting a car in Norway, especially for a one way trip with drop off in another city, is VERY expensive. Gas and food are also very expensive in Norway, plus there are tolls on the road we’d be using.

The route from Oslo to Bergen is also rather devoid of places to stay. There are a lot of apartments to rent, and a few hotels that are either in the middle of nowhere or have dodgy reviews. I wouldn’t mind renting an apartment, but I’d hate to do that for just an overnight. Most of the ones I found were pretty bare bones, too. I did manage to find several hotels that allowed me to book now and pay later, and can be canceled up to the day of arrival. Clarion Hotels for the win! They even have a hotel out in the middle of nowhere that I considered booking, but then I thought again.

Finally, I think we decided we’d just take the train… which means we now have to decide if we want to leave at 8:23AM or 12:05PM. The later trip is notably less expensive, but slower. I suspect we’ll go for the morning time, so we can get to Bergen in the afternoon. If we wanted to spend another night in Oslo, we could get a really (relatively) cheap train fare… but then we’d be paying for another night in Oslo, which is legitimately a nice city, but one we’ve already seen. It’s not a super pretty town, either, although I do remember enjoying the day cruise we took on the Oslo Fjord in 2009.

So, once I found a hotel that offers parking, in case we drive after all, I went to book plane tickets. A flight from Bergen to Stockholm takes one hour and twenty minutes. I found seats on SAS– Scandinavian Airlines (although when I hear SAS, it reminds me of a cursed statistics program I had to use in grad school). I tried to book with my PenFed card, but for some reason, PenFed refuses to send texts with codes to overseas phone numbers, nor will they send the confirmation codes to emails. So that means I can’t authorize charges through their stupid two factor authentication program.

I went to USAA, which did successfully send me a text. But, even though I entered all of my information, gave them a fingerprint, and tried to authorize the charge, they still declined it and blocked my card. At 10PM, I was calling USAA– for the second time in a week– to ask them to unblock my card and authorize payment, so we can get from Bergen to Stockholm. The lady I spoke to last night was very nice and professional, unlike the other person I talked to a few days ago, who was quite rude to me.

We finally got the plane tickets sorted, and now we just have to confirm where we’ll be sleeping for our night in Stockholm. I had wanted to stay longer in Stockholm, since we never really got to see the city when we were there in 2009, but that would have meant arranging for another night there. Our night in Stockholm is already included in our cruise fare, so adding another would mean going to another hotel or paying more to Regent. I think we’d prefer another night in Bergen, anyway.

All that’s left to do now is buy train tickets, or arrange for a car to get us from Oslo to Bergen. I’ve even mostly paid off the credit card companies. I paid off the deposit and Lufthansa tickets last week, which I booked through PenFed. Then, this morning, I accidentally paid USAA for the rest of the cruise fare. I had only meant to send them $1000 today, but ended up requesting to pay the whole bill. Luckily, there was enough money to pay for it. Thanks again to Bill’s decision to pay taxes all year and get a refund, we had the cash available. Edited to add: I just got us our train tickets… good thing, too, because the seats were already sold out, and I had to get us a compartment for six people instead. That was another $500. At least it’s changeable and refundable.

Living in Germany sure has been good for us…

But dammit… the fares went down 2,000 euros this week!!!!

Oh well. We’re sure to have a great time. I look forward to blogging about it, and experiencing new places on a different cruise line. I’ll be surprised if I’ll want to give up small ship cruising for Regent permanently, but we’ll see. I suspect that if I ever spot a hot deal like the one they’re offering right now for our cruise, I’ll want to jump on it. Especially if we have the money!

If you’re curious about what we’re in for on our journey from Oslo to Bergen, have a look at a couple of videos… I think it will be unforgettable.

Let’s hope for sunny weather!

Looks good!

And yes, I know we don’t have to spend this much money to have a good time… but I have definitely done my fair share of cheap traveling. It’s nice to have an upgraded experience, and I’m grateful we have the opportunity. We never thought the day would come.

The Traveling Overeducated Housewife

…the wanderings and ramblings of a boring housewife…

Tag Archives: expensive

Five hours of foodie decadence at Pizarro Fine Dining in Groß-Gerau…

July 2… time to go HOME.

In case you needed a reminder… Scandinavia is EXPENSIVE.