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Spring lunch at Villa Im Tal, and more travel plans!

Bill decided he wanted to go out to lunch again this weekend. Villa Im Tal, one of our favorite restaurants in Wiesbaden, was closed last weekend, so we went to Landhaus Diedert. This weekend, however, Villa Im Tal was open. Bill noticed that their menu appeared to be leaning more toward Italian cuisine. We are planning a big trip to Italy at the end of this month, so we made reservations for 1:00pm. Villa Im Tal is easily booked on OpenTable.de.

Some readers might recall that on April 2, Hesse dropped most of its COVID rules. However, I remembered that last weekend, when we dined at Landhaus Diedert, everyone was wearing masks in the restaurant. Although I threw out all of the masks in my purse, I made sure to carry a new one for today, just in case. On the way down the country road where the restaurant is, we passed a lady on a beautiful piebald pony who looked like he was about to start shedding his winter coat. He was still fluffy, like a teddy bear. SIGH.

We showed up right on time and donned masks, since the hostess/server was wearing one. She checked our vaccination statuses, which I understand that a lot of places are no longer doing, since it’s no longer required by law. Once we proved that we are up-to-date on our shots, she led us to our table. We noticed people were a lot more casual about masking this week. Some people wore them, but most people didn’t. The dining room is very spacious and there was plenty of room.

We usually sit in the front dining room when we visit Villa Im Tal. The one exception was in 2020, when we ate outside on a beautiful spring day. Today, it looked like the front dining room wasn’t set up. We were seated in the back, which was kind of interesting. It has a different ambiance, and offers a nice view of the lovely meadow that made me long for the days when I still had a horse and could go trail riding. Or, barring that, I would just like to hang out in a meadow with horses and smell their intoxicating aroma. Maybe someday…

In any case, Villa Im Tal is in the thick of “Spargel season”. It’s time for fresh asparagus, and they offered plenty on their menu. They also had their own version of the wonderful wild garlic soup so prevalent in Germany in the spring. Bill decided to have an asparagus heavy lunch, while I went with surf and turf. And we both had the garlic soup for our starters. Dessert consisted of a strawberry rhubarb tart with white chocolate ice cream for Bill, and an almond “cannelloni” filled with chocolate mousse and a small scoop of blood orange ice cream for me. The ice creams were house made.

Total damage for today’s lunch was about 215 euros, but it was well worth the cost. Service was, as usual, excellent. We were enjoying the space with a number of happy locals and a couple of very well behaved dogs. One dog was so good that we didn’t even notice her until the end of the meal, when her people led her out. Maybe someday, Noyzi will be good enough to go to a restaurant.

Below are some photos from today’s lunch. It’s always a pleasure to visit Villa Im Tal. It was funny, though, because the young woman who waited on us wished us a “pleasant journey”. I kind of laughed and said, “You mean, back to Wiesbaden?” She was surprised to find out that we live here. I guess they don’t get a lot of Americans in that part of town.

The bread was delicious!
The couple in the corner brought a very well behaved dog. We didn’t notice her until they left.
Wild garlic soup! It was served with smoked quail breast. This version was milder than last week’s.
This week’s wine… from the Piedmont region of Italy.
Bill had Spargel with ham and Hollandaise sauce, as well as new potatoes.
I had “surf and turf”– Sirloin with a tempura fried shrimp, ratatouille, and potatoes with bacon.
It’s nice to be out.
Almond cannelloni with chocolate mousse and blood orange ice cream.
Bill’s rhubarb and strawberry tart with white chocolate ice cream.
Another view of my tasty and satisfying dessert.
I was so jealous of this lady. She also brought her dog.
Bill sure does enjoy being retired Army. 😉
Outside…
Spring has sprung.
Villa Im Tal is a beautiful restaurant.
Wiesbaden is so pretty.
Train station in Wiesbaden.

This week, we also made some decisions about our upcoming vacation. I hadn’t been really wanting to take this deal, offered by a member of my wine group on Facebook. He’s a sommelier in Florence who offers tours and sells wine. We’ve bought a number of his monthly boxes, which don’t come cheap, but are of excellent quality. He hit Bill up for a trip to Florence. I had originally said no, but then in the wake of the loosening COVID rules, decided what the hell. So, on April 23, we will be off on our next trip.

So far, our itinerary is this: One night in Andermatt, Switzerland, on the way down to Italy. Three nights in Torrechiara (near Parma) for three nights. Three nights in Florence, with one night incorporating the wine tour we’re taking. We will get there early because Bill wants to go to the Uffizi, a very famous art museum. He had wanted to go during our last visit, back in May 2013, but we weren’t able to arrange it. This time, we will make a point of making a visit happen. The third night, we will be having dinner and a wine tasting, and the weekend will consist of the rest of the tour, which will include visits to wineries and castles, and lots of wine tasting and probably a fair amount of wine buying. We will spend a night in Cortona, then come back to Florence, where we’ll spend another night before heading northward to Vaduz, Liechtenstein, where we will spend two nights before coming home again.

I had originally planned for us to go to Lugano, but I realized that it was too close to where we were coming from, and the timing might be tricky. Also, I have a feeling that we’ll be kind of ready for some quiet and decompression. Lugano will probably be a little too happening for us at the end of the trip, when I know I’ll be anticipating coming home. Vaduz is very beautiful. We went there for a few hours in 2009, with Bill’s mom, and we ended up literally getting trapped in Italy later. In any case, Vaduz is closer to home than Lugano is, and it’s not so close to Florence that we have to kill time before check in.

We WILL get to Lugano at some point. I do still want to visit there. I just want to do it at the beginning of the trip instead of the end. Maybe we’ll spend my birthday there in June.

We still need to nail down the hotel situation in Florence, but that will be sorted out soon. I hope to come home with lots of cheesy comestibles, wines, hams, olive oils, and pasta. I always look forward to Italy, so I think this will be a great trip. This will be my third time in Florence. The first time was in September 1997… and in fact, I was there when I heard that Princess Diana had died. I actually saw her picture on an Italian newspaper with the headline that she’d died. I thought I was looking at a tabloid. I am probably one of the few people in the world who heard about her death on September 2, 1997, rather than the day it happened. Ahhh… the days when we weren’t plugged in all the time. I remember listening to her funeral on French radio while riding a train through the South of France, en route to Spain.

Anyway, I think it will be a great foodie trip, and I look forward to writing it up. Stay tuned.

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adventure

A month on a train in Europe… South of France

The most beautiful part of my month in Europe was probably the trip we took through the South of France.  The Italian Riviera is gorgeous with the Alps looming over the sea and palm trees everywhere.    The beauty continues into France.  Chris, Dawn, and I decided we wanted to hit Nice.  Chris and Dawn also wanted to go to Monaco and that provided a nice side trip from France’s lovely and nice city.

We got off the train and found a fleabag hotel.  It was very close to the train station and had shutters that closed.  We went into the dusty lobby and a very laid back lady showed us a large, dingy room with three beds.  We booked it because it had a bathroom and was dirt cheap.  It also had a TV.

I think by the time we got to Nice, I was really becoming a third wheel.  I remember wandering around Nice a lot by myself, heading down to the beach and checking out all the flamboyant people.  I also discovered a GREAT restaurant there.  They had a deal in which you could get a three course meal for 39 French francs.  I think at that time, the conversion rate was about three or four francs to a dollar, though I could be wrong.  Anyway, the restaurant had really good food and it was very inexpensive.  I remember later reading in a guide book about the place.  It was written up in a Let’s Go book for being exactly as awesome as it was for people who are traveling on a shoestring budget.

I also remember walking around a market and purchasing a double cassette of The Police: Live! and a t-shirt for my niece, who was about four years old back then.  To this day, I can’t listen to that album, since replaced on CD, without being reminded of traveling through France.

Courtesy Wikipedia: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nice-night-view-with-blurred-cars_1200x900.jpg)

We spent a night or two in Nice, then decided to get on the train and head for Spain.  It turned out that was September 5th, the day of Princess Diana’s funeral.  I tuned in to the radio and listened to her funeral, dubbed into French.  I could hear Charles Spencer’s eulogy under the French dubbing, as we sped west through the mesmerizing southern French countryside.  I wish we’d stopped somewhere along the way for a quick rest.  I’ve been trying to get back to southern France ever since that trip 15 years ago and haven’t quite made it yet.  Fortunately, my husband is now a confirmed Francophile. (ETA: we went back in 2014)

If you ever have the opportunity to take the train from the Italian Riviera through, the French Riviera, to Barcelona, Spain, I highly recommend doing it.  Be sure to stop along the way, though, and soak up some rays at the beach, drink wine, and eat some wonderful French food…

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adventure, Austria, Europe, friends, Slovakia, trains

A month on a train in Europe… Slovakia and Vienna, Austria

I distinctly recall the Bratislava train station circa 1997.  Although Bratislava, Slovakia is very close to Vienna, Austria, at that time, they were worlds apart in terms of efficiency.  I exchanged some cash and ended up with what I later learned was an ungodly amount of cash.  Like Armenia circa 1997, the Slovak Republic was still a very cheap place to visit.

I bought a train ticket to Zilina, where my Irish friend Chris had an internship that was ending.  His girlfriend, now wife, Dawn, had come from America to see him and start a semester studying in Spain. We were going to meet up in Zilina and travel through Europe together for a couple of weeks.

The trip to Zilina took awhile.  I remember sitting on the train, watching the countryside pass.  I distinctly remember passing Trencin, a charming looking city on the Van River, not too far from the Czech Republic.  Trencin Castle is visible from the train and I remember wanting to get off and explore the city.

When we landed in Zilina, I found the bus my friend told me to take to the university where he was staying.  I was struck by how similar everything was to the other formerly communist countries I had seen, lots of cookie cutter buildings and old, serviceable buses that belched smoke and fumes and still carried the masses along the dirty streets.  I spoke to the front desk person a the university and he told me where Chris’s room was.  I waited there for a little while, until Chris and Dawn showed up.

Zilina turned out to be a cute town.  Chris and his friends, who came from all over Europe, went out that night to a bar.  I don’t remember much about the outing, except that it was a nice looking place… until I went to the bathroom. Someone had puked all over the toilet seat and left it there.

I slept in Chris’s bed with his cheerful French Asian roommate, Jeremy, while Chris and Dawn borrowed a friend’s room so they could have some private time.  The next day, I met more of Chris’s friends, including a guy from Switzerland, whose name escapes me, a Spanish guy named Xavier, and some blonde chick from Finland whom everyone seemed to think was annoying.  I didn’t have an opinion of her.  I think I was just glad that for once, someone else besides me was thought of as irritating.

Everybody played basketball in a very parochial looking gym.  I didn’t play.  I took some pictures instead.

After two nights in Zilina, it was time for us to move on.  Chris, Dawn, and I, along with some of Chris’s friends, boarded a train to Vienna.  There, we got rooms at a university dormitory that Dawn had found in a Let’s Go Europe guide book.  I remember the dorm room looking a lot like they do in the United States.  And I remember the subway stop– Taubstummengasse– because the Vienna U-Bahn system had this horrible male voice that made that word sound just awful!

We walked around Vienna, which is a very grand city… and wandered around the palace gardens, and eventually visited a museum.  I remember seeing a lot of cool exhibits, but my eyes were bothering me, as if I had scratched them with my contact lenses.  Actually, I probably did, since in those days I wore the same pair of contacts for a year or more at a time!  The sun irritated my eyes and I was having trouble keeping them open.  I ended up going back to the university and renting a dorm room for a couple of hours so I could take a nap.

Vienna (courtesy of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vienna_Panorama_at_Night.jpg)

Vienna was pricey, though, despite the cheap digs.  By that night, we were on a train headed to Venice, Italy.  Little did I know, that would be Princess Diana’s last night alive.

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