Food woes

Just back from a 10 day trip to Portugal and Spain. Lovely trip, full of sun and sand and will blog about that later. But first a rant about the food. Its impossible being a vegetarian there. I don't think they understand the concept of not eating meat and fish. If it said no meat, and are there any veg dishes on the menu, they would rattle of all the fish dishes, and if i said no meat, no fish, then what would be left is salad!!
And the worst is tapas. In all the tapas restaurants i could have either potato (fried or in a salad) or fried peppers. And that's it. And that's lunch/dinner not a tea time snack. By the end of it I was longing for good old sambhar rice and vegetables, or even some veg pasta!
And to top it off, the girls are so fussy and either want chicken nuggets or fish fingers, so half the time I was in McDonalds eating a vegetable burger which consisted of two buns, cheese and lettuce. The last two days I put my foot down and we went to a nice Indian restaurant and I completely pigged out, so none of the benefits of losing weight on this trip!
I think its good the girls are not as fussy as me. They have survived on sausages, fish fingers and chicken nuggets most of the trip. Otherwise it would have only been fries or bread so at least this way they get some proteins and some variety.
The food was quite bland also, the only exception being the Goan Portugese restaurant we stumbled upon in Lisbon, so couple of days the hubby and I got innovative with the small rice cooker we carry to make dal rice for the girls (yes i'm terrible, i cook on holidays for the girls!!) and made spicy veg paella, and chole rice!
Ok, enough ranting, the next post will have something other than food!

Birthday parties

So S and A's birthday party finally happened. It was highly jinxed this year and fingers crossed it finally went off all ok. Firstly it was scheduled for one month after their actual birthdays thanks to the hubby's hectic travel schedule, school holidays and other birthday parties. And the week before it happened, S broke her leg. I cancelled the party, and frankly it was the least of my concerns since S leg seemed to be taking a very long time to heal and I was worried that the doctors were not treating her correctly.
Anyway to cut a long story short, S seemed much better, and when i asked her if she still wanted to celebrate her birthday two months after the date she seemed enthusiastic. It didn't matter that she had already got her presents from her close friends by then. So i went ahead and booked her original party place - spielzaenti - an indoor play area for kids. And S and A were both thrilled. I didn't realise how much S had wanted to have her birthday party until some of the other moms told me she had been discussing her party with her friends in school, and one day she came and told me what items the menu should include since her friends asked for that. A was also very excited and insisted that I call her two special friends and when she ended up with a splinter in her thumb two days before the party was most upset that she may not be able to cut the cake.
The party went off well and the girls had a blast. It was on Friday afternoon after school and I had also asked the moms to bring their elder/younger siblings. Most of the younger siblings are A's friends so that worked out well. The moms were then also able to relax and hang around and not worry about arranging playdates for their other kids. The hubby got back from work early and helped decorate the cakes (I had ordered a Cinderella cake for S -she had insisted when i went to order, which turned out to be hopeless), pick up S from school and look after S and A in spielzaenti while i got the snacks organised. Luckily it was a sunny day so the indoor play area was not too crowded so we spread out over three tables. S finally got a flower cake and A got an animals cake. The frazzled moms got prosecco!
The hubby had a tough time with the kids at the car racing section- they kept asking him for coins, until he finally threw his hands up and asked them to harass someone else. Didn't help that some of the kids were driving the wrong way on the track and banging into other kids. Now the hubby knows what I have to deal with on a daily basis.
But the girls enjoyed and when we finally left at 7 pm it was tough to drag them away. Of course they insisted on unwrapping all the presents that day, so at the end of the day I felt, personally, like I had finished some big presentation/deal in office!

Trip to Vienna

Just back from a 4 day road trip to Vienna. Long and exhausting but Austria is so beautiful, loved it. We left on Wednesday evening, drove to Innsbruck, reaching around 9:30 pm. Next morning walked around old town, very beautiful, set against a huge mountain range and having the river Tyrol run through it. Set off for Vienna around 12 pm. We reached Vienna only at 6 in the evening, but it was a sunny long day so set out to explore the Prater amusement park near the hotel.
Prater park had lots of activities for kids to do, and after watching the girls bounce on the trampoline and go on the bouncy slide some 100 times we went to the biergarten in the park for a nice Viennese dinner of Wurstli for the hubby and apfelstrudel for me. Yummy.
The next morning (Friday) we went to Schon brunn palace. Its really huge set in a sprawling green campus. We knew the girls wouldn't be upto touring the inside of the palace, so we went instead to the Tiergarten which is part of the palace grounds. Its a long walk through the gardens, so we got to see the beautiful trees, plants and sculptures on the way. We loved the zoo, I know its odd to go visit a zoo in Vienna when we have one literally next door in Zurich, but the girls love animals and I had also read about the giant panda bear which this zoo had and was quite keen to see it. The zoo was very nice, it was housed in  much smaller area than the Zurich zoo so we got to see a lot more. We saw a giant panda eating shoots and leaves (rather stuffing it in with its hands, amazing), giraffes running around, a hippo swimming lazily in the water, elephants playing, having a mud bath, and reaching out towards the visitors grabbing grass growing there. Amazing. Also got very close (through a glass wall of course) to a black jaguar, cheetah, and a lion which roared at us. In fact even the elephanth snorted loudly at us which was quite disconcerting. The aquarium section was also very nice with some horse shoe crabs we had not seen before and up close to the pink flamingos. I can go on and on, but the Vienna zoo is well worth a visit.
After the zoo we thought we should do some stuff for the adults also :) We saw the Rathaus (parliament), the Stephensdome - amazing inside and outside, and walked through the main old town till it got dark.
Next day we again went to Prater park for more fun stuff for the girls, S surprised me by enjoying herself on the spinning roller coaster with me. To be honest, I felt quite sick at the end of it. A also enjoyed the ship. We then went to the Hofburg palace, it was in the same area we had visited the previous day so we just walked around a bit, had a lovely lunch at the Cafe Hofburg (dessert was again apfel strudel) and set out for Hallstatt around 4 pm. I must say I loved the food in Vienna, there was quite a lot of stuff for vegetarians there. I had vegetarian strudel one of the days, and spinach strudel in a herb cream sauce the other day and both were amazing! The desserts are awesome of course.
We reached Hallstatt late Saturday evening. Its a beautiful small Austrian town set in the middle of the mountains along a lake. We were a bit unlucky with the weather, which cleared up only around the time we left (at 11 am the next morning). But the view was amazing, and we picked up some really cute wooden handicrafts.
So now that summer is here, back to holiday season again! Weather has been awful this year, hopefully the summer stays long.