Instagram Travel Thursday -tag

11/4/201511/9/2015

Most Beautiful Sunrise and other Best-of-the-Best of South Florida

A week ago I already felt like I had landed in the middle of paradise – and then the bell boy led me to my room where the balcony opened to an amazing view of the Atlantic, straight to East. Sunsets are beautiful, but sunrises are even more so, and what could be better than viewing them straight from your bed?

Sunrise at Hollywood Beachilta — My kind of view to start the day! Thanks to Margaritaville Resort for the amazing view – and at this resort, every room comes with a view.

Sunrise in Florida — Do you think it was worth it to wake up at seven? Especially when I could go back to sleep at 7.30…

Colorado weather was good enough when it was time to head to Florida, but still the warm wet air of Southern Florida caught me off guard when I exited Miami airport in search of a taxi to my final destination, Fort Lauderdale. I spent nine days in South Florida, and this is what I loved:

Hollywood Beach Boardwalk. Bands playing almost every night at the band stand, and the feeling of warm sand between my toes right off the airplane.
Fort Lauderdale Beach and an ocean that was still warm in November. The lights around here are turned down in the night to not confuse sea turtles nesting on the beach.
John U Lloyd State Park with a beach completely untouched by development. If you think Florida’s beaches are too touristy, this is for you.

Hollywood Beach right next to Margaritaville

John U Lloyd State Park Beach — John U Lloyd State Park – this view could be from a hundred years ago, when barefoot postmen walked days on end to deliver mail to different beach communities.

The 175 steps leading up to Hillsboro Inlet Lighthouse. The museum is small and you won’t be able to get a close-up with the lense, but check out the views!
Those couple magic minutes, when I figured out how to flyboard. Totally worth the ten or so minutes spent splashing into the water at awkward angles.

Four alligators spotted while airboating around night-time Everglades. Wroooom!
One alligator that we spotted with Iiro while driving along an “alternative” toll-free route to Big Cypress Swamp. The route was a dirt road in bad shape, and our rental car was a Toyota Prius, but hey, we made it – with a wild alligator sighting to boot!
A mile of boardwalks around a swamp next to the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Seminole Indian Museum. Don’t step off the boardwalk, a sign told us, and looking at the impenetrable wetlands, this seemed like one of those “don’t microwave your cat”-signs of pure obviousness. Hard to believe people actually lived in these swamps!
One big bad swamp buggy, whose sole passengers Iiro and I were. The ride might be a little more bumpy than usual, the driver said and charged straight into the swamp. Fun!

Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki boardwalk — No way we could have hiked around a swamp without the boardwalk.

Everglades transportation — Swamp buggy at left, swamp airboat on the right. Thanks to Billie Swamp Safari and Sawgrass Recreation Park for the rides!

150 miles to Key West, which we didn’t drive but FLEW! The small Piper airplane took us low enough for me to grasp the sheer size of the Everglades.
The 100,000 or so party people who had come to Key West’s Fantasy Fest with us. “Crazier than New Orleans on Mardi Gras” said one local and I don’t find it hard to believe…

Everglades from air — Everglades right off the coast

Dozens of new tavel bloggers I met at TBEX travel blogger conference.
Two “old” travel blogging pals from Finland, who I finally got to know face-to-face. Moikka, Sanna and Ulla!
The top-rated award-winning queen size air mattress that our friend in Fort Lauderdale had gotten to host us for the last couple days of our stay. And this is completely without irony here.

Some of the photos and events featured in this post are from a press trip organized by Greater Fort Lauderdale CVB.

This post is part of Instagram Travel Thursday, a celebration of travel photos on Instagram and the stories behind them. You can find me on Instagram as @globecalledhome. The rest of the participants are below.

8/6/20158/4/2015

Advice from a Mountain

Summer has advanced to August, but I feel like it has just started. Wasn’t it just a little more than a month ago when I trampled through snow in the mountains? And if last year is anything to judge by, the highest mountain tops are still open to climbers without winter equipment well into September.

So far, we’ve climbed two fourteeners in the Rocky Mountains: first Mount Bierstadt (14,065 ft / 4287m) in June, pushing through snow up to our thighs, and then a couple weeks ago to Mount Elbert (14,440 ft / 4401m) in beautiful sunshine and clear skies. We’ve also climbed our fair share of smaller mounts and trails and bushwhacked our way forward. I finally spotted some wild turkeys in Rocky Mountain National Park, and marmots whisking their tails away have cemented their place as our totem animals. I’ve sled down a mountain on my behind in a state of mild panic to escape a thunderstorm, and I might have developed a mild case of astraphobia, which is only a good thing, because I don’t want to end up a statistic. (On average, 11 Coloradans die each year of lightning strikes.) I’ve filled up my hard drive with photos several times over and munched on too many Clif Bars to count. Every couple of weeks, I’ve made the pilgrimage to REI to get some new topo maps, which should come to an end any moment now, because soon I have them all.

I’ve been meaning to write trips reports from several of the hikes and climbs, but meanwhile you may enjoy some Colorado mountain views that my Instagram followers have seen already throughout the summer. The advice is from a poem by Ilan Shamir.

Reach for new heights

Savor life’s peak experiences

There is beauty as far as the eye can see

Be uplifting

Rise above it all

Build on solid foundation

Patience, patience, patience

Life has its ups and downs

Let your troubles vanish into thin air

7/2/20157/2/2015

Why French Cuisine is the Best – and other stories on culinary travel

I don’t really have one favorite food, but several: good burgers, oysters, snails, crayfish, raw fish, tartar steaks, and anything with cheese, eggplant or avocado, and the list goes on. What I crave for most varies daily. Today, it would be sautéed reindeer with lingonberry jam.

Crêpes in France, a burger in Las Vegas, cheese breakfast buffet in Paris, and spätzle in Luxembourg

On vacation, I like to eat in restaurants with table service. I cook so much at home that it doesn’t really feel like a vacation if I’m cooking, although I do make an exception if we’re at a nice cabin with friends, enjoying the evening. For lunch, I’m fine with fast food or street food, but dinner in a local restaurant is an integral part of the travel experience for me. I’m not a fan of buffets either.

I don’t ever remember being disappointed in the local cuisine. Sometimes it’s been pretty simple, and a week-long sailing trip in Turkey will make me swear off kebap, but my deepest disappointments have been on the way to the destination. Yes, I’m talking about the sometimes inedible food on airplanes. And why on earth is Delta’s intercontinental veggie choice always the same tomato pasta?

The best part about business class flights is the starter.

I love starters, and if I’m in a buffet, I usually just stick to them. I usually consider ordering a starter in a restaurant even if I’m not that hungry, just for the tastes. Fortunately in the US, the starters are usually made for sharing, and even sharing the main dish is accepted, unlike in Europe, where in some places splitting the plate will cost you extra.

Oysters don't really taste like anything, and still I get a craving for them. — Oysters don’t really taste like anything, and still I get a craving for them.

My favorite pizza is The Works by Backcountry Pizza in Boulder: sausage, ground beef, mushrooms, feta, banana peppers and olives. Usually in an American pizzeria I go for the pepperoni pizza, which reminds me of Fridays in an American school in the 90s: always pizza for lunch. In Europe, I usually go for the pizzas with pineapple, ham and gorgonzola.

Pepperoni pizza and ice tea on a Los Angeles beach

I’ve taken cooking courses a couple times while traveling – in Hungary and Vietnam – and it’s always been a fun experience. What I like about the courses is when they teach you different techniques, because the ingredient lists I can always look up in a cook book. In Hungary, I was taught the exact moment when squash főzelék is ready – not overcooked, not undercooked – and in Vietnam, I learned the proper technique for rolling summer rolls and how to cut a decorative rose out of a tomato.

When Luxembourg had Open Doors for its companies, I of course headed to a cheese factory.

A couple years ago I would have sworn by Indian cuisine, but my stay in Central Europe changed me: French cuisine is the best in the world. The reason lies in its diversity: not just one kitchen but 22, one for each region, all with their own specialties, like galettes in Normandy (salty buckwheat crepes), “garnished” sauercraut in Alsace (where the garnishings are ten different sorts of meat), or snails in Burgundy, one of my favorite starters.

French cuisine at its best: snails, macarons, fondue and duck.

As for the drinks, I really like American craft beers: there are thousands to choose from, they’re made with passion and devotion, and they’re very decently priced on this side of the Atlantic. I especially like IPAs and Pale Ales. The only one that’s usually missing here is gueuze, the Belgian sour lambic, my favorite beer type – but not anymore, since our local brewery Upslope made a batch of it.

Mulled wine with spices from Colorado, Italian-style apero, beer selection in Belgium, and beer in Madrid that comes with a plate of paella

At home, we eat fairly internationally, thanks to my love of cook books. I love trying out new recipes, and cook books make great souvenirs. My favorite book is the one Iiro brought to me from Malesia many years ago, The Asian Kitchen, from which I cooked an Indonesian dinner a while ago. Most often in use at the moment is Recettes de brasserie that I brought from Paris, to aid in learning both French cooking and French food vocabulary.

Two foods we love making at home: sushi and BBQ

I never bring food along with me for trips, except maybe for the first leg of the journey. For long train trips from Luxembourg, I usually picked up a baguette or a croissant from the station. In Colorado, we load the car full of water and soda, and if heading to the mountains, we take trail snacks in case we get stuck somewhere.

If I could buy anything I wanted... — If I could buy anything I wanted from the grocery store… but alas, my local grocer doesn’t stock Carelian pies or licorice.

I like to bring home food souvenirs: dijon mustard in different flavors from Burgundy, Napoleon-beer from Waterloo, made by a local brewery that existed already during Napoleon’s times, and apparently his troops drank the same beer, and from Ireland, whiskey-flavored caramels. However, the best souvenirs are from when I visit Finland: salmiak and licorice candies, local Fazer chocolate, dip powder mixes (especially the one we call “American” that you certainly can’t get from America) and rye bread.

If home sickness hits me abroad, I can always go to IKEA.

By the way, all the photos on this post are from Instagram. Before I started using it, I thought it was the social media where hipsters posted photos of the food they ate. Of course it’s so much more… but the food’s still there!