Category: travel

Rose Luxury Dinner

That was the place we had the only dinner on this trip (Friday at Silver Lyan felt very much like dinner for me, but apparently not for Vlad :), and on Sunday, Boris and I had dinner at the American Airlines lounge). Vlad was going to keep our dinner destination a secret, but accidentally sent me an email which was meant to be for Dylon :).

The full pdf of the menu is here, and here is a picture I took in the restaurant:

As you can see, that’s another level of culinary art (I can assure you that everything tasted most unusual, like you never could imagine!). Since there were four of us, Vlad ordered the whole menu, and each dish was delivered with a story that was, unfortunately, not on the menu! Vlad also ordered a wine pairing for him and me to share. Not all pictures turned out well, but most of these dishes are below:

Only a spoon of ice cream with caviar in the middle is edible, the rest is decoration:)
Surprisingly, I didn’t like desserts that much, this one it the only one I liked

The ethical question I have is whether it is acceptable to have a dinner for four for the price, which is equivalent to some people’s monthly income. Yes, that’s because Vlad gives more than 30% tips, and yes, that’s in DC where people’s income is higher than in Chicago, and yes, this was more of an art than food, but still…

National Art Gallery

To say the weather in DC was bad is not enough. It was the worst you could imagine! There was pouring rain all Saturday, so we had to change our plans and head to the museums. Unfortunately, we were not alone: everybody who came to DC for a weekend, did the same, so there were crowds everywhere.

Boris and I headed to the National Gallery of Arts. The first thing we saw there was an exhibit of German Expressionism.

“Sorrow” by Egon Schiele
“In God’s Hands”
Gramatte “Self-pportrait with wife”. It took me a while to see “a couple”

We stopped by Cauguin an Van Gogh, because you can’t pass them, and then we saw the Flemish collection.

“An Old WOman Dozing over a Book” seems very familiar 🙂

Unfortunately, the side effect of all museums in DC being free is the requirement to get passes in advance, and since we didn’t plan for it, we couldn’t get into many of them. Once again, something for the next time!

Two Breakfast Places In DC

I know, I know… but when it’s about Vlad, it’s inevitably about good food :). And I still have one more food-related post in the making :).

I loved both breakfast places we’ve been, both the food and the aesthetics.

Silver Lyan

On Friday night, shortly after arrival, we went downstairs to Silver Lyan bar to see Vlad at work. Last time when we were in DC, he were in Silver Lyan for Hanami, and I wanted to see how it is during it’s “regular operations.” Most importantly, it was a chance to see Vlad doing “his thing,” which always tells about him more than anything else. So we went there, and it was pretty amazing. Now, that Vlad is not in Chicago, I do not have chances to try his cocktails that often and I almost forgot what an extraordinary experience it is! Each cocktail has it’s story (and Vlad told me that they write the stories first and then they figure out how to “make it happen.” He promest to give me the pdfs of all of these stories (I didn’t take the menu pictutures), so at this moment, images only.

Nimbus Spritz
(Bacardí Carta Blanca, carrot mead, mushroom caramel, spruce, White Lyan water, clay “champagne”)
Air Bee n Bee (Patrón blanco, almond blossom, hay-smoked bee larvae, mango vinegar, Mosel riesling)
Salmon Cannon (alcohol-free version)
Porter’s Tropical Old Tom, birchwood booch, douglas fir, ‘pink’ tea
Lychee Martini
(Roku gin, lychee sherbet, elderflower shochu,
black grape)
Silver Service Martini
(Fords gin, served 50:50 with Dolin vermouth
with oyster, olive, house-pickled onion and lemon)

Actually, I just realised that I didn’t take a picture of the cocktail I liked most – the one which Vlad made when he was in Tokio – Lychee Martini with elderflower shochu. And to be clear – Vlad made a mini-version of each of the cocktails for me, so that I could taste several (and I still didn’t finish even mini-versions).

All the different foods we tried during these two days of stay ended were great, and unfortunately, the rest of our agenda was severely affected by the weather. it was pouring rain on Saturday, and bitterly cold and windy on Sunday, so things went not exactly as planned, although I we still did a lot and talked a lot 🙂

DC: Riggs Hotel

We are in DC, visiting Vlad and Dylon and staying at the Riggs hotel: second time for me, first time for Boris, and also, that’s his first visit to DC in general. Unfortunately, it’s the worst possible weather, so our today’s plans were already altered, but it’s still great to be there!

Not only we got special “friends and family” rate, but we were also upgraded to Jiniour Suite
Special upgrade:)
The gym is gigantic, and nobody is there on Saturday morning!

Human Zoos

On our trip to Antwerp and Ghent, we had a photo stop at Atomium, and our tour guide told us about the Human Zoo which was open during the 1958 World Fair. I had not idea that they still existed in the 20th century, yet along that recently, so I rushed to read more about it. I am sure that everyone less ignorant than me saw that picture, but I saw it for the first time, and frankly, whatever else you read about Human Zoos wouldn’t make the same impression as that one photo. Shocking is not enough of a word.

It’s easy to Google more details about human zoos; I do not want to put any more links here. I can’t imagine people tossing bananas and other food in the direction of humans which are literally “on display.” Just can’t imagine.

Flying Back And How Did This Week Go

Flying back from Brussels was equally interesting. Since I had three separate reservations, I still had to fly back through Helsinki, but I also could not have a short connection in London because the next flight wouldn’t wait for me, and I didn’t want to lose one more day in transit. We took the last Sunday flight from Brussels, which arrived in Helsinki at 10:30 PM, which meant going to bed at midnight and getting up at 4 AM to get to the first flight to London.

It turned out that the border control in the Helsinki airport didn’t open till 6 AM, so I had to wait for about 20 min, which I could spend sleeping :). Also, British Airways didn’t issue me a boarding pass online, which meant I had to get it in Terminal 5 at Heathrow, just before the security checkpoint, and then I had to wait for my flight to Chicago for six hours.

Fortunately, the lounges in Heathrow are great, so that was not a problem. That was the first time I took a shower in the airport., and I found out that they had absolutely everything; there was no need to unpack. I will know for the next time!

That’s a picture from the Brussels Finnair lounge – they had a real mushroom soup!

Now, a short review of what was going on during the last four days. My flight landed ahead of time, but then we couldn’t get to the gate for 40 minutes, and the line for passport control was very long, so I ended up coming home at 9-30 PM, and I had to get my mail from my neighbor, unpack, and on Tuesday at 7-30 AM I was already in the office. On Tuesday evening, I was at the Opera (I will write about this performance separately), and my neighbor and I had dinner before the opera to celebrate her birthday. So once again, at home at 10-45 PM.

On Wednesday, I attended a meetup after work (good, productive, great networking, but once again … late night). On Thursday, I finally went to see my mom after work, attended an online yoga class, and made a couple of phone calls. And on Friday – a Valentine’s Day musical, “Twisted Love,” at Above the Law Theater.

Don’t take me wrong, it’s all great; just trying to catch up with life! Oh, and also, I am about to leave to another opera!

Ghent

Ghent was our second stop on this bus tour. Many people told me I should visit Ghent when I am in Belgium next time, and that’s what we did. Now I know that a couple of hours is not enough, and I hope that sometime in my next life, I will be able to come to Belgium at a minimum for a week and spend more time in each of the cities visiting all the castles and museums.

Ghent is amazing and impossibly charming, even in the weather like it was!

Our tour guide said that this building was the home for the first Belgium trade union. I didn’t get a chance to verify this information yet 🙂
This bell tower ou the Market square rang the start and end of the market
Enen t this time of te year and at this weather, the city is full of tourists
We didn’t have time to visit the museum un the city castle; next time!
Antwerp made money on spices, and Ghent – on grain. The grain was
Somehow, this view of Ghent looks a lot like a 17th century painting of Ghent 🙂
I just realized that I never got a good shot of St.Bavo, a little bit of it shows on the right.
Th Belgians say that the Big Ben was copied from this tower 🙂
A new pavilion which was erected to protect the outdoor concerts from the element. We were told that the reaction of the public was very similar to the Chicagoans reaction at Pritzker Pavilion 🙂

Antwerp

It was our second time in Belgium, and so far, Belgium was good to us. When we were there for the first time in 2015, it was summer, and the weather was beautiful. We had a great tour guide, Mik, with whom we went for a three-hour walking tour of Brussels and then went for a one-day trip to Brugge. I remember how Mik was walking very fast, and some of the people in the group complained, but Boris and I were happy that it was the right speed for us. That was before my back problems started, and then for many years, I was thinking about this trip as “how I want things to be” – I wanted to be able to explore a city on foot again and to be able to walk as long as I want. In this respect, I “closed the circle” – we walked a lot, and nothing hurt.

This time, we took a one-day bus trip to Antwerp and Ghent, and It exceeded expectations. First, when I asked Boris whether he wanted to go on a day trip, he said he didn’t mind but expected that we would be on the bus for most of the day with some stops and a little bit of walking, but it ended up being a lot of walking! I was a little bit suspicious when they put both English-speaking and Spanish-speaking groups on one bus, so during the ride, the tour guides switched, and in each of the cities, we went on separate walking tours. It felt like too much of “optimization,” but fortunately, I was wrong.

Our tour guide, Marko, started by commenting on people taking pictures before even knowing what is in front of them, and he reminded us that the most important thing is our experience, not the Instagram posts. There is nothing especially new and groundbreaking in this statement, but somehow this changed my reception mode, and I took way less pictures than I usually do. He told us a lot of interesting facts (some of them didn’t seem true for me, and I searched for more information; some were completely new, and I also searched for more information, overall, a lot of bookmarks are sitting there waiting for more research to be done). Although he was entertaining, he was not one of these joke-telling-tereotypes-promoting tour guides, he knew in-depth what he was talking about.

Antwerp

Antwerp Castle
The Town Hall
The Grote Markt Square
Each pf the buildings was a home of one of the professional guilds, and the figures on top represent the saint partons of these guilds or other guild symbols.
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Musical Instruments Museum

Boris and I visited this museum when we were in Brussels for the first time. It was our favorite then, and this time, Boris voted to spend as much time in this museum as we could. The best part of this museum is that you can listen to the recordings of almost all of the instruments that are on display. It’s overwhelming :). At some point, you simply can’t take in more, but you also can’t stop.

The thing that impressed me most is how many different kinds of music and musical instruments exist in the world and how little we know outside of our European experience.

Since there is no way to reproduce all the sounds we heard, tons of pictures.

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