For the love of coffee

During my last trip to Europe I started doing this weird thing where I would attempt to track down the oldest coffee house in each city I visited. I'm not sure how this all came about, but it probably has something to do with the sociology essay on coffee that I once had to write. Combined with my love of coffee and old architecture.

So far I've been successful with my mission mostly in Italy. In a couple of other countries I struggled either due to a lack of information or simply because I didn't have enough time. Where I haven't been able to go to the oldest cafe, I've tried to go to one of the oldest.

In Vienna, I went to Cafe Landtmann with my cousin Elisabeth. It opened in 1873 and while that may seem pretty old, it wasn't the oldest in Vienna. That title belongs to Cafe Frauenhuber which I think is about 100 years older than Landtmann.

In Budapest, the title belongs to Ruszwurm which I did manage to get to. Ruszwurm dates back to 1827 and is situated up near the Fisherman's Bastion. The cakes and pastries are so delicious that even Empress Elisabeth used to order them from here.

In Venice there is Caffe Florian, which was established in 1720. It is right on St Mark's Square, so while the prices are ridiculously expensive, the view of the square and the artwork inside are worth the price tag.

I am most definitely a coffee person, but for some reason I ordered a hot chocolate that day. It was rich, and it was like a thick soup. So decadent.

In Florence, I had a quick stop at Caffe Gilli which was founded in 1733. From memory it wasn't as fancy as  Caffe Florian or Caffe Greco (which you will see shortly), but the building still had beautiful architecture.

Caffe Greco in Rome is slightly younger, established in 1760. It is just a few metres away from the Spanish Steps. After an afternoon of shopping, I could have spent hours in here just taking in all of the art work on the walls.

And so now we come to my current trip. I tried and I tried, but I couldn't find anything remotely like a historical coffee house in either Moscow or St Petersburg :( 

I did, however, have more luck in the Nordic countries!

Cafe Ekberg was a few minutes away from our hotel in Helsinki, so an ideal place for us to have breakfast. During the week, they offer a breakfast buffet for only €10 which includes not only the staple items like coffee, rolls, cold meat, cheese, cereal, and fruit, but also a range of their delicious pastries that you can normally buy in store! It was founded in 1852 originally as a bakery and has been at this particular address for over 80 years.

Cafe Maiasmokk was our cafe of choice in Tallinn, having been in the same location in 1864. It officially takes the crown of oldest cafe in operation in Tallinn. 

After an early morning ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn, we needed sugar and caffeine. I decided on the tiramisu   which I do not regret at all.

I was this close to choosing their pavlova, but I thought hey, I'm on the other side of the world I must as well get something that I normally wouldn't make.

Statues of Moscow

This  post is dedicated to all of the statues and fountains I came across in Moscow. They seemed to be everywhere, but not all of them have made it into the blog so far. And that's where this post comes in - they are all pretty damn awesome and deserve to be seen.

This the monument to Cyril and Methodius, who are said to be the founding fathers of Cyrillic. Although scary at first, Cyrillic isn't actually all that bad. Some of the letters are similar to the Latin alphabet (but some have different sounds), some are similar to the Greek alphabet, and others I have never come across before. Being an English speaker and having learned some Greek at uni, it hasn't been too hard trying to figure out what signs say especially if you put a little effort into learning the letters in that third miscellaneous category. It sure has helped when catching the metro, because once you are inside there isn't much English at all.

I came across several fountains in Alexander Garden just outside the Kremlin.

This one is of four horses and is apparently known as the "Four Seasons of the Year" fountain. You can't tell in this photo, but three of the horses are looking in one direction but the fourth looks a little bit freaked out and has its head cocked towards the Kremlin.

Also near Alexander Garden is a series of fountains known as the "Heroes of Fairy Tales". They are set along a small canal type structure between Alexander Garden and the underground shopping mall below Manezhnaya Square.

The underground shopping mall is literally just that - a three storey shopping mall that is underground. It looks like any other shopping centre, but the elevator is a little trippy. Instead of regular numbers, it uses -1, -2, and -3. This fountain sits in the atrium (on the -3rd floor) by a cafe.

Outside St Basil's Cathedral is the monument to Minin and Pozarhsky. Apparently they win at life and deserve a monument because they got together a volunteer army and kicked some bad guys out of Russia.

Lenin's Mausoleum was closed for several months because they were trying to repair the foundations. There were rumours around that they were actually planning to finally bury Lenin. Luckily for us, it reopened about a week or two before we arrived.

It is open from 10am until 1pm, but is closed on Mondays and Fridays. Our common strategy on this trip seems to be the earlier the better, so we arrived just after 9am, got some McDonald's for breakfast and then joined the queue just after 9.30am (there were already about 20 people in line). We figured this would be our best bet because when we had walked past the queue the other day, there must have been at least 60-80 people in it.

The guards in charge of this queue drip feed people to the security area, where you have to go through a scanner and the security guards check your bags. And by check, I mean check in great detail. They go through all of your compartments and apparently even open up glasses cases in search of cameras (and other stuff too, presumably). Charlotte had to check her bag in at the State Historical Museum because the security guard found her BlackBerry, but not the camera she had hidden under some stuff. My camera is somewhat chunkier and was more difficult too hide, but it somehow remained concealed under my map and a packet of tissues. I must have had a more lenient guard though because he definitely must have seen my phone when he opened up the compartment it was in, but still let me through.

The mausoleum itself is VERY dimly lit - both Charlotte and I almost tripped going down the first set of stairs after entering the mausoleum from broad daylight. Seeing the embalmed body of Lenin was extremely eery and a little bit creepy, but I am glad I did it.

In the same secured area as Lenin's Mausoleum is a strip of the Kremlin Wall where important people are buried (or their ashes, anyway). There was a small group of Japanese tourists in front of me and one of the men (probably in his 60s) tried to read all of the Cyrillic names on the plaques. When he exclaimed "Staaaliiiinn... Look! Look! It's Stalin" to the rest of his group, I understood exactly how he felt.

Apart from recognising the Cyrillic for Stalin, what's even more awesome is that Yuri Gagarin is buried in the wall too!

With no disrespect for the dead, Lenin's embalmed body is pretty much a statue so here is a picture of the mausoleum (given that no cameras were allowed).

While in Moscow, we went to Cafe Mu-Mu (My-My in Cyrillic) more than once. It's a chain of restaurants, where you choose what you want from a canteen set-up and pay. The salads and carbs are charged at a per serve price, but some of the meat dishes are charged by weight. On our first outing I had a delicious pork chop covered in gravy and then the second time I pretty much hit my food jackpot by pointing at random: steak, topped with caramelised onions, then baked (I think) with some sort of delicious cream cheese mixture.

Each store has this awesome cow out the front (my definition of 'statue' is very broad today):

So awesome that they had to chain the cow to the menu board at this store:

On our last full day before heading off to St Petersburg, we paid a visit to the Krymsky Val branch of the State Tretyakov Gallery. It contains an amazing and huge collection of Russian art - by the end we had seen so much art that we probably didn't appreciate the last couple dozen of paintings as much as we would have, had we seen them at the beginning. I fell in love with the works of Mikhail Nesterov, who currently has an entire exhibition hall dedicated to him.

There is one particular painting called 'Russia, the Soul of the People' which is spectacular in real life as it takes up an entire wall. It is also fascinating because they have a number of small study canvases on display as well.

About 100m away from the Tretyakov Gallery is something known as the Fallen Monument Park (I found it on TripAdvisor as the Graveyard of Fallen Monuments). I have read that some monuments were dumped here before the collapse of the Soviet Union but it didn't become an official park until afterwards. Unfortunately the park was closed - the grass was overgrown, so I'm not sure how much longer the statues will be there - but because it is so large, we could still see quite a bit around the perimeter.

The area surrounding the Tretyakov Gallery is quite arty and there is a special area dedicated to artists, where they can paint and put their paintings on display. I found some people painting in the shadow of this statue:

On our way to the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, I came across this enormous statue of what looked like a pirate ship. It is absolutely gigantic, but for some reason it wasn't on the map I had. I had a bit of a google and apparently it is a monument to Peter the Great. Some people hate it, but I think it is awesome and wouldn't mind having something like that in Wellington!

Finally, the metro system of Moscow is beyond beautiful. Platforms are decorated with mosaics, chandeliers, and plenty of marble carvings. Legend has it that the brown circle line is there because Stalin put his coffee cup on the plans, which left behind a coffee stain. The person in charge was too scared to clarify what Stalin wanted, so the circle line was built.

This is the Biblioteka Imeni Lenina station, which is next to the Russian State Library, near the Kremlin. There is a statue in this photo, therefore my rambling about the metro, and all subsequent photos are totally justified (I am too lazy to write an entire post on the Moscow metro, even though I probably could).

Wontons and Bruce Lee

Nothing can really prepare you for stifling humidity and 30 degree heat when you’ve just come from Wellington where the high has been less than half of that. Nevertheless, we had a day in Hong Kong and we were going to make good use of it!

Being on the11.59pm flight out of Auckland and having my amazing travel pillow on hand, I managed to get what vaguely resembled a decent night’s sleep.

We caught the airport train to Hong Kong Island and the free shuttle from the station took us to our hotel. The Ibis couldn’t check us in yet but they happily took our bags.

So out we went. Armed with a tourist map. Written only in Chinese. Apparently the hotel didn’t have any more English ones. Luckily the streets signs were all in English.

We somehow made our way to the Peak Tram without getting horribly lost and we didn’t even take any wrong turns! I bet the Hunk won’t believe me, but it’s totally true. Just ask Charlotte.

The tram that goes up to the Peak Tower is a bit of a touristy gimmick, but at 125 years old it’s really quite awesome. At times the incline became so steep that I felt like the back of my seat was the only thing stopping me from falling backwards.

The view from the top was amazing, but boy were we starving! We decided on a place called Mak’s Noodles which turned out to be delightful even though it was one of the only food places open on the Peak before midday. My craving for wonton soup was finally able to be satisfied.

Their bowls are a little bit on the small side, but the portions are surprisingly filling. I slurped down my noodles with glee. The soup was delicious and the wontons were just right the size.

No longer hangry, we spent our afternoon being tourists and finding touristy things to do.

We rode the mid-levels escalator, which starts near the bottom of town and works its way up past SOHO. Brilliant if you have tired feet but still want to explore.

We found a temple called Man Mo just around the corner from our hotel:

We saw some interesting dry food stuffs being sold:

And some interesting macaron flavours. Now I am a big fan of cheese, it's my favourite food group but I'm not so sure about this:

In the evening we took the Star Ferry to Kowloon. The ferry comes every 10-15 minutes and only costs about HKD2.50, which is less than $0.50! We wandered along the promenade and even found Bruce Lee!

I would have liked to have spent more time shopping and exploring, but we were both too knackered for that by the time nightfall had come. We have a day in Hong Kong on the way back though, so there's still time to shop.

Besides, if Charlotte's run in with the flight attendant on the way to Moscow is anything to go by, we will be needing all of the rest and brain cells we can get.

Flight attendant: Tea or coffee?
Charlotte: Tea, please
Flight attendant: Black or green?
Charlotte: White
Flight attendant: Huh??
Charlotte: *blank stare*
Flight attendant: We have black and green
Charlotte: With cream please?
Flight attendant: *blank stare*
Charlotte: *blank stare*
Me: I think she would like black tea with milk, please.