Belvoir Park

It's been rainy in Zurich. Every day it rains atleast a little bit. Atleast it's a lot cooler and by the time the clouds part in the late afternoon, it's really beautiful and the air is so crisp and fresh that you forget the grey morning altogether.

On our first day back, I spent the whole day blogging about Amsterdam and doing my usual workout and a quick bit of shopping. That evening we went back to this little fondue place, raclette staub. They have a very simple menu, 3 cheese fondues, 1 meat fondue, and raclette. We tried another of their cheese fondues, one with vacherin cheese only, no oil or wine. It was a little thicker, with a slightly nuttier flavor than the typical emmental, vacherin, oil and wine blend.

Yesterday, I explored the theatre district and found out about a skateboard competition this Saturday here in Zurich. I'm going to try to get Lexi and I some tickets. I bought a hiking back pack because I needed to be able to carry groceries and such on my bike and I needed something to take on the trip to England. I spent a little time in the bookstore, reading up on Swiss wine country, there is a section near Geneva, accessible by train, that seems to have the highest concentration of Swiss wineries. If we end up having a free weekend we might check it out. I also found out that we will be in Zurich for the infamous street parade in August. It's supposedly bigger than the love parage in Germany. It's something between carnivale and a rave.

We cancelled the second trip that we had planned with the French wine tour company as we can't trust that he'll get the details right after our driver never showed for us on our trip to Epernay. We might change it around to be a longer trip across more countries, perhaps France, England, Germany and Italy if possible over 10 days. There's a Swiss Holiday in early August so Lexi can stretch her time off a little farther.

I picked up some groceries at Migros. My new back pack can carry about five 1.5 liter bottles of diet soda, an important feature. After dropping them at home, I met Lexi outside of her work and we went to Belvoir Park for dinner.

Belvoir Park is a restaurant attached to a cooking and hospitality school. They had a great 5 course Prix Fixe. It started with a vegetable mouse, which was very tasty and went well with the fresh baked rolls. Then came the selection of 3 different sushi bites with a great creamed wasabi sauce. The champagne and butter cream and spinach soup came next, with a little fried ship full of marinated mushrooms. A small salmon and shrimp dish with seasoned rice followed. The new trend in serving up fancy rice is to create a tapered cylinder of rice on the plate. Then the main course chicken stuffed with mushroom with butter noodles and vegetables. The most outstanding thing about the food was the perfect texture of each of the components. The vegetables were peeled and through some combination of steaming and pan frying cooked to aldente perfection. The noodles were also the right balance of soft and rigid and the chicken fell apart with a fork. Finally the desert cart, where they scoop samples of 3 different deserts for you. Lexi had white and dark chocolate mousse with black berries and I had german cream cake and almond cream loaf with blue berries and black berries. Then came the tiny chocolates to finish the meal. It was great and the service was great. Cooking schools always give the best value for fancy dining. Everyone is still eager and trying to prove themselves to potential employers. The waiting kept the right distance throughout the whole meal, letting us enjoy ourselves without intrusion but never making us ask for something when it was needed.

After that description of that meal, it pleases me to report that I'm staying in shape. In fact, I've lost 3 pounds since the start of the vacation. It's all because I only eat 2 meals a day and always do my set of exercises and/or take a long walk or bike everyday.