Wednesday, June 28, 2017

This Week's MENU. MENU's Scandinavian Road Trip on a Shoestring. Part 1: North Holland and Germany

Poppies and Dutch windmills, ancient and modern, North Holland



The road to Scandinavia is littered with good intentions. We have been on it for 2½ weeks and this, other than a series of Facebook, Linked in and Twitter posts and photographs published on Instagram, is the first issue of MENU since before we left home. As we write this, we are in Denmark having driven from Holland through Germany, Denmark and Sweden to Norway and we are now en route to Schipol and home at the end of the week. We’ll have more in the next issue

We decided, while we are still fit and able, to travel more. For the last two years it was Lynne’s turn to show John places she loved which he had not visited: Greece and Turkey and then Hong Kong. John worked in Oslo in Norway in the late 1960’s while he trained to be a photographer, so this year we decided to go north – no wine farms, probably no restaurants as we heard it was very, very expensive (it is!) but a great trip to plan. We don’t like organised tours and the thought of a bus trip is a complete anathema. So the plan was to fly to Schipol in Holland, hire a car, and drive to Scandinavia, through Holland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway – and back
We left Holland at 9 am and drove across the huge Ijsselmeerdijk to Friesland and then crossed the border into Germany. Our first stop would be Hamburg. The German autobahns are legendary – well they were; it seems that all over the north they are rebuilding them and widening them. What we imagined would be a lovely day’s drive was hell. Two lanes squeezed onto the oncoming side, so tight that we really feared for the car’s sides


MENU's Wine of the Week; Du Toitskloof Chenin Blanc 2017     in a box. Not entirely Tongue-in-Cheek. 
 When we travel, we mitigate the high prices of wine in other countries by packing a 3 litre box of quaffable wine in each suitcase. Gentle acidity; apple and tropical fruit flavours. Perfect for a sundowner: here on the stoep of a Swedish wooden cabin in Varberg
23rd May 2017
© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2017
PS If a word or name is in bold type and underlined, click on it for more information
Phones: +27 21 439 3169 / 083 229 1172 / 083 656 4169
Postal address: 60 Arthurs Rd, Sea Point 8005
If you like the photographs you see in our publications, please look at our Adamastor Photo website for our rate card and samples from our portfolio
Recommendations of products and outside events are not solicited or charged for, and are made at the authors’ pleasure. All photographs, recipes and text used in these newsletters and our blogs are © John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus. Our restaurant reviews are usually unsolicited. We prefer to pay for our meals and not be paid in any way by anyone. Whether we are invited or go independently, we don’t feel bad if we say we didn’t like it. Honesty is indeed our best policy. While every effort is made to avoid mistakes, we are human and they do creep in occasionally, for which we apologise. This electronic journal has been sent to you because you have personally subscribed to it or because someone you know has asked us to send it to you or forwarded it to you themselves. Addresses given to us will not be divulged to any person or organisation. We collect them only for our own promotional purposes. If you wish to be added to our mailing list, please click here to send us a message and if you wish to be removed from our mailing list, please click here to send us a message.

No comments: