Hum to Opatijia

Our host from the night in Hum was kind enough to drive us to the top of Ucka national park.

From there, we descended through forests, with occasional glimpses of the ocean, down to the lovely coastal resort of Opatijia.

We switched our diet from truffles to sea food and ate some lovely squid salad, tuna sashimi with orange, grilled octopus and seafood pasta.

We even found room in our by-now-pretty-full bellies for dessert!

This dinner made us pretty happy!

Richmond Food

Excellent food at Supper in Richmond VA: Charcuterie, fried oysters and griddle cakes with pulled pork. Yum-o!

Flying Time Intermezzo: Philadelphia

Apologies for lightposting (again)! I hope I can make it up by starting this blog post with wonderful Chinese food.



Last weekend was time for our biweekly get together, this time in Philadelphia. Our only goal for this weekend was to have good food. We succeeded with flying colors. On Saturday evening we went to Barbuzzo (no pics), where inspired Mediterranean food was prepared with balls and love. We had wonderful trout, meatballs, acorn squash and bread pudding.

Then for breakfast the next morning, we went to Chinatown, specifically Heung Fa Chun Sweet House. We asked what was good, and got a soft tofu and a noodle dish. The soft tofu dish (first pic) was out of this world!



Then it was time for some mind food, so we visited the Rodin museum.

One more food pic: we then went to Bud & Marilyn, which is advertised as retro-American. This fried chicken was another big hit.



Another biweekly get together that worked out terrifically!

Camping

The Crab Lady

It is hard to find things to do these days, because it is freaking hot outside. Today, there is even a heat advisory in effect, telling us not to exert ourselves too much.

We decided to ignore the advisory and engaged in some pretty strenuous activity outdoors for lunch today: we sat outside to eat our fresh crabs. We were slightly intimidated by the whole experience, but it was certainly delicious!

Spring, Snake and Snacks

I apologize for posting more flower pictures, but our garden is close to being in full bloom and it is stunning.

We also found a snake caught in some netting meant to protect a small tree.



Listen to the end of the clip and you will hear it imitating a rattle snake by vibrating its tail in the dry leaves.

And just to remind everyone that this is a food blog, here are some fancy crab rangoons I made yesterday.

Roughing It

Because A really has a total lack of compassion, we took a 3 hour bus journey (poor sick F) to Bacalar. Since we did not have any hotel reserved, we took a cab with a fellow traveler from the bus stop to the camp site/youth hostel that she had booked. Apparently, we still had not learned that we are not in our twenties...

Anyway, we got a tent with clean sheets and a slightly leaky air mattress. It felt like heaven since there were no fleas, and the owner was wonderfully professional.

Across the road, there was a very nice Cocina Economica, where the daily lunch special cost 2 bucks. They even gave us extra aqua fresca, which was especially good for F because he really needed to rehydrate!

Bacalar turned out to be a wonderful little town on a beautiful lagoon, with a nice town square, as well as nice Christmas decorations.

We spent the next day swimming at a sinkhole, and getting a couple of bug bites that made A's feet swell to humongous proportions.





Still, we had a lot of fun swimming and looking at the tree roots and fishes in the beautiful clear water.






On our way back to town, we stopped at a beautiful restaurant on the lagoon for some drinks and snacks.





In addition to a beautiful setting (we're hoping to add one of these pyramid things to our backyard -- it looks like a great way to hang your mosquito net!), the restaurant really made the experience complete with this amazingly off-key rendition of "Under the Boardwalk".






As much fun as pretending you're not forty-ish had been, we realized it was time to act our age. (Or, more precisely, we realized that traveling by bus took so long that we would not be able to go anywhere interesting in the remaining 7 days if we kept roughing it).



So, the next morning we took a bus all the way back again to Cancun's airport, where we picked up a rental car. Lesson learnt for next time: don't forget to pick up rental car at the start of trip!