I ate ants

My birthday was pretty ordinary this year - spent most of it looking at the inside of an aircraft - but I got a do over. At the second best restaurant in the world. It was number 1 til about 2 weeks ago when it got knocked down a peg thanks to that little food poisoning issue...

Anyway - this is about my meal at Noma. 

Just to set the scene - this is a 4 hour meal. No menu. You are served whatever the chefs have foraged locally. The only item that they disclosed as "purchased" were the coffee beans at the end of the meal. Oh, and it was 20 courses. Yup, 20.

We started with an aperitif - a Nordic coconut to be exact. Once you drank the (warm) cocktail you got to eat the straw.

Next up we had malt flatbread and juniper. Only we couldn't see the food - until the waiter pointed out it was in the floral arrangement on the table...

Next up - deep fried moss. This stuff was so crispy and light...

Anyone for some elm leaves dragged through roasted yeast? Tastes like Vegemite...

Next up was a cheese cookie. This thing was about the size of a 50cent piece in reality

Perhaps you would like some berries in pickled rose petals? Bit bitter for me, but the others all loved it.

What about some dried carrot in ash with sorrel?

This is where I became a chicken - LIVE RAW shrimp. The other three were all braver than little old me...well, Tim was kinda brave...

The pickled and smoked quail egg was more my speed

Next up was some sorrel and nasturtium. This is what green tastes like...

To finish the entrees - leek with cod roe (this was awesome).

Every meal needs bread right? So how about fresh, hot sourdough, home made butter and some pork fat?

Now for the mains, would you like some fresh milk curd with wild blueberries?

How about some dried scallops and beech nuts with bio dynamic grains and watercress?

How about onions with fermented pears and ANTS!!!!!!!

Not into ants? Maybe dried beets and plums are more your style?

How about potatoes and bleak fish roe (caviar)

Or maybe some pike perch and cabbages with verbena and dill? What's a trip to a fine dining restaurant without foam?

Next up was a slow roasted beef rib with blueberry glaze and freeze dried ligon berries.

Time for dessert - dansk ice cream!

Dessert number two included mashed potato - it was good - I promise!

Time to retire to the bar for coffee and bar snacks (because we are not full enough already...). Would you like some chocolate covered pork fat? (This was AWESOME!).

Maybe beetroot candy?

All in all an awesome meal and well worth the price. You feel a little like they are challenging you, but there is nothing wrong with that.

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Hello Australia, this is Europe calling...

Yup, it is very, nearly, almost that time of year again. Holiday time. And to stop the green eyed monsters who block me on FB because they are trapped at their desks - this page is making a comeback! Once again you can follow my misguided antics, and this time around you get an added comedic bonus. Me - trapped on a cruise ship! (I do these things for your amusement...).

In about three weeks time I'll be checking out the new Qantas/Emirates alliance and jetting off to Europe to escape the evil Canberra winter (Game of Thrones were wrong - winter isn't coming, she is already here). The stops along the way this time include:

• Copenhagen/Malmo - once again I'll be enjoying the best (and worst) of europop at the Eurovision Song Contest. Throw in lunch at the world's number 1 restaurant and some pretty awesome travel buddies and it should be a great birthday week.
• The best the Baltic has to offer - I'll be checking the sites of Stockholm, Tallin, Helsinki and St Petersburg to name but a few of the stops on my cruise. 
• Amsterdam - my planning has only made it as far as canal boats...need to work on that!
• London - because one must see Viva Forever: the Spice Girls Musical at least once on the West End
• Gascony, France - where I get to spend a week cooking, eating and drinking with the fabulous Miss Cleo

 Let the countdown begin!

The last stop on the world tour

Following Japan, there was one last stop to be had on the world tour - New Zealand. To me, it has always been a country that brings to mind sheep, a nice sav blanc and sarcastic colleagues. I wasn't disappointed in any of these areas. The best part? I kept thinking things were really expensive, then had a moment when realized that oh, hang on, that's NZD - bargain! (love getting paid in a real currency).

There were sheep. Lots of them too. I just checked with the New Zealand Ministry of Population and Sustainable Development and apparently there are 10 sheep to each human in New Zealand (used to be 20:1, not quite sure what happened to reduce e ratio so dramatically over the past ten years, but it leaves me unsettled...). Am a little disappointed I never made it to Sheep World (it is a real place in Auckland), will need to save that for next time.

I of course needed some kind of sheep related souvenir, and who could pass up this little guy...

There were also some cows that looked like they had bred with the sheep. We nicknamed them shows.

As I mentioned above, there was also wine, and a lovely weekend in wine country to sample some of the local delights.

Don't be fooled by the sunshine in these pics, for the most part the weather as as you would expect for this time of year in NZ - rubbish. I am not sure if I am relieved or disappointed though that for the week that I was there I didn't once get to sample those trademark Wellington winds.

I do like going up towers and checking out the view, and the Skytower in Auckland did not disappoint.

Thee are crazzzzzy people though who pay money to jump off the thing (which is the tallest structure in the southern hemisphere).

It also had a glass floor in parts...which freaked me out a little.

One thing about Auckland that I did like was the messages on the departures board at the aircraft. If your flight was not yet ready, maybe you should should follow their instructions...

I have one more post for the blog that I am going to work on in the coming week - so don't think you are off the hook on having to read my ramblings just yet...

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Japan - why are there so many stairs for me to climb???

I do not think I have ever climbed so many stairs in my life as what I have in the last week. I had thought that climb of over 1400 stairs I did that time in Romania to get to Vlad the Impalers castle was bad, but Japan was worse. I am a little shocked that after a week of consistently doing that I don't automatically have the legs of a pro athlete - surely there has to be a benefit in all that pain???

So, in Japan we spent time in 4 main areas - Yokohama, Tokyo, Kyoto and Hiroshima. Turns out those years of Japanese lessons at school were not all in vain, and by the end of the week I could start to read the hiragana again (couldn't translate it, but at least I could look at the symbols and get a vague idea what it said to find things on a map).

Took a lot of pictures and did a lot of things, so will just stick to the highlights I think. First up was a trip to Tokyo. Finn was smart and decided to stay in bed, but I bought into Sid's craziness and got up at 4am to visit the Tokyo Fish Market. Place was packed with every kind of seafood imaginable (and a few that we're just...odd). They had the dried

And the fresh...

There was also some mad knife skills on display. Check out these teeny tiny fish fillets with my fingers for scale (keeping in mind my fingers are teeny - p.s. how awesome are the nails?)

For morning tea we went to one of the sushi places just outside the fish market, where we had all sorts of yummy things...

The tuna sashimi (not shown) just dissolved in your mouth. There was a kind of sushi on the menu though that we were unwilling to try...(we checked and that is horse horse, not sea horse).

My first trip to a public wash room in Japan followed and it was quite confusing. There are enough buttons in the loo to launch a space shuttle. I don't want to play Muzak, I want to flush!!!!

Now, I know taking a picture in a public toilet is creepy, and well, almost a little George Michael, but it wasn't the creepiest thing that happened all day. See Finn had this guidebook, and it mentioned a huge Manga store, where apparently sometimes people hang out in cosplay. We decided to go check it out. The store was massive, and we wandered through the manga that was what we expected manga to be (i.e. child friendly) and then it was like we crossed a line in the store. Suddenly the covers of the manga were getting a little Mills and Boon and before we knew it, we'd hit the manga porn section! Whilst we recovered from our surprise that it was so close to kiddies, we realized the were adult blow up dolls as well in the shapes of manga characters... Not at all what any of us expected.

We recovered with a beer and a discussion on what to do next. The guidebook provided two ideas, we could go to the Tobacco and Salt Museum, or we could go scope out the "love hotels". Sadly, the love hotels won (I was the only vote for the salt museum). The love hotels are rooms you can rent by the hour (perhaps with your newly purchased blow up doll from down the street). This was one of the classier ones we could find. Japanese like to put things in vending machines, and apparently at the love hotels that is where one can find their sex toys (though we wandered past a number of shops that would put fyshwick to shame in the neighborhood as well).

The evening was topped off with some yummy dinner...

A stroll through the lights...

And the discovery of a musical act in a CD store that really needs to be at Eurovision...

The following day we headed out again to Kamakura. There were lots of shrines and temples here. Including this giant one, which you could go inside of...

Finn told us of a walking trail in his guidebook that would get us to the next one. It was more like a hike through jungle...

4km later we made it to civilization again. At all of the shrines, much like at a lot of the Christian sites in Europe, you could write down a wish and hang it at the shrine.

We couldn't read most of them (being in Japanese and all) but there was this one...All that, AND a pony!

Next day we drove out to Mt Fuji, which was sadly covered in clouds. They did on a nearby hill had these sulfuric ponds that they cooked eggs in. The sulfur turned the eggs black. Legend has it if you eat one you will extend your life by 8 years. I didn't eat one. Firstly I hate hard boiled eggs and secondly, I am not sure the world could cope with 8 extra years of me...

We also went and checked out this bizarre outdoor art gallery (mostly sculpture). Is it just me or is this perhaps NOT the most appropriate sculpture to put outside a children's playground area?

Next there was Kyoto. The Kyoto style of bento box was actually one of the best I had the whole trip...

There were castles...

And interesting signs...

And this great temple

It had these gates going on for kilometers. We only only did about a third of the path, but they were very cool to walk through...

That evening was dinner in a 3 star Michelin restaurant in Kyoto. Could not believe my luck, dessert was a snow cone!

The following day was back on the bullet train to Hiroshima.

It is strange being in a town where everything has been built in the last 50 or so years and where the word war has been replaced with the word incident.

We visited the peace park. It was actually the day after the anniversary, so all the wreaths were still in place from the service the day before.

This is the view through the memorial, over the eternal flame and down to the building that was the epicenter of the A-bomb blast.

Because the bomb was detonated directly over this building, it was the only thing left standing (though burnt to cinders) for a 2km radius. It still stands today.

The memorial to the victims was unbelievably sad. You sat in a circular room, and the 360 view around you was the devastation that the survivors would have seen as the view from the makeshift hospital. The actual memorial in the middle of the room was a clock, with the time set at 08:15, the time the bomb was dropped.

One thing I did love in the peace museum though was the had some of the actual paper cranes that the girl that first did it to recover from her leukemia made in hospital. They were so small. She made the required 1000, but her wish sadly did not come true. The were so many all over the park, made by school children from all over the world.

We decided we were in need of a beer after that day. How is this for the food menu at the bar we were in...(we were not brave enough to try that last item).

There were some awesome looking karaoke bars...

Rather than karaoke we hit the arcade for a Mario kart tournament. You know those claw games at the arcade, where you put your money in, position the claw and see if you can pick up a prize? I always thought they were a scam. Not in Japan though. In Japan, I am Queen of the Claw! First go and I got a prize (which was if course met with mass disbeliefe and hysterical laughter). Even won the boys a lovely buxom anime mermaid. No idea why they were not impressed...

The following morning there was another castle. This one of course a replica as the original from the 1500's was destroyed by the A-bomb.

It was then back on the bullet train to return to Tokyo and pack, ready for me to depart the next day for New Zealand. Am currently making the most if the 6 hours (!?!?!?) I have between flights in Hong Kong to write this.

Before I go, let me leave you with a public service announcement - please, always watch your children...

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