During my recent trip to Vienna for my day job, Gasthaus Poeschl, which I had never heard of before, was one of three restaurants recommended by the local work colleagues (the other two ones I had known before: Café Korb and Café Englander; click on the links for the blog posts). Great Atmosphere More or less opposite the street from another favourite of ours, Zum Weissen Rauchfangkehrer, Poeschl immediately took me in with the cosy vibes of a place where locals congregate to have a meal and exchange some rumours. There was a fair bit of noise in the room. Some guests had brought their kids, others were involved in loud discussions about the sense or nonsense of the latest Covid restrictions. I admired the waiters for their agility and grace, manoeuvring three or four plates at a time through the tiny space between the bar and the tables. […]
A Self-Guided Visit to the Paris Catacombs – A Sight with Six Million Skeletons
During our recent visit to Paris Ms B & I did what we had been planning to do for a long time: visit the famous Paris Catacombs. They are located close to the metro station Denfert-Rochereau, not too far from the city centre. Skip the queue, kind of We had purchased our skip-the-queue self-guided audio tour tickets in advance. The Paris Museums Tickets webpage to which the official Paris Catacombs website links to, charges €29 per person. With a bit of luck you might find one of the daily changing discounts somewhere else if you google around a bit. €29 is no small amount of money, but you will be grateful to have spent it, when you see the massive queues which meander around the entrance building for two hundred metres and more. While I’m writing this post, I can see on the Catacombs’ website that the queues are currently […]
Riding Horses and Jetskis – A weekend trip to the New Forest & Poole
Ms B & I love the New Forest and usually try to visit at least once every two years. This post is about our stay last summer. Sometimes it takes us forever to finish a post. But rest assured, the New Forest hasn’t changed a bit since we first visited 8 years ago. We do double-check each venue and activity provider to make sure they’re still rated the same and up and running. In this case, for example, we are happy to report that The Terrace has hired a new, Michelin-starred head chef, since our visit (links below). Our apologies that the photos are not aligned with the headlines of this post. This is because we wanted to spread the photos evenly and chronologically, while there are simply way too many animal photos to squeeze in. The weather forecast for the weekend wasn’t great, which is funny, because during most […]
Our 2018
I guess it’s time for the Barbarians’ year end review. 2018 has treated us well. We had more wondrous and wonderful collaborations in New York, Malta, Frankfurt, London, Cambridge, Kent, and our prime weekend destination: the Cotswolds. We met up with some lovely fellow bloggers in person and made friends on social networks. Winter Wonderland Our 2018 started with a few fun days in Vienna. It was our fourth time together in Vienna in winter. In our book there’s no better place to enjoy this time of year than Austria’s glorious capital. We made a point in ordering Viennese schnitzel every time we ate out and our favourite turned out to be Cafe Englander. Gobbling like a Gourmet We also started shopping for discount deals at Michelin-starred restaurants and on average dined at such culinary temples twice a month, sometimes for less than £20 per person, hardly ever for […]
An Amazing Dinner at the Lovely Il-Horza, Valletta
During our recent visit to the beautiful Knights Templar island of Malta, Charlie Bone, the chef and owner of Il-Horza, invited us to visit his tiny but highly regarded restaurant. We asked the cab driver to drop us off some distance from the venue and enjoyed the short stroll across the pompous squares and through crooked alleyways of Valletta, Malta’s capital. We were offered to choose between the more elegant, slightly more spacious ground floor room, and the more rustic, basic, but very cosy basement, which is just a few steps down the stairs from the entrance. We chose a table in the basement, because we loved the ambience. After short deliberation, we opted for bone marrow (€9) and the chef’s daily selection of Antipasti (€9) as our starters. As main Ms B chose local fish of the day (sea bream, €23.50), and I couldn’t resist the ribeye of […]