Archive for October, 2009

Six Favorite Meals in Europe

So I am just getting around to posting this, but I compiled my six fave meals I ate in Europe here. They range from super cheap to average priced, but all were very memorable and super tasty!

Food-9175_cr1. Le Petit Prince, Latin Quarter, Paris

This restaurant we ate at with our friends Jason and Allisyn after searching around for a good little French restaurant for a while. We found this one on a tiny little cobblestoned side street in the Latin Quarter and ate at the tables out front on an amazingly beautiful Paris night.
First course: Poached Egg in a Spinach Cream soup with cubes of goat cheese covered in paprika – really really good
Second course: Braised Lamb shank stew type thing with a sauce and vegetables – so good
Dessert, Upside Down Apple Tart with Butter Gelato

2. Chez Juliet, Vielle Ville, Nice

Seafood “Stew” with wine sauce. It wasn’t really a stew but more shrimp, scallops, and fish in a really tasty thick creamy wine sauce with grilled veggies, and fresh baked bread. so yummy

3. Andrea’s Restaurant or something like that, Monterosso al Mare, Cinque Terre

First course: Homemade gnocchi with pesto sauce
Second course: Green Pepper Filet, a steak made with this amazing green peppercorn sauce and little green peppercorns on top. the restaurant was basically run by one guy who waited the tables, cooked the food and everything, he was so nice too. i asked him about what he used and he brought out the jar to me of the like pickled peppercorns he used and told me if it wasn’t his last jar he would have given it to me! I later found a smaller jar of them in a market in Pisa they are called “Pepe Verde”

4. Baggettes from Kayser Boulangerie, Cheese and fruit from little markets, Paris

This night we bought fresh bread and bought cheese and fruit and just sat out on the grass at Champs de Mars and watched the sunset on the Eiffel Tower waited for the lights to come on and then for the lights to twinkle, which they do for the first few minutes of each hour. See video below

5. Some Pizzaria, Vernazza, Cinque Terre

After doing the amazing 2 hour hike from our village to Vernazza, the neighboring one, we found a little pizza place with tables on the harbor.

Starter: Fresh mozzerella bruscetta
Main Course: Fresh wood oven baked pizzas, mine was salami, starla’s was a fresh made pesto pizza, both were ridiculously good.


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6. Chez Hanna Falafel, La Marais, Paris

We headed to the Marais to eat at the famous L’as du Falafel that we had read so much about but upon arrival we found it shuttered for some unknown reason. There were two other places right down the street that had long lines down the street so we picked one and waited about 3o min for our falafel.
Falafel consisting of: Pita bread pocket, fresh hummus, some spicy red sauce, falafel, cabbage, other veggies, topped with a creamy white sauce.

Wedding Photography

IMG_7638_rtI shot my friend Alison’s wedding way back in August and for one reason or another never posted any of the photos. So, anyway here are a small sampling of them that I posted on flickr. It was my first wedding I shot and it was a LOT of work. I couldn’t walk without pain for 3 days from all the running around and getting up and down all night. I really had a good time and am pleased with the results I got, but it was a lot of pressure and I would hesitate to do the same for a crazy bride that wanted everything perfect. Alison was great and very understanding and accommodating to my inexperience! I rented a fancy Canon Speedlite flash and an expensive zoom lens from Adorama to help out on the equipment side, though I still found my Canon 50mm f1.4 to be the star of the show and captured most of my best images. I love that lens.

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Back From Europe!

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Starla and I in Eze, France

We just got back from our trip to France and Italy. We had a really really good time and had mostly amazing weather the whole time. Paris is as lovely as ever and really is a place I could see myself living. We happened to be there the same weekend as Nuit Blanche which is an amazing annual event where artists take over a bunch of landmarks around the city with light based installations. The whole city seems to come out for this and it lasts all night long. It is very cool and I would recommend trying to see it. Nice and the Côte d’Azur was very beautiful with amazing water and good food. We stayed there 3 nights and one day went out on a little tour of the region taking in Cannes (boring), Antibes (lively, enticing) St Paul de Vence (beautiful little preserved medieval hillside village), Eze (another beautiful little preserved medieval hillside village) and Monaco. Cinque Terre was one of the most stunning places I have ever been and hiking from town to town on the rocky Mediterranean coast is an amazing life experience. We caught 4 of the 5 towns only missing Corniglia. Pisa has a famous leaning tower, a beautiful accompanying church and not a ton else. We were supposed to only stay the night to be close to the airport but due to a flight problem we ended up being there two days. It is only an hour from Florence and it kind of killed me to be so close to such and amazing place but not be able to go to it.

Like usual I got really into taking photographs and ended up with about 1700 of them which i went through every night and edited down to about 350 photos which are up on my flickr account, which you can see here.