Travel

Ah, coffee. As a Melbournian by choice, conviction, and happenstance, coffee is a special topic that leads to strong opinions. And rightly so. Like wine, coffee can be anywhere on the range from divine to atrocious. And that is only the coffee. How you accessorize your coffee then becomes an almost religious debate, especially amongst Melbournians.

Black coffee… early memories tell horrendous stories of something called Jakob’s Krönung - Jacob’s crowning. Filter coffee, highly acidic and burned, completely unbalanced, and usually - by people from a certain generation - enjoyed in a weak form that Brazilians would call cha-fé (how ever you write this). Cha is tea of course, and I’ll leave the rest up to your imagination.

So here are my best of lists from my cycling adventure.

Best cycling

1. Canal du Rhone au Rhin
2. UNESCO Upper Middle Rhine Valley
3. Around Deidesheim

The canal was just outright spectacular. Its unerring straightness was maybe a bit “boring” for lack of a better word, but this was peaceful, cute cafes in the lock houses, no traffic. Outstanding.

The Rhine Valley is just beautiful. You feel castled out after a while (at least I do) but you cannot deny the beauty.

Only a short note today about a random encounter over breakfast. I came down to the restaurant at 8am and there was - again - one other person having breakfast (there were more coming later though…). We greeted each other and then randomly decided instead of sitting at different tables, to have breakfast together. A financial analyst from San Francisco, en route to visiting family in the Netherlands - and we had a super interesting, wide-ranging conversation about a wide variety of topics.

The day

After a not very long sleep and a nice breakfast, I tried the LBS, but alas, no joy. My derailleur seems to be ok but my back wheel is missing a spoke. Let’s see how long that will go well, might have to get a new wheel before long.

After that, a great massage, a haircut by the most meticulous barber I have ever met, feels great! Shout out to Timing Cut Barber. I might have to come to Wiesbaden for haircuts going forward.

As anticipated, this was a well-needed day for recovery. The hotel was perfect for the occasion, starting with a huge breakfast buffet, good coffee, and what really turned into a leisurely brunch. Afterwards sauna, sleep, reading, writing, a bit of a walk through the very pretty old town of Ettlingen, and then dinner in the 1 Star Erbprinz Gourmet restaurant.

The Dinner

I chose the five course meal with matching wines and it was a solid 1 star performance. There was some “fingerfood” followed by an amuse bouche of salmon in joghurt sauce. Let’s call it interesting. Especially the asparagus water with raspberry vinegar was strange.

Flew to Singapore for the first time in about 6 years. Other than a number of work trips to India, I have not been back in Asia in a while. And to top it off, I was continuing to Manila on Monday for work meetings. Manila - haven’t been back there for over 10 years…

Flying with SQ is always a blast from the past… I used to do that a lot, into all directions, but of course mainly between SIN and MEL on I think SQ227. Now on route to new, updated adventures.