Every now and then we’ve come across a local find that we feel rivals the selection of delicacies and are as good as anything that we have found in Europe (previous examples: Boulangerie la Parisienne in Yaletown and La Baguette et l’Echalote on Granville Island). Recently, I’ve come across another place worth mentioning that I have been going to very frequently for lunch: The Mozart Bakery & Cafe.

The Mozart Bakery & Cafe is located in the Walnut Grove area of Langley in a strip mall next to convenience stores and a bank. I happened to come across the Mozart Bakery last year as I was looking for a place to eat. My first 10 or so visits to Mozart were strictly to have lunch – always one of their excellent wraps and an interesting side salad usually with lots of pasta and tomatoes. Behind the counter are a great variety of fresh baked breads which I have unfortunately not tried yet.

Inside the cafe there are two glass cases: one with the lunch options from which I normally select but it’s the other case that holds all the sweet stuff. As I said it took me about 10 visits to Mozart before I ordered one of their fantastic World’s Best Pecan Fudge Brownies. Within 2 seconds of the first bite of the brownie, I knew that I was going to be writing a new blog article on them. I wouldn’t be understating the case by saying that the brownie was perhaps one of the most delicious deserts that I have ever eaten. Definitely as good as anything that I have had in Europe.

I now seem to be going to the Mozart Bakery regularly about once a week. I really should expand my horizons and start trying several of their other treats but I just can’t seem to not order another brownie.

The best part about all of this is that Mozart Bakery is about 5 minutes away from where I work. 5 minutes is all it now takes to taste Europe.

Baden

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Mozart Bakery & Cafe
#2 – 20349 88th Ave, Langley
604-882-0433

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I’ve now had a chance to read all the blog postings that Baden has written and perused our pictures a few times to refresh my memory on all that we saw. Upon reflection it was certainly an ambitious trip for us and toward the end (mainly due to having a cold and not feeling 100%) I was definitely crankier at the end of the day than when we started our trip.

All in all the vacation was fantastic. I must say that Baden and Barb did way more homework than we did and it sure was a plus when deciding what to do. The sites were stupendous, astonishing, amazing, surprising, wonderful, awesome, breathtaking, etc. I was really surprised that most people we dealt with had some English so we could muddle our way through and I have to say that Italians weren’t shy on correcting your pronunciation.

It’s really hard to say what the highlight of our trip was. But I certainly would like to go back and spend more time in Rome, Florence and Siena with a few days of R&R in Positano (such an marvelous place with an excellent beach).

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From Peter:

Yes, it was an ambitious vacation for us, and thank goodness for Baden and Barb’s prep work and Euro-savvy as we certainly didn’t anticipate or appreciate the ground work required for a trip such as this. Thanks you two!

It was a vacation of ‘firsts’ for me. First time in Italy (actually it was the second time, but I was only six so it doesn’t count). First time going to and staying at multiple places in one trip. First time going on vacation as a group and first time seeing places that I had read so much about, and then actually being there!

I really enjoyed Rome and the Sorrento/Capri/Positano/Ravello experience the most. That bus ride to Positano and then the ferry to Amalfi was spectacular! Looking at the pictures from there brings it all back, the memories still fresh!

I would agree with Liz’s summary as to where to spend more time the next time; Rome, Florence and Positano.

St Peter’s, the old Forum ruins, the Parthenon and just about every church we ventured into were inspiring. And there were so many places that we saw that beggar description! Truly a vacation of firsts!

We never got to see any of London today due to time constraints. I don’t think that seeing a lot of Heathrow airport really counts.

In many ways this Adventure has been very different that all of our previous trips. The main difference of course is that we were travelling with Liz and Pete. The other significant difference – for me only – was the inclusion of my Dell Pocket PC. More on that later.

For virtually all of the trip, we got along pretty well with Liz and Peter and I can say honestly that having them along on this trip was definitely a positive aspect of the trip. If we had to make the same decision again, we would invite them along on the trip again without hesitation.

However, there were aspects of travelling with two other people that we had to deal with. The major issue was that with more people involved in any decisions, it sometimes is a compromise as to what we would do on a daily basis. This is to be expected as we were all equal partners in the trip and everyone had an equal say. There were a few times when Barb and I may have done some things slightly different if it was just the two of us but these times were quite infrequent and not an ongoing source of frustration.

While we have not explicitly asked them about it, we suspect that both Liz and Peter would say that they would have preferred to have more days where we did less running around or even did nothing at all. I think that Barb and I have gotten used to a certain pace to our trips and usually know what to expect from each other so there’s usually fewer surprises in this area.

I’m hoping that Liz or Peter can provide me with a final chapter of their own to give some of their own perspectives of the trip for the blog.

As I said above, the other significant difference for this trip was the inclusion of my Dell Axim.

On the surface, this may seem like a purely technical issue but the real impact goes much deeper. This difference may only be noticeable to those who have been getting my Excellent Adventure updates from previous years. The two major differences were my ability to post pictures along with my updates and also the quantity of how much I was able to write.

Several people had posted comments asking: “When did you find the time to write all of this”? Having the Dell Pocket PC with me allowed me to write at many times of the day when I normally would be doing things like reading a book or watching TV.

By my estimate I wrote about 4-5 times as much on this trip as on previous trips. All I can say is that what I wrote on this trip is the amount of content that I have always wanted to write before on previous trips but never could due to time constraints. Being able to type off line made all the difference.

Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down

So, as we always do, we bring you our Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down of Our Excellent Italian Adventure:

Thumbs Up:

-Smoking. Regular readers will know that the smoking issue in Europe always make my Thumbs Down list so why is it on my Thumbs Up side this time? The reason is that in virtually all restaurants and other indoor public places that we went to in Italy, there was no smoking signs and people were actually following this and not smoking.

-Desserts. I had always read that Italian restaurants often had a limited selection of desserts to offer customers. We had consistently read that to only expect something like Tiramisu and maybe some fresh seasonal fruits. Not so. Some of the best desserts that I have ever eaten were had on this trip. Still not up to the selection and quality of France and Germany but delicious nonetheless.

-Tuscany. Everything about Tuscany was like a picture postcard. Some of the experiences in the small towns around our villa will be remembered forever.

-Amalfi Coast. One of Barb’s favourites is the boat ride along the Amalfi Coast from Positano to the town of Amalfi.

-Costs. So many people had told us how expensive Italy is. Having been to several European countries we can tell you that Italy is one of the cheapest. Perhaps only slightly more expensive that Spain, we found France and Germany to be more expensive (especially France). Britain is in a league all of it’s own as far as high costs go. The conversion to Pounds from Canadian dollars really makes a huge difference.

Thumbs Down:

-Out of Order. Far too many times we found things in Italy to be out of order, completely broken or just not working properly in some way. This was an ongoing source of frustration that we had not experienced in most other countries that we have been to.

-Weather. OK, this isn’t something that we can blame on Italy but we really had some bad weather in Sorrento and a few days in Rome. The trip out to Lake Como wasn’t nearly as good as it could have if were to have had clear, sunny weather that day instead of misty day where we couldn’t see across the lake very well. Luckily, the sun started to shine as soon as we got to Tuscany and we had no more rain after that.

-Driving too much. Driving along the narrow, winding roads throughout Tuscany was really physically draining. I also think that we just drove a bit to much on many days which also made some days less fun.

-Poor road signs. Many, many times we got lost while driving in Italy and it was almost always due to poor highway road signs. In some cases, a turnoff sign was completely missing and we drove around town for a while trying to find our way back on the highway.

That’s all from me for this year. I hope that everyone enjoyed coming along on our Italian Adventure with us.

We’re already have plans underway for our Excellent Adventures for 2006 and have also begun talking about 2007. “The Making Of” updates for both of those will appear on my blog as they develop.

Baden

A new chapter of Our Excellent Italian Adventure has unfolded which was unknown to us even 12 hours ago when we woke up in Milan ready to depart for the airport.

The original plan was to fly to Rome today from Milan, then connect to London where we would then get our final connection back home to Vancouver from there.

Everything seemed to be on track until the small matter of the air traffic controller’s in Rome going on strike about 90 minutes before we were scheduled to leave Rome.

As you might imagine, our travel plans took quite a beating from that point forward.

Just Like the Amazing Race

We were informed by the nice people at the British Airways counter that the air traffic controllers would be on strike between noon and 4PM. As our flight to London was scheduled to leave at 1:30, we seemed to have just missed the boat as all flights up until noon seemed to have departed on time.

We were given two choices: we could wait until about 4:30 and catch our postponed flight to London. This, of course, would mean that we would be missing our connecting flight to Vancouver. Since British Airways only flies to Vancouver from London once a day, we would have to stay in a hotel overnight in London.

The second option would be to stay the night in Rome and catch the 1:30PM flight the next day. Both options would mean getting back to Vancouver one day later.

Wait! It gets better.

The polite people at the British Airways counter were also quick to tell us that since the delay was being caused by factors outside of their control, they would not be compensating us for the extra hotel charges.

Before we wanted to commit to anything, we wanted to see if there were any other way of getting to Heathrow airport on any other airline – perhaps at another airport in Rome. To determine what our options were we found an Internet kiosk in the airport and started to check several travel web sites like Expedia and Travelocity. We then started hitting the web sites for all of the discount airlines in Europe that we knew of like Easyjet and Ryan Air.

Unfortunately, unlike on the show the Amazing Race (where everyone almost always seems to be able to find another flight option), there were no better choices available to us.

In the end we decided that it would be best to depart Rome today and get to London to spend the night. We actually thought for a minute that we could get into our hotel by around 6:30PM (we would gain an hour flying to London) and maybe even have a night on the town in London. How great would an Excellent Italian and British Adventure be?

The illusion of this night on the town ever happening pretty much evaporated right around the time that we were still sitting in the boarding gate (not even having left the Rome airport yet) a full hour after it was scheduled to leave. Our hopes further crumbled as we sat in the plane on the runway for another 60 minutes before we even took off. By all estimates, we probably won’t be getting to Heathrow until around 8PM.

A New Low in Airline Cuisine

We assume that due to the fact that the plane was in a hurry to leave the Rome airport as soon as possible that there wasn’t the proper amount of time needed to stock the plane with it’s normal food for our dinner.

As a result, we had another unprecedented event occur of us being handed a blue box as we walked down the jetway before we stepped onto the plane.

Air Chef was proudly emblazoned onto the top of the blue box.

Just the words air chef got me thinking of someone looking like Chef-Boy-Ar-Dee working furiously in the back of the plane putting together our evening’s fare. Unfortunately, it was not to be.

The contents of the air chef box was a dry, tasteless object that some people may refer to as a sandwich. Along with it came a small orange juice and a package labelled as Grancereale. This ended up being some cookies that might taste like something you found in the back of your pantry 2 months past it’s expiry date.

Nonetheless, we were hungry and nothing better seemed to be in sight so this was going to be it.

A Night in London

Under normal circumstances, it would be great to visit London. Peter and I have cousins who live here (whom Peter has never met) plus there all the interesting things to see and do here.

Staying one night in London because your flight was delayed and you missed your connecting flight home is none of that.

Worse yet, we were all mentally prepared to get home after being away for 3 weeks and having to spend one more night in a hotel is really unbearable.

We collected our bags from the airport and booked a night in a local hotel. While cheap by London standards, the hotel is costing us a small fortune (almost double the daily rate for our Milan hotel) for just the one night.

We’re all pretty bushed and I suspect that we’ll all be getting to bed fairly early tonight. Tomorrow, on the other hand, is another story.

We have a 5PM flight out of Heathrow airport tomorrow and are only about 10 minutes from the airport. Who knows if we’ll be able to sneak a visit into London tomorrow?

Baden

PS: In case you’re wondering about the significance of the picture above, I’ve added another “Runs SAP” picture to my collection from Heathrow airport.

See my previous article on My SAP Collection.

Goto the final episode of Our Excellent Italian Adventure