Monthly Archives: January 2020

Posts from Base Camp

Travel Flashback – Stuben, Austria (2013)

Leave a comment

(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

Context is everything in travel. In 2013, I had such a great week of skiing in Val Gardena that the following 4 days of skiing in Stuben, Austria, could never measure up. And by the end of a stretch where I was skiing for 10 out of 11 days, I think that some fatigue set in and minor annoyances were easily exaggerated.

A daytime view of the photo at the top of this post

I was recently browsing through my photo archives and found some pictures from my 5-day stay in Stuben. A lot of impressions came flooding back.  I realized that Stuben really was a beautiful village.   I also remembered that the weather really didn’t cooperate…we didn’t see too much sun when we were on the slopes, even though it was technically already springtime.  In fact, I think we only had one partial day of sunny skies.

Another night view of downtown Stuben

Strangely enough, the strongest lingering impression was about cigarettes. The owner of our B&B smoked incessantly. The nearest pub and restaurant also seemed to follow a different set of rules from the rest of the Alps.  Restaurants and hotels have been smoke-free in Canada for so long that these smoky places literally left a really bad taste.

Finally, a sunny day! This is above Zurs, Austria

Many years have passed, and I know that the B&B is now under new management.  I suspect the pub is no longer a smoking “outlier” either. Maybe it’s time for a fresh assessment of skiing in Stuben?

We had just skied down this stash of fresh powder, above Zurs

Stuben has a lot going for it. It’s a tiny, remote village at “the end of the road”, but is still linked to the legendary St. Anton ski area. The pistes are long and often challenging. And the lift pass also gets you on the slopes at Lech, Zurs, St. Christoph, and Sonnenkopf. Since our visit, the slopes at nearby Warth and Schroecken have been linked as well.

More “almost” off-piste skiing above Zurs

Even though there was a blizzard and there were only about 12 people skiing in the entire Sonnenkopf area, we still had a lot of fun on our day there. Sure, we rarely saw where we were going but, with slightly better visibility, it could have moved from “fun” to “epic”.

The sun was also out on the day we left Stuben. This is the “main street” of the tiny village.

I’ve had some great travel experiences in Austria, such as my whirlwind 2014 visit to Vienna. It may be time to move on from the bad weather (and cigarettes) of 2013 and give Austrian skiing another shot!   

Posts from the road

A Warm Winter Weekend in Montreal

Leave a comment

(Montreal, Quebec, Canada)

It’s not often that you hear about a warm winter weekend in Montreal. But that’s exactly what we had on our recent visit!

The first part of our visit focused mainly on food and shopping. We once again purchased a weekend transit pass, allowing us to travel around the city and hop on or off whenever we felt inspired. We started by returning to Verdun, for a clothing shop we discovered on our previous trip to Montreal. Before shopping, however, we had to make sure we were properly nourished.

I took this picture just because I think “Lavo-Rama” is a great name for a laundromat (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce)

We chose a Peruvian place just down the street from the clothing shop. My hopes were high, as I saw both lomo saltado and chicha morada on the menu.  I have a nostalgic attachment to these items, as I prepared lomo saltado during a cooking course I took in Cusco, Peru. And I had many delicious glasses of chicha morada throughout my Peruvian trip in 2014.

Simply “Jimi”. Perfect name for a music shop. (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce)

While it was nice to revisit Peru on a winter’s day in Canada, it wasn’t quite the same as what I remembered from 6 years before. I guess this isn’t surprising – almost everything tastes better in the place it comes from.  Eating in Peru is great!

The next day, we ventured to the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood. We had no particular destination in mind:  we had just heard that there were a lot of bookstores and independent businesses that might be interesting to look at. This was true, but what really struck us was the number of bakeries and pastry shops…and also the number of pet-oriented businesses! The pets of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce certainly ought to be well-amused and well-groomed.

Woof & Groom dog-grooming emporium in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce

From there,  it was off to the neighbourhood of Côte-des-Neiges. This time, the attraction was an allegedly high number of ethnic restaurants. We decided to simply roam and stop in for lunch wherever the “vibe” was right. Nothing truly called to us until we saw a basement restaurant called La Republika. There was no menu posted outside: we just knew that the food was from the Philippines. We took the plunge, as there seemed to be many local residents dining despite the low outside profile.

Tosilog lunch at La Republika (Côte-des-Neiges)

It turned out to be the culinary highlight of our trip.  My wife had a very enjoyable pork dish called tosilog, while I had grilled shrimps. I was somewhat surprised to see that the shrimps had not been shelled (or otherwise processed) before being grilled. The waiter brought me some gloves and I spent quite a bit of time trying to shell the slippery-sauced shrimp. All turned out well in the end, even if I made a complete mess and the grilling sauce ended up everywhere.  There was no question that the dish was freshly made!

Grilled shrimp lunch at La Republika (Côte-des-Neiges)

We walked off our lunch feast on Mont-Royal, the small “mountain” that provides excellent views of downtown Montreal (see photo at the top of this post).   After an extended hike, we caught another bus to the Plateau neighbourhood…home of my favourite record store (“Aux 33 Tours”).  It never fails to surprise me with unexpected vinyl treasures. 

Hiking high above the city on Mont-Royal

Cookies and hot chocolate followed in the Plateau, and eventually a late dinner at Qing Hua near our hotel at the edge of Westmount. Qing Hua is a Montreal institution specializing in “Chinese dumplings”…name a filling, and it’s probably available in at least one of their large steamed dumplings. I tried beef curry, as well as vermicelli-mushroom-cabbage.

Stay tuned – there’s more on Montreal!