CRF: The Best Of Liechtenstein

"CRF" is not a crime show you've never heard of, it stands for "Cutting Room Floor." It's been more than a year since we returned from Europe, and we've started to get seriously nostalgic.  To give us all an extra travel fix, we're posting some of our favorite photos that never made it onto the blog.  Here are our favorite unpublished memories and pictures of Liechtenstein - a tiny, odd, forgotten place.

These Swiss browns with Switzerland in the backdrop were photographed from a berggasthaus just like the ones we'd hiked to in the Appenzell Mountains.  We were carrying Swiss francs in our wallets at the time and trying to speak Swiss German.  Surprise! Du bist nicht in der Schweiz!
Liechtenstein might not look like much on a map, it doesn't have its own language or currency, but we left The Principality with a real sense that we'd visited a country all its own.  Sure, there are more registered businesses than there are citizens, but this tiny country's identity as an unlikely survivor rings truer than its status as a tax haven.

Not to say you're left to forget that Liechtenstein has the highest GDP per person in the world, the world's lowest external debt and Europe's wealthiest ruler.  It feels moneyed in the capital, Vaduz, even if it also feels like a farm town.
Their National Museum had one of the finest Natural History exhibits we've ever seen, anywhere.  Their Kunstmuseum is world-class and their ski museum and stamp collections are as cluttered and quirky as can be.  The public spaces are filled with art.  If there was a roundabout, it had a sculpture at its center.  The capital's center plaza was sleek and modern, though very tiny.

The food was... expensive and alpine.  There were some great local specialties at the Bauernmarkt, Weinfest Trieson, Sommernachtsfest and at "Oldie Night," but we otherwise had little success eating well.  We did cook some great forellen und rösti, and had plenty of camping picnics, but white asparagus toasts in aspic aren't our idea of inspiring, even if they did come with a squirt of mayonnaise and a bit of pickle.

The heat at the end of August, dusty with the last cuts of hay, drove us to the water.  The Rhine is too swift and sharp-bottomed to swim in, but there were plenty of pools.

Liechtenstein isn't tiny tiny, by microstate standards.  At 61.78 square miles, it's about three hundred and sixty three times larger than Vatican City - but that's like comparing grapes and poppy seeds.  In terms of micro-ness, it's closest to San Marino, though Liechtenstein's still over two and a half times larger.

Still, it's the third smallest place we visited on the trip, and every larger country felt a LOT larger.  You can walk across Liechtenstein in a day.  Luxembourg, which many people confuse with Liechtenstein, is sixteen times larger, and has a functioning train system.

This greenhouse was situated alongside our walking path from campsite to capital.  The walk took less than an hour and covered more than a quarter of the country's length.

But that's on the flats along the Rhine river valley.  Along the Austrian border on the other side of the country - locally referred to as the "Oberland" - Liechtenstein is mountainous and harder to get around.  We spent a sunny day hiking the ski resort of Malbun and watching a falconry show, and another few days on a long, trans-nation hike.  The peaks here are part of the Western Rhaetian Alps. Cowbells clanked on the summer breeze.

One of the trip's wierd animal experiences was at "BIRKA Bird Paradise," a zoo-like aviary that we never really figured out.  There were plenty of parrots and chickens, but who the heck knows why they were there?
In some ways, Liechtenstein feels a bit like a roadstop along the expanse of our trip.  We visited just after returning from a trip back home - we flew back into Ljubljana airport, where we'd left our car, and drove up into the Austrian Alps feeling excited and full of energy.  Two weeks later, we left Liechtenstein bemused and restless, driving on to France and broader horizons.  What had we seen?  What had we done?  Walked, looked at postage stamps, wandered around a garden, gotten confused, felt hemmed-in - and seen some strange birds.  It's not that it wasn't pleasant, it's just that we wanted to get back on the road.

There's a romantic myth about Europe: that it's filled with tiny kingdoms, where princes and kings and queens sit in their castles, ignored by the rest of the world.  Two and a half centuries ago, before Napoleon and the fall of the Holy Roman Empire, there really were little duchies and comtés scattered amongst and beside the major countries - in Germany alone there were around 300 sovereign states.
Today, almost all of those little kingdoms are gone, and you'll find only three micro-states ruled by royal families: Luxembourg (which isn't really that micro), Monaco (which can hardly be called a forgotten kingdom) and Liechtenstein.  In a lot of ways, this little place is a unique throwback.

Approaching Vaduz, a traveler passes through farms and orderly vineyards.  The mountains rise to one side, very green and lush in the late summer, but topped by glaciers and distant rocks. There's a quaint little castle just above town, where a real prince lives.  A few Victorian-Gothic steeples rise above the beech treetops.  It looks, from afar, just like the capital of a fairytale, middle-european, lost-principality should look.
Of course, close up, it's full of Toyota dealerships, pizza places, bank buildings and shopping complexes.  Theres too much traffic and not enough places to park.  If modern concrete is your thing, maybe you'll like it. If you want to visit a peaceful principality town, though, avoid the capital.  You can stay anywhere else in the country and still drive to Vaduz in twenty minutes, if you feel like it.  Better yet, take the bus.
This picture was taken at dusk from a third story window of the one old Inn still left in town, Gasthof Löwen.  The timber-framed building has literally been walled in by roads and development.  On the last night in the country, we went to sleep under the eaves, listening to the grumbling roundabout outside in the night, dreaming of bigger places to explore.

To see all of our posts about Liechtenstein, just click here.

Our 10 Most Popular Posts

Here's the travel blogging catch-22.  Most people are looking for information about places they plan to visit.  So, millions of people search for things about Tuscany, Paris or Amsterdam's canals.  The most amazing place on earth won't receive much traffic if nobody knows about it.  The problem is, the more popular a place is, the more bloggers there are writing about it.  The chance that someone reads your post about the Acropolis? Slim.

Predicting which of our 700 (plus) posts would get read was almost impossible.  Some of the best things we wrote didn't even get read by our own parents.  Some of our silliest or worst-written bits have became enormously (and embarrassingly) popular.

Our 10 most popular posts (based on Google analytics data and Blogger.com traffic reports) are a mixed bag.  Some are good (number one, thankfully), some began their online life as throwaways (see number nine), some are just weird (number five).  Only one of these posts was specifically designed to attract traffic (number two).

10. Cihangir

Sometimes we just hit upon something. Cihangir is a hip, young Istanbul neighborhood.  It reminded us of a Turkish Williamsburg and confirmed our belief that renting an apartment is the best way to see a city.  The best neighborhoods are often the best because they don't have any hotels.  Don't get us wrong, the center of Istanbul is as gobsmacking is you'd expect and we never tired of tooling around in search of balik ekmek or The Mussel Man (who we wind up finding in Cihangir anyway).  But the best cities are great because of their ever-changing qualities, their momentum and the neighborhoods defined by the young people there at a given time. 

9. Not Taking Pictures of The Sistine Chapel

As bloggers, we found ourselves in a jam.  Here we were in Vatican City, two whole weeks of posting about a very, very small microstate and the pièce de résistance was off limits.  No photos in the Sistine Chapel.  Seriously?  If this were a rule decreed by the pope, the security guards would probably have worked a little harder - or at all - to enforce it.  As it turns out, a Japanese TV company owns the exclusive rights to some of the art world's most famous images because they funded its restoration. (This is after NBC turned down the deal.  Probably because they were too busy fine-tuning  Joey, the Friends spin-off).  Anyway, the whole thing was ridiculous, made only more so by the fact that everyone. was. taking. pictures.  So, we decided to half break the rules and snap some shots, too.  Just not of the ceiling.  We're sure this gets traffic because people are searching to see if photos are allowed in the Sistine Chapel.  Not that finding out is going to stop them.  

8. Georgian Food
We can vouch for the fact that it is very difficult to search for anything about Georgia, in English, without being directed to the state instead of the country.  Using the word "Georgian" helps matters a lot.  This one makes us happy because Georgian food really did feel like a revelation.  The textures and flavors were consistently surprising and delicious.  Pomegranate seeds, crushed walnuts, cilantro,  the best bread of our lives.  And then there were khinkali, the soup dumpling like concoctions pictured above.  In the tiny town of Mestia, at the time the most remote place we'd been, the only restaurant in town basically only served khinkali   We discovered, quickly, that they are so delicious you don't need anything more.

7. The Bright Spots

Amazingly, this is only our second most-popular Albanian post (see below!)  

Sometimes we know exactly why people are reading a specific post.  After a TED Blog writer used our photos of Tirana's painted buildings we got a sudden surge of visitors.

The story of Edi Rama (painter turned Minister of Culture turned mayor) and his brilliant idea to transform ugly communist-era cement blocks into bold, bright works of art is a great one.  It's no wonder it's garnered some attention.  We're just happy that our own piece focuses more on the story of the city today and of Malvin, a young man who served us dinner one night and was showing us around the next.  Maybe he'll stumble upon the post himself and shoot us an email.  We wonder if he ever made it to that bioengineering school in Canada.

6. Castle Hunting: Trakai Castle
Island castles are a little bit of a trend (see number 4).
We remember this castle most for the speeding ticket we got nearby.  Lithuanian police take road safety very seriously.  For the record, if you should ever find yourself stopped by an officer in Lithuania, be prepared to pay your fine in cash on the spot.  If you don't have the money, he/she will drive you to the nearest bank to withdraw the amount.  Don't be scared.  This is absolutely normal.  Well, you can still be scared.  As we were.

5. Sleeping In Soviet Style
This little Belarusian piece has always baffled us.  For almost a year it was our number two most-viewed post, second only to this, about Belarusian tractors (which now ranks about 12th).  It would make sense if people were only landing here while looking for lodging in Belarus - which is hard to find - but that didn't seem to be the case.  Inexplicably, thousands of people showed up after searching for "armenian elevator buttons."  The internet is a weird, weird place.
(Thanks to one visitor, we learned that what we thought was a very cool smoke detector was actually an even cooler single-channel radio from the Soviet age).

4. Castle Hunting: Kizkalesi Castles

We were never even supposed to be there in Kizkalesi, but we were finding it a little difficult to catch a boat to northern Cyprus, and we needed a place to stay.  For a Turkish seaside town, it's a little drab.  People visit for the "floating" castle (and visit our blog for pictures of it).  We stayed in an empty hotel, run by a very nice Kurdish man who took us to the nearby Caves of Heaven and Hell and invited us to watch a televised NBA game with him in the evening. 

3. Lithuanian Food
For a long time, Lithuanian Food was the most viewed post on the blog.  It features grainy, unappealing photos of cepelinai, blyneliai and various other cheesy, gloppy dishes.  This is a poorly-lit shot of kiaulės audis, which is smoked pig's ear.  We had no idea - as we crunched cartilage on that dark night in the Žemaitija National Park - that so many people would find this stuff interesting.  Then, again, we may not have ordered the smoked pig's ear if we didn't at least hope they would.

2. Montenegro's Best Beaches
Some day soon, this will be the most read merlinandrebecca.com post.  It's been popular since day one, and it does really well around every vacation time.  Montenegro is newly independent and popular, so there isn't as much written about it as, say, Croatia.  We think that's why readers end up on our site.  This one feels a little bittersweet, though, because we created it while thinking "this will get so much traffic!"  But, hey, the hope is that then you stumble upon something like this.  The other hope is that more people will look beyond the big resorts that are threatening to destroy the coastline and find those little places that remain untouched… for now.

1. Albanian Food

While it's not too surprising that 3 of our 10 most popular posts are about food, Albania sneaking in for the win is a bit of a shock.  Here's our theory:  there's simply not much information available online about Albanian food.  So, unlike a search for "Italian food," you're more likely to stumble upon us.  In fact, googling those two words right now, we're right there behind wikipedia, food.com, ask.com and pinterest (which may or may not have even existed when we published this post).  If the title had been "Frogs Legs and Lamb's Head" - as I'm sure at least one of us wanted it to be - there's no way this would be our number one.  But… hey… we learned a few traffic tips along the way.  Now, add the fact that Albania was named Lonely Planet's Top Destination for 2011 and you've got yourself a winner!

CRF: The Best of Croatia

"CRF" is not a crime show you've never heard of, it stands for "Cutting Room Floor." It's been almost a year since we returned from Europe, and we've started to get seriously nostalgic.  To give us all an extra travel fix, we're posting some of our favorite photos that never made it onto the blog.  Here are our favorite unpublished memories and pictures of Croatia.

More than any other country, we associate Croatia with hedonism, sun and the scent of saltwater.  Our trip never felt like a vacation, but Croatia is a vacation by definition.  Everyone there was on holiday in one way or another - it was the same for the naked Germans and drunk Russians and sunburned Brits that joined us on those rocky shores.  It was July.  The sun never seemed to go down.

For a few happy days, we stayed at a huge campsite on Cres Island.  There was squid to eat in town and beer to sip on the long oceanside promenade.  When we swam, we were stung by tiny jellyfish.  When we walked in the balmy evenings, we listened to cicadas and waves.  Nearby, in a pine forest, a rusty amusement park spun its blinking, neon magic.

At home in the US, not long after the trip, someone told us that Croatia sounded "scary and Russian."  It's true that in some places, like Zadar, one can find bomb-scarred buildings from the Balkan wars - but you have to look hard.  The scariest thing about Croatia today? Probably the spiny sea-urchins that lurk in the shallow water.
The Dalmatian coast is mostly rock, and some salt-scoured islands feel almost entirely dead.  Real, comfortable, sandy beaches are rare.  Most people sunbathe on concrete slabs.

In Opatija, a city where seafood approaches perfection, we had a barbecue of squid and blitva.  The market where we shopped for our supper was made of Tito-era cement and seemed like the only cool place in the sun-baked city.

The heart of the summer - no rain, mild air, a sense that nothing bad can possibly happen - is best spent in a tent.  We soaked up the sun and got into our sleeping bag coated with salt.  We never went inside.  We ate by the ocean, we napped in the shade, we swam and walked and came home to a crowded camping city that smelled always of grilling sausage and suntan oil.
This was the semi-permanent home of one of our neighbors there at Camping Kovačine - grandparents, small children and at least two couples used this one camper as a base.  Did they all sleep inside?  Hard to tell.

Late one night - well past midnight - we were returning to our campsite in Ičići and came across this streetlight game of volleyball.

These scales always remind us of communism.  Every market from Minsk to Budapest to Sarajevo is full of them.

We spent a lot of time near the Mediterranean on the trip, but almost always during the colder months.  The summer seashores are too crowded in Malta or Greece or Provence.  At least, they're too crowded for serious travel.
But there we were, in Croatia during the high season.  We succumbed because there was no other choice.  It's Croatia that we think of first when our minds turn to sunny saltwater.  It was unavoidably perfect.  It was a vacation.
To see all our posts from Croatia, just click here.
To see all the Cutting Room Floor posts, with great pictures from the other 49 countries, just click here.

CRF: The Best Of Slovakia

"CRF" is not a crime show you've never heard of, it stands for "Cutting Room Floor." It's been almost a year since we returned from Europe, and we've started to get seriously nostalgic.  To give us all an extra travel fix, we're posting some of our favorite photos that never made it onto the blog.  Here are our favorite unpublished memories and pictures of Slovakia.
There are lots of Slovak trucks on the roads of Europe, and it's well known as the "other half" of Czechoslovakia, but it's still a little-known, hidden away country.  Crossing from the Czech Republic, we descended into a rougher land, spiked with tall pines and criss-crossed with big rivers - Slovakia smells first of wet woods and coarse paprika.
But there are also elegant promenades and beautiful towns, great museums and copper steeples.  One of our favorite towns was our last, the charming Banská Štiavnica in the south-west of the country.  This intriguing "plague tower" shone brightly in the middle of Trojičné námestie square.
At the technical museum, in Košice, we got lost in the dark, wonderful rooms.  Outside, the city was full of music and weddings, but the world contained in those dusty hallways was a silent one.  Displays of prickling antennae, bare wires, worn typewriter keys, dull lenses, remote controls - and what seemed like a hundred gramophone speakers.
Slovakia was a prickle of peaks and forests in the western part of the country.  At first, as we climbed in from the Czech Republic, the whole landscape was made of wood and stone.  It was wild.  We passed a shepherd once, standing in the mist by his flock, who wore brown robes of sheepskin that reached all the way to the ground.  He stared at us in the alpine cloud, leaning on his crook.  At that moment, Slovakia felt like part of the untamed past.
On the other hand, the middle of the country is flat and hot.  The land there is a continuation of the great Hungarian puszta, and the roads stretch out simple, flat and dusty.  We ate oil-slicked, paprika chicken soup at this restaurant, in the heart of the plain.  A thin, aproned Roma woman served us.  Across the road, a shanty village glowered.  Kids kicked at trash, the streets were full of brown water.  We stopped for not much more than an hour. The food was delicious and hearty, as it tended to be in Slovakia.
At "Theatur" bar, in Košice (not the gambling den pictured here), we had a long discussion about martinis.  Mainly, we talked about how good Theatur's martinis were - the young, blond bartender shrugged when we complimented her work.  "I didn't even try," she said. We agreed, after much discussion, that they were the best drinks we'd had in months, and were probably the best to be found within two hundred miles.
Košice is full of good food and exciting things.  It's also has - like so many regional hubs in ex-communist backwaters - its share of red neon and bleak-faced vagrants.
When we stayed in the forested hamlet of Podlesok, there wasn't much light at night save for the moon and stars.   In Slovenský Raj Národný Park (home to the slippery, scary Suchá Belá waterfall course) we saw men logging with horses and clearing weeds with scythes.  This was the edge of modernity, where tradition and machinery were meeting each other in the forest.
Ovčí syr (Slovak sheep cheese) can be so dry and thready that it almost feels like fiber on the tongue.  The tendrils squeak in your teeth. The texture is both bouncy and melting. Forget bryndzové halušky, this is Slovakia's real national flavor.
(Actually, bryndzové halušky is just potato dumplings with bryndza - one type of ovčí syr.  So, really...)
It was June when we visited Slovakia, so our memories are of summer heat, the sound of bugs, the intense green of early wheat and the yellow of rapeseed.  The days were long.  We ate picnics beside country roads, smelling pollen on the wind.
We spent one hot afternoon walking around Levoča, a pretty village with an imposing town wall and almost no people in the streets.  Slovakia evokes as much central-European grandeur as any of its neighbors (see Bojnice castle, the incredible ceilings inside or the ancient edifice of Spišský Hrad), but has many fewer tourists than the Czech Republic or Hungary.
Levoča has medieval history, UNESCO listed carvings and dark little cafes set in crumbling stone buildings - but, at the time, it was all ours.
To see all of our posts from Slovakia, just click here.
To see other Cutting Room Floor posts, with lots of other great pictures, just click here.

British Food: Neeps, Squeak, Chips and Guts

When the fish hit the fat, it made a racket.  Sputtering, splattering, bubbling and squealing, it cooked fast and hot.  Within a bare few minutes, we were handed our lunch.  It was still hot after we'd walked from chippy ("fish and chip stand" is too long a name for something so simple) to beach, sat down, taken this picture and tasted the fries.  Or, "chips," as we all know they're called. On the Welsh island of Anglesey, in the middle of November, this felt like our most British of meals, and it came so close to the end of our time there.  The haddock was juicy, the crust was crisp, the whole thing tasted of salt and empire.
Beside the fish is a little dish of "mushy peas," which is exactly what it sounds like.

America and Britain are not culturally similar.  Anyone who tells you otherwise hasn't been to both places.  We may speak the same language, but would a typical, small-town American restaurant serve haggis with neeps-n-tatties?  Is blood sausage a normal part of American breakfasts?  Can you imagine supermarket freezers displaying pre-made kidney pie?
Brits love their offal, especially certain pieces in certain places.  Haggis might seem like a joke to us Americans, a weird food that couldn't possibly be common, but it's truly a staple in Scotland.  This plate of haggis (the "neeps-n-tatties" beside it are simply mashed turnips and potatoes) was served to me in a raucous pub in Elgin, which is about as blue-collar a place as there is.  I ate the dish a few other times while in the north, and grew to really like it.  And I really liked it; not as in "it's weird, but I can tolerate it."  As in "I hope they have haggis on the menu!"
It's made from ground sheep's heart, liver and lungs mixed with oatmeal and traditionally cooked in a sheep's stomach.  Nowadays, a plastic casing is often substituted for the stomach.  The flavor is richened with mace, nutmeg, allspice, marjoram, thyme and plenty of ground pepper.  It is so aromatic, so uniquely spiced, that vegetarian versions (using grain instead of organ) tasted undeniably haggis-like.  It really is delicious, and definitely isn't a joke.

Scotland isn't the only country within Great Britain with a signature dish that gets the imagination going.  Welsh rabbit is neither originally Welsh nor made of rabbit.  You'll find it referred to as "rarebit" in Wales, a word invented for the purpose of saying something other than "rabbit" for this meatless dish.  Welsh rabbit originated in England and is, essentially, fondue.  Cheese, usually cheddar, is melted and mixed with ale, mustard, cayenne, wine, what have you.  Then, it's either poured over bread or served with "soldiers" (finger sized slices of toast) for dipping.  So how did this cheesy food, which tastes exactly as you'd expect it would, get named after Bugs Bunny?  The two theories I've read point to the English insulting the Welsh - either that they were so poor, cheese was their rabbit (an animal the English already considered 'the poor man's meat') or that they were so bad at hunting, cheese on bread would be a Welsh rabbit hunter's dinner.

In Criccieth, while walking beneath a seaside castle, we stopped into a bakery.  It was early morning. The sun was coming up over the Snowdon mountains. The town smelled of baking.  We asked the girl behind the counter what these little rectangles were - she'd just pulled them from the oven and they were puffed up and emitting visible plumes of steam.  "These?" she said, giving us a suspicious look. "These are pie."  Pie?
"Yeah," she said. "Cheese pie."  She gave us another funny look.  How could we not identify pie?
In the UK, pie can be fruity, meaty, cheesy, round, square, deep, flat or otherwise.  It seems that if it's wrapped in pastry, it can be called a pie.  This one was mildly cheesy, with a small dose of grassy herbs and sweetish potato inside. It tasted a bit like a knish.

In Hawes, in one of the small stone pubs that dot the Yorkshire Dales, we tried steak, kidney and "Old Peculier" pie.  The beer, which really is spelled that way, made the dish an English take on an Irish classic "steak and Guinness pie."  Fish pies were about the same, with cream replacing gravy and large, pillowy chunks of fish.   It became clear that 'pie' could mean a stew with a puff pastry hat sitting on top or a broiled topper of mashed potatoes.

That's not to say that sometimes a pie is a pie just as you'd want it to be.  The United Kingdom kept our  excellent baked goods streak going.  Through Scandinavia, over to Ireland and now here, it's been three months of excellent whole grains, seasonal fruit and powdered sugar.  It was the stuff of dreams, of magazine pictorials.  And 'stuff' couldn't be a more appropriate word, because there was never a case in which we needed dessert.  We were often full on ale before a meal even began.  And yet...  who can resists?

Once we had 'pies' sort of figured out, there was the whole issue of 'puddings.'

Now, to address the elephant in the kitchen.  Is British food bland?  We can't deny the fact that salt shakers were employed at almost every meal and that things like "mushroom stroganoff" (a vegetarian pub staple) had a dizzying array of ingredients while still managing to taste like nothing at all except for a hard to describe, oxymoronic mix of 'rich' and 'watery.'  But we can't say that this, umm, subtlety of flavor was necessarily the mark of bad food or unskilled chefs.  It's just a style, one that favors the heartier, homier flavors of cinnamon, clove, cream and thyme rather than the punch of salt and spice.  One that prefers you tailor your own dish to your taste with the always readily available supply of condiments.  Above, a selection of packets in a Scottish pub.  Traditional British food may have a reputation for being bland, but does it really get much more British than worcester sauce, HP, English mustard and malt vinegar?

There's all that Indian food if you're looking for something punchier.  Some of the best Indian food of our lives.  It's what Brits eat out, if they're not having stew in a pub.  Like red-sauce Italian food in America, it's not seen as "ethnic" anymore.  We never had a true, traditional afternoon tea - towers of sandwiches, scones, china pots, clotted cream.  Nor did we stop for a "sunday carvery" - a man with a saber, thick cuts of meat, plentiful sides.  But we did eat plenty of curry, saag and daal.  Indian food is popular from London to Inverness, an omnipresent second flavor.  It is also not particularly photogenic, especially in dimmed restaurant lighting on reflective copper dishes.  Instead, we leave you with this picture of a ram.  Lamb or "mutton" is very common in the UK, and at Indian restaurants it is simply referred to as "meat."  Sorry, big guy.

A Warm Winter's Jacket

You say 'po-TAY-to' and Brits say... well, they say 'tatties,' mostly.  Depending on the form, they also say 'crisps' for chips, 'chips' for fries, 'mash' for mashed potatoes - unless they are mashed with cabbage and other leftover vegetables, in which case they're 'bubble and squeak.'  For the sound they make in the pan?  Then, there are 'jacket potatoes,' the British name for baked potatoes.  And with winter upon us, being able to eat my lunch all wrapped up in a warm jacket has been wonderful.

It all began on our very first day in the United Kingdom, in Edinburgh, Scotland.  We spotted a place called The Sandwich Shop.  Here, in the birthplace of the sandwich, it only seemed natural.  The Sandwich Shop had all our dream fillings - avocado, cheddar, red onion, hummus, all sorts of condiments.  The trouble was, it was so cold out that a sandwich just didn't seem... comforting enough.  That's when I noticed that the optional vessels in which you could have your toppings piled were baguette, wrap, roll and jacket potatoes.  Some fresh, summery fruit and veg nestled inside a warm, mushy jacket, please!  Would I like butter?  Why, yes, I would, thank you!

We were in the University neighborhood the next day and went into a coffee shop.  The homey smell of spuds mixed with the ground beans in the air.  While a young woman ladled out soup and plated scones from behind the counter,  most people had their orders delivered from a staircase in the back.  Jacket potatoes just oozing with curry and cream obscured objects.  Chicken strips? Tuna chunks?  Out the front door, we saw a steady stream of people descend stairs and then come back up with a square styrofoam parcel.  The cafe was above a place called Rotato, in which the jackets were cooked on spits over a fire.  Get it?  ROtating poTATO.  We went down and got ourselves a spicy chickpea jacket with rocket and sour cream (this time, holding the butter) and ate it in the park.

From then on, jacket potatoes were always an option - in cafes, pubs, restaurants.  Menus had a sandwich section, maybe wraps or paninis and a 'jacket potatoes.'  In Scotland, haggis made some appearances as a filling option.  Otherwise, though, the trend began that we would see throughout England and Wales.  Jacket Potato topping choices were almost uniformly tuna mayonnaise (a very honest description of the tuna-to-mayo ratio), coronation chicken (chicken with a yellow curry mayonnaise), coleslaw (cabbage and mayo), prawns marie rose (tiny shrimps mixed with a sauce of ketchup and mayonnaise, 'marie rose') and beans & cheese (baked & cheddar).  Above, the prawn choice.

In Warwick, England we saw a car pulling a cart behind it.  The black cart with gold trimming had a bell affixed to it which rang as it moved down the street.  He set up shop in the town square and put up his specials sign.  It was the Shire Jacket Potato guy and people, including us, lined up to grab our hot street treat.  Chicken curry, Chili and Beans were his hot options for the day.  The potato was removed from his coal oven and split - the steam escaped, stabbing the cold air in thick streaks.  Then, a healthy slice of butter was patted in, Merlin's curried chicken was ladled on.  For my beans and cheese one, he asked if I wanted beans first or cheese.  I said beans for aesthetic reasons, but should have said cheese for melty-goodness reasons.  Those are some stick-to-your-ribs spuds right there.  Beware of burnt tater tongues.

The Most British Cheese

I think the personality of a place can always be tasted in its cheese.  The voluptuous, brash, classic  array from Italy.  The seduction and traditionalism, sensory overload and decadence of cheese from France.  Britain's big three paint a picture of their own.  Stilton blue is complex, showy and rich, like the palaces and manor houses.  Cheddar is the stone walls and old mills, the Industrial Revolution and the stuff upper lip.  And Wensleydale is the B&B owner who has set out a hospitality tray of cookies and teas.  Wensleydale is the misty cow pastures, the cream teas and the tailored tweeds.  It's the Yorkshire Dales and English hospitality.

Wensleydale cheese has a long history and has changed over time, growing milder with age.  Now a white cow's milk cheese, it began life as sheeps-milk blue made by Cistercian monks from the Roquefort region of France.   They'd resettled in the valley of Wensleydale and brought their French blue recipe along with them.  In 1540, the monastery was closed and local farmers decided to pick up where the monks left off.  This is when Wensleydale started to take on its own character, ditching its French roots and blue veins.

Generation after generation continued the craft, even through World War II, a time when most other small production creameries died out.  During the war, cows were drafted into service.  Don't worry, they weren't outfitted with grenades or anything.  Their milk was called in for the production of "Government Cheddar."  Doesn't that just sound delicious?  But somehow, the Wensleydale Creamery in Hawes survived.  Today it is the last remaining dairy in Wensleydale that makes the eponymous cheese.  ("Wensleydale" doesn't have the same protection as, say, "Stilton" and can be produced places that aren't in Wensleydale.  But Wensleydale Creamery stuff's the real deal.)  Approaching the Visitor's Centre, you smell warm milk.

The Wensleydale Creamery in Hawes really gave a new meaning to the term Visitor Centre.  I see those two words on a sign and assume that it means some sort of tourist set-up with cafe, shop, souvenirs, a small exhibit.  It had all  that and a museum to boot, but it also was just this big, buzzing place full of... well... visitors.  Families came in to grab lunch in the cafe and then go tap on the glass window overlooking the cheese production.  "Simon!" One shouted while waving and snapping a camera phone picture.  Simon's blush could have been the reaction of an embarrassed brother or that of a caught-off-guard crush.

People made the sample station rounds, munching on the different orange and white cubes, flecked with bits of cranberry, apricot, chili and blue mold.  Then, they grabbed the good old mild & crumbly original Wensleydale they came in to get, along with a jar of chutney, and went to the cash register to pay up.  We sat with our computers, happy to take advantage of their "Free WIFI" tabletop signs, another testament to the fact that they wanted you to linger after your "breakfast bap" (bap = wrap) or daily pud special (pud = dessert).  The cheesecake made from the ginger Wensleydale looked divine.

There's a spring in Wensleydale Creamery's step these days.  After two near-closures, the flagship cheese is enjoying a resurgence in popularity, thanks to cartoon characters Wallace and Gromit - well, Wallace, specifically, the sweater vest wearing cheese connoisseur.  His very favorite cheese just happens to be Wensleydale.  Why? Because its delicious of course!  But also because the creator just thought that the name sounded so wonderfully British.  There is something really quintessential about it, I think.  The way it rolls of the tongue like green hills do across the landscape.  Quintessential in name and flavor, really.

It's not as loud and vivacious as Stilton, and not the dependable workhorse that Cheddar is, but Wensleydale may just be the most British of British cheeses.  It mixes amiably with pickle or chutney on a Ploughman's sandwich, rests on a cracker like an old hand on a walking stick.  Beside a slice of fruitcake, it's the loyal companion, a tad bland, but lovable.  The perfect complement, not too salty or sweet or sharp or tart.  It is a subtle flavor, but a strong one nonetheless.  One could call it brightly acidic, well-rounded, mild but strong. 

People say that the heart of the Yorkshire Dales is in the town of Hawes - and the heart of Hawes is Wensleydale Creamery.  The town's population is mostly employed at the creamery, the menus at tea houses and pubs all feature Wensleydale cheese in a proud way.  Hawes is a tight cluster of old stone buildings, the type of grey, hard-edged exteriors that you know have floral wallpaper and decorative pillows inside.  The flowery interior within the walls that were built to last.  When you put a knife to Wensleydale cheese, it feels the same way.  It crumbles and the morsels are wonderfully bright.  A cheese really does resemble the place it comes from.