Hangzhou, China: Two Totally Different Towns in Oneby Randi / August 12, 2017Huangshan, China: One of the Most Spectacular Sights in the Country…So They Say
After our time in the city of Hangzhou, we left on a short train to Huangshan, one of China’s most important, and most spectacularly beautiful, sights. This is what’s known as the “Yellow Mountain”, and Chinese people will come from all over the country to climb up to the summit. It’s a strenuous climb, and there are a few route options to choose from – including via cable car, which is cheating!, we said, gung ho on doing a great day of hiking and climbing. Huangshan was the entry on our itinerary that I added myself. I had seen pictures of the mountain, and was in awe of how beautiful it was. I have to SEE the big f-ing thing, I said! I have to see this myself! Turns out, the universe had other ideas for me. I mean, I was there, I climbed up, oh how I climbed, but I didn’t actually see…anything.
Tangkou
We’ll get there. First, we had to get to the town at the base of the mountain, Tangkou, where we were staying the first night. You either stay in Tunxi, by the station, or Tangkou, just under an hour away. Both are tiny, two street villages with a few questionable restaurants, a few shops, a few hostels, and some residents who look at you like, what the crap are you doing here. If you stay in Tunxi, you still have to take the bus to the base the day you climb the mountain, anyway, so there’s really no good reason not to stay in Tangkou. We stayed at a good place called YSHS Hostel, and it was fine – clean, basic, quiet – but what made it were the owners. Every review we read raved about “John and his mom” and we were like, whaaat is that about, but it’s true, John and his mom were the nicest people ever! His mom is the cook and doesn’t speak English but communicated her kindness successfully. She was very concerned when I didn’t have breakfast with Z one morning (I do room fruit for breakfast!). And John is great, and he will pick you up from and drive you to the various bus stations whenever you call him. So I definitely recommend staying there. They didn’t have a good laundry machine, so we did laundry just up the street at the other hostel, which was an interesting experience. The dryer was actually like a standing zipped up closet with an open bottom. Didn’t really work.
open bottoms don’t really work for dryers
The mountain in the background that you can almost see through the fog
We ‘explored’ the little town and got excited for the next day’s climb. It was foggy that first day but we crossed our fingers that we’d have better weather. Apparently it rains 200 days of the year on the mountain, but in the peak of summer, the storms usually move fast. So we were told.
couldn’t read this in person either
The next day, we set off early in the morning with John driving us to the bus station for the quick bus to the entrance of the mountain. This is where everyone needs to buy tickets to enter the mountain, which cost over 200 yuan. This is where 99% of people get on the cable car so they can get to the summit in one piece. And this is where Z and I spent 20 minutes asking everyone who worked there how in god’s name we find the actual climbing path. There were zero signs for people attempting to actually climb up. It was infuriating, and stupid. This is a big deal to climb! But that day we were the only people there at that time wanting to climb. That should have tipped us off that maybe it wasn’t a good day – the fog had worsened – but because of our schedule, it was our only shot anyway.
Also, I didn’t yet mention, there are two climbing paths up the mountain – the eastern and western steps. The eastern steps are 7.5 kilometers of mostly easier, flatter, more doable steps and terrain. It’s still obviously a lot, but it’s better for the average person. The western steps are harder, to say the least, and our guide book firmly dissuades the reader from attempting to go up them. It was 15 kilometers of killer steep uphill mountain stairs. 15 kilometers. That is like 10 miles. Uphill. I tried a stairmaster once and lasted like a minute. We were not doing the western steps.
John had other ideas, though. We said, John my boy! drive us to the entrance for the eastern steps! And he said – NO! You don’t want to do that, the scenery is nothing it’s a waste it’s terrible! The western steps are what’s actually worth seeing! And despite being TOLD (by the book) that it was super insane to do, we were like, Okay John! Take us to the 15 kilometers of steep mountain stairs! We will be fine!
We were not fine – and it didn’t even have to do with how hard it was.
So to start this hike of insanity when no one who worked there could point to a freaking path beginning, we followed buses that were going a little bit farther up the road, which was super freaking scary and dangerous – this was a mountain path road, meaning it was winding and narrow and buses careen around the bends without expecting to see people walking. It was scary and dumb but it was literally the only way to start the climb, apparently. What the hell! I can’t get over this, considering how big an attraction this climb is. Where were the starting signs, Huangshan! Get your shit together!
there’s a really tall mountain behind that fog somewhere
Luckily, we made it to a spot that finally clearly signalled for pedestrians to ‘turn into the woods here’, and we began the real path finally. It was chilly and very foggy, but we hoped for a change in the weather soon. And we got one, just not in the direction we wanted. Oh no, the weather got much, much worse. First, it started to rain. We had our anoraks and umbrellas so we didn’t worry about that. It’s just rain! On slippery mountain steps. No biggie. And it was getting colder and colder, which, well, at least it wasn’t sweltering hot, right? But for now, we concentrated on climbing endless stairs. Hooray for exercise! This will be great! I’ll feel so great after all this leg work!
a dozen or so of the LITERALLY MILLIONS OF STEPS I CLIMBED
After what seemed like hours, we assumed we’d made great progress. We came to one of the first titled points, the location of an old temple or pagoda long ago or something, and looked at the map (really really shitty map, all of them are, and they are all different) and realized we had gone like one kilometer tops. We’d gone nowhere. We met a group of Parisians who were like, surely this is halfway, right? We told them the bad news and they were like aaaare you joking?? This is TERRIBLE! It was great to be with people who were complaining more than me. I was okay so far, just a little cold and wet, but I still was optimistic that the fog and clouds would break before we got out of the forest and to a point on the mountain where views would be good.
Over the next two hours, it didn’t just get colder and rainier. It was like the coldest and wettest we’ve ever been for that long. We were soaked to the bone, our clothes so wet we could wring out our shirts despite wearing anoraks, and so frozen that they were like sheets of ice hitting our shivering skin. Every step we took, it was like swinging into a sheet of ice. Clammy, goose-bumped skin, completely drenched hair and clothes, and SOCKS, despite good hiking boots (and hiking socks! it went through to my base layer socks! so gross!). It was completely miserable, and so were we. But we were going to stay at a nice hotel at the top of the mountain that night, as is like the thing to do, so we kept plowing ahead, despite the worsening weather. The rain got harder, but it was the wind that was killer. It was like hurricane wind, gale force winds knocking us back – which, when you are on top of mountain cliffs, is not an ideal situation. People were hanging onto the slippery ‘railings’ from the 4th century trying to make it to the next plateau for safety but the wind thwarted us at every turn. Then the wind blew my umbrella inside out – which it had been doing repeatedly, and as usual I would turn it the other way and let the wind blow it rightside in or however you say that. But this time, the wind was so ferocious that it blew my umbrella inside out and BROKE the spokes. No more umbrella usage for me! So I used my soaking wet buff to keep my anorak hood in place and settled for that being as good as I could get, as rain just poured right down into my eyes and made it harder to see now. We made it to another little overhang section with another little shop (luckily there were drink and snack stands frequently), and dozens and dozens of people were camped out, waiting for the weather to lift but we all knew by now that it would only get worse. And it did. It really did, but we continued because we had to be almost there, right?
this is the face BEFORE my umbrella completely broke, can you even
It started to hail, guys. We were probably 10 kilometers up the mountain by now – UP A MOUNTAIN, on a swirling path by the edge of it – and it was HAILING. And gale force winds were whipping our entire bodies hither and thither and, according to the people coming down the mountain, we still were at least an hour from the end of the Western Steps. Another hour, after it had been probably three and a half by now of consistent trudging directly UP. We were a mess. The French guys were even worse. We all huddled together under a small roof and scarfed down a few necessary blood-sugar-raising snacks. I have never been a huge fan of Pringles, but the entire can we demolished was the greatest thing I’d ever eaten in my life.
The worst part, though, wasn’t how miserable the weather was making us. It was how miserable the weather was making the view. Or, rather, there was no view anymore. We had come to Huangshan, I NEEDED to see Huangshan, because the view from and of the mountain is considered one of the most magical sights in all of China, a must-see, just beyond comprehension how gorgeous it is. And we could barely see three feet in front of us, let alone anything in the thousands of feet below us. It was like we were just standing in the clouds, and there was no seeing anything outside of the clouds. It’s a real shame that we couldn’t enjoy the whole point of this experience and destination, merely because of bad luck and timing.
We continued. One more hour, we said. We can do this. One more hour and we can relax in our overpriced but should-be-decent hotel (all the hotels up at the mountain were overpriced for what they were because they can be, but still, hotels), we can take a warm shower and put on dry clothes. And maybe tomorrow would be better, and we could wake up for sunrise over the vista. So we trudged. One foot in front of the other. We were literally willing our feet to take each step.
the famous gorgeous view from the top of Huangshan…completely blocked by fog and cloud
At about the 4.5 hour mark, we finally, finally finished the 15 kilometers uphill and reached the end of the Western Steps! We were so disappointed that we couldn’t see any of the famous views, but at least we finished the climb! We made it. Ugh, finally. So now to our hotel! Immediately at the top of the Western Steps is a different hotel, a restaurant, toilets (thanks! although there were enough along the way, thankfully), and the path to this end of the cable car. (Yes, those wise people we saw at the ticket entrance who just hopped in the cable car missed the whole dire experience of climbing in freezing hail and got off here.) We said goodbye to the French people as they happily praised the cable car they’ve been waiting to take back down and get the hell off this mountain. We asked people in the hotel and the restaurant how to get to the Paiyunlou (spelling wrong I’m sure) Hotel and they showed us a vague route on our maps that continued trekking down and around various parts of the mountain… for another 4.5 hours. UM EXCUSE ME WHAT? WHAT IS THAT YOU SAID? We kept asking different people and they all said somewhere between 4 and 5 hours, so it was real. This nightmare was real. We did not have another 2 hours in us, let alone 4-5! We called the hotel to find out whether this was a) for real, and b) why there was no information anywhere saying that this hotel was located like NOT where anyone says it is (including the book! It was f-ing recommended by our book which made NO mention of it being anywhere other than at the top of this part of the climb! DAMMIT TO HELL.) But the person who answered the phone did not speak English, and after saying a few words in Chinese she hung up on us. That’s after someone finally , finally, picked up the phone, so continuing to call wasn’t really an option and apparently despite saying that they spoke English, they did not, so what good would it do. We asked one more person the route and got another 4.5 hour answer. And then, for the first time in our lives, we bailed on a hotel booking and called John and asked if we could stay again at YSHS if we came back down. He said of course, because he’s the nicest, and that he would pick us up where he dropped us that morning, so many hours that felt like days ago, so we got on the cable car, tried to thaw during the INSANE 20-minute ride (longest cable car of my entire life, jfc) during which we continued to see absolutely zilch outside, and reassured each other that we had made the right decision. It was a sucky choice to have to make, but we could not have gone through another entire round of what we had already gone through in the wind and rain, just for the chance of better weather in the morning, when we could save four hours of hiking and shower and relax at YSHS and enjoy Tangkou a little more. I think we made the right decision.
damn you fog
just to prove I’m not exaggerating about the weather
At the base, we got on the short bus back to the bus station, and John picked us up a minute later and drove us back to safety. And warmth. Thawing out in that shower was the best ever. We unpacked our day packs that we had on the mountain with us (John had been storing our big bags till our intended return the next day, so that was nice and lucky) and saw that every single last item was soaked through. I had to throw out a whole notebook that I had buried in the bottom, along with a box’s worth of tissues, both of which had turned to Gwynnie’s website mush. Our clothes for the next day were so wet we could wring them, and our passports were soaked! We had to dry them out and then place them under furniture to re-form and flatten. Thank god they weren’t actually ruined, just wet and misshapen. But the worst, the saddest for me, was my last pack of my favorite gum all the way from the USA, now a disintegrating box of wet gunk. (I kept it for a week after this, hoping it would dry out and get back to an edible consistency. It did not.)
After we took boiling hot showers (we thought about going back to the hostel up the street and asking to stand in that standing-closet clothes dryer but that would have required going back outside), we went into the very nice common lobby area and chatted with a French father and son while I think John’s son played video games. John brought us all tea and crackers on the house, which was really sweet of him. The French guys lived in Paris, so we talked about how much we love (and miss…oh so miss) Paris, and all about their travels (Indonesia! Fun!) and ours, and it came out that we had our honeymoon (three years ago!) in Morocco, and the father got super excited and exclaimed “I am Moroccan!” We went through the details of our Moroccan trekking trip, as much as we could remember of the little Berber villages in the mountains that we stayed in, and of all the places in the world, it turned out that he was from Imlil, one of those tiny villages we had trekked to and lodged in, in the Atlas Mountains! How amazing is that! That these people we were having tea with in like the smallest little village in China happened to be from the smallest little place in Morocco that we went to. Such a small world!
Soon, we needed food. Those magical Pringles were indeed wonderful but not enough to refuel after this day, so we set off to find some weird looking restaurants with pictures of food we could point to. Luckily, such places were plentiful, both in terms of the pointing and the weird, so we were in luck. I pointed to several vegetables and got them, and we liked it, and we loved it.
one of these was from the day before. plus rice, always rice
After proper sustenance, we went off to find my favorite things that I had discovered in these little streets the previous day – my two favorite things in China, bubble tea and steamed buns. Yesirree, this tiny little town had BOTH, and great versions of them too! Can you even! The off-brand bubble tea place was called Tea & Brown, and it was so cheap and pretty decent. I mean as long as I can successfully communicate that I want the bubbles in mine, we’re good, I don’t care if you just give me a cup of water as long as there’s bubbles. One time the lady didn’t give me bubbles (often they don’t come in the fruit teas, and I guess I didn’t say the words for ‘please give me bubles’ right) and she tried to get away with it! Hell no! I (very politely and sweetly) made her open the plasticked top part and pour bubbles on top.
Even better was the random lady cooking up tons (tonnes!) of steamed buns near a garage on what we considered the main street. I don’t even know if they were really for sale to the general public, but that first day I asked whether they were ‘su shi’ – vegetarian – and she pointed to the veggie ones, I said yayyy gimme, she said 1.5 yuan each (like 22 cents), and then every day after I bought like 4 at a time for less than $1 altogether! I can’t even eat four in a day but I couldn’t buy fewer; they were so cheap and big and great! It was SUCH a find! Not even in Shanghai did I find amazing vegetarian steamed buns like this! And so cheap! Because they were 1.5 yuan, I referred to them as the “one dollar five buns” (and one time, just to finish the thought, we bought SIX!). My family will understand this, and okay I’ll explain – it’s just referring to a video of my cousin when she first looooose a tooth and said the tooth fairy gave her ‘1 dollar 5’ and somehow it is THE FUNNIEST THING EVER. Anyway, the 1 dollar 5 steamed buns were so good, and so convenient, and so easy to get, I wish every town in China had a lady like this. What a great lady.
NOT SHADY
We also had fun exploring the small shops in town for goodies we might want…or not.
DO YOU SEE IT? is that the English name, or the tag line or just something they wanted us to know?
mmm nathanks
just another ridiculous face for the road
So, we made the best of our extra time in Tangkou, but it really is such a disappointment to have missed out on the full experience of Huangshan. It’s supposed to be so magical and, for many, life-changing to see the majestic sweep of the misty mountains as you climb up and up and up, so to be met instead with pure dense cloud cover was such a damn shame. The only slight silver lining, if you can call it that, is that the next day was gross and foggy too, so if we (somehow) had made it to our hotel and tried for the views the next morning, we still would not have seen anything good. So that’s good, I guess! It means we made the right decision coming down the mountain; we just unwittingly picked the wrong week to visit Huangshan (and the wrong hotel regardless! Who builds a hotel almost 9 hours of trekking away and doesn’t say anything about the second half of it?! and I’m still so mad at the book for including all this info about it and not saying p.s. it’s not located where it says on our map! grrr). It’s too sad to share pictures of what it actually looks like here (and, well, obviously I didn’t take any myself), so take a quick second to google ‘Huangshan yellow mountain’ and take a look, and then you’ll see why we added this stop to our agenda, and why we’re pretty mad at our crappy luck. And then comment below OH DAMN IT’S BEAUTIFUL SO SORRY FOR YOU. I knowwww.
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“The Essential Vegan Travel Guide” & Interview with the Author, The Vegan Word!
This is Caitlin! Caitlin says hi!
Hello everyone! Today we have a special post about the very helpful book “The Essential Vegan Travel Guide”, by Caitlin Galer-Unti of The Vegan Word. The book has been out for a little while but Caitlin and I are both very very important people so this is more of a reminder to buy the book rather than new news. Not only am I going to share my thoughts, which you love, but we have a super awesome interview with the super awesome author herself, CGU! Caitlin Galer University! I ask the tough, hard-hitting questions that we all wished Megyn Kelly had the balls to ask, so gird your loins. Just kidding I ask fun questions. Also buy it here!
A shot from CGU’s travels in Romania! Romania! She knows what she is doing. Photo cred: Caitlin Galer-Unti.
Before we get to the interview and find out about all the drama that went down during it (zero drama), let’s talk about this book. I haven’t been so happy reading a book that felt like it was written just for me since I read the backstage account of the “Wicked” run in San Francisco called Unnaturally Green. If you are vegan and if you ever traveled, you will connect with this book (the vegan travel one, not the Wicked one) in many ways. And if you are vegan and want to travel ever again, this book has some great tips to make it easier and better.
Right off the bat, the introduction will have fellow seasoned travelers quickly commiserating about the worst thing that happens when you’re traveling – finally getting to that restaurant you’ve been so excited to go to and finding it closed. Ew and oh no! Luckily, CGUniversity gives great advice for how to avoid such heartbreak. I appreciate how the book actually describes new-to-me research methods for finding vegan food in any location instead of just saying ‘use the internet, it’s all there.’ I know how important and how frustrating research can be for any purpose, so having new tips and tricks at my disposal is going to make such an important difference in this most important purpose of research, finding food.
Cake in Stockholm! I didn’t get any cake in Stockholm! What the hell! It’s because I didn’t have this book yet! Photo cred: Caitlin Galer-Unti
You’ll also be commiserating hard with her recap of a terrible American Airlines flight (is there any other kind) where not only did they forget her vegan meal, but they also LAUGHED at her. Guess what? American did the same thing to me! Well they didn’t laugh (CGU that is AWFUL) but they just didn’t believe me that cheese and eggs weren’t what vegan meant and tried to persuade me that I was the one mistaken. Moral, don’t fly American if you can help it. What a bunch of shittoboggans.
But most of the book is inspiring, and you will feel not only excited but ready to make your next trip a slam-dunk. Or you will be ready to slam-dunk it. How do basketball words work? I love loved how the book strongly suggests making friends with vegan and vegetarian locals. Honestly, I never do this and I really want to now. It’s clearly the best thing to do – these people will know where you can eat and where you can eat well, and they’ll know the best things to do in their town! Why haven’t I done this more? Why haven’t you? Another, very different, thing I never considered doing is making oatmeal in a coffee maker! Dude! That’s hilarious and also brill! I don’t even make coffee in a coffee maker (I don’t drink coffee) so I never really considered their usefulness to me. This is a game changer for places where your only other breakfast option is maybe a piece of bread with nothing on it, or, you know, if you love oatmeal, which everyone does.
CGU offers lots of tips like these and more, all while maintaining an optimistic tone. I cracked up several times at her blunt humor. For instance, when responding to the common refrain we all hear about how we will ‘insult the local culture’ if we don’t eat their traditional foods, Caitlin points out the very true, very persuasive fact that ‘even non-vegans might refuse to participate in [some local traditions] – like bullfighting, child marriage, or stoning gay people.’ Cracked. Up.
The only thing I wanted more of was how to deal with the non-food part of your travels, the activities in places where everything you can do seems non-vegan. I almost went on a trip like this, where the only things to do were like hunting and ice-fishing and bear-riding or something like that and decided not to go. But maybe I missed other things I could have done. But obviously that is not the intent of this book, which is a great help about the most important part of your travels – eating. Go buy it! Here’s a link! I get a kick-back!
But most of the book is inspiring, and you will feel not only excited but ready to make your next trip a slam-dunk. Or you will be ready to slam-dunk it. How do basketball words work? I love loved how the book strongly suggests making friends with vegan and vegetarian locals. Honestly, I never do this and I really want to now. It’s clearly the best thing to do – these people will know where you can eat and where you can eat well, and they’ll know the best things to do in their town! Why haven’t I done this more? Why haven’t you? Another, very different, thing I never considered doing is making oatmeal in a coffee maker! Dude! That’s hilarious and also brill! I don’t even make coffee in a coffee maker (I don’t drink coffee) so I never really considered their usefulness to me. This is a game changer for places where your only other breakfast option is maybe a piece of bread with nothing on it, or, you know, if you love oatmeal, which everyone does.
CGU offers lots of tips like these and more, all while maintaining an optimistic tone. I cracked up several times at her blunt humor. For instance, when responding to the common refrain we all hear about how we will ‘insult the local culture’ if we don’t eat their traditional foods, Caitlin points out the very true, very persuasive fact that ‘even non-vegans might refuse to participate in [some local traditions] – like bullfighting, child marriage, or stoning gay people.’ Cracked. Up.
The only thing I wanted more of was how to deal with the non-food part of your travels, the activities in places where everything you can do seems non-vegan. I almost went on a trip like this, where the only things to do were like hunting and ice-fishing and bear-riding or something like that and decided not to go. But maybe I missed other things I could have done. But obviously that is not the intent of this book, which is a great help about the most important part of your travels – eating. Go buy it! Here’s a link! I get a kick-back!
On to the interview!
TEN QUESTIONS FOR CAITLIN GALER-UNTI OF THE VEGAN WORD
Italics are my words, non-italics are CGU’s. I mean also try to look at what’s in the form of a question.
Italics are my words, non-italics are CGU’s. I mean also try to look at what’s in the form of a question.
1. First of all, I’m going to ask something that only I really will care about. In the book, you mentioned a boat hostel in Stockholm. About ten years ago, I stayed in a tugboat hostel in Stockholm! The Red Boat something? Did you stay here? Because that was awesome and I haven’t thought about it in ten years!!
CGU: That’s the hostel! Unfortunately I didn’t stay there though. It looks so cool though!
(thus ends the questions I asked for personal reasons.)
2. Everyone knows you are a baller of a vegan traveler, but did you travel a lot (or at all) before going vegan? If so, how do the experiences compare?
CGU: I’ve done more travelling since going vegan but I did travel quite a bit in my pre-vegan days. I’m a lifelong vegetarian so all my pre-vegan travel experiences were of vegetarian travel. I went all over the U.S. with my family as a child, mainly on road trips. I don’t know exactly but I think we visited between 40 and 45 states! I also went to Canada and 7 countries in Europe as a vegetarian, some of which I later visited as a vegan.
So, I’ve visited a few places as both a vegetarian and a vegan and can directly compare. And honestly, the main difference is I eat SO much better as a vegan traveller!
It does involve a bit more upfront planning – now instead of reading a guidebook, I find myself looking up vegetarian and vegan restaurants in advance of my trip and reading reviews. It means I never end up at just any old tourist trap – not that I ever set out to eat at tourist traps, but I definitely didn’t take very much care in choosing restaurants prior to going vegan, and would often just eat at the first place I saw. And sometimes the result was some pretty dissatisfying meals!
For example, I remember eating at several bistros in Paris in my pre-vegan days and being told the only vegetarian option they had was chips and a side salad. We actually ate pretty awful food the whole time we were in Paris. I’ve been back many times since then as a vegan and I’ve eaten so well! Although Paris has historically had a bad reputation for vegan food, it’s improved a lot in recent years and I’ve had some great food there, from vegan fondue at Gentle Gourmet to a burger at East Side and even an all-vegetarian bistro experience that was miles beyond my experience eating vegetarian at a non-vegetarian bistro.
Taken in Barcelona, where CGU now lives! Lucky! Photo cred: Caitlin Galer-Unti
3. The advice in this book will definitely help in avoiding such situations, but how do you cope in those rare times when everything goes wrong, you can’t find food, it’s pouring rain, you’re lost, you’re homesick, you’re actual sick — aka, the amalgamation of travel nightmares?
CGU: I had pretty much that in Beijing and I just allowed myself to feel really sorry for myself. I had a really bad flu, and coupled with the pollution had developed a hacking cough. It was raining and I couldn’t find a vegetarian restaurant which wasn’t where it said it would be on Happycow (this is why I suggest in the book that you always double check the address and even call in advance!), and I was nearly an hour’s walk from the nearest metro. I was hungry and angry and I just sat down on pavement and cried. I got all the frustration out with my tears and once I was done I actually felt a lot better, and was able to pick myself up and go back to the only vegetarian restaurant I’d been to previously and was able to locate easily. I got myself some takeaway and went back to my hostel to have an early night. Then I found a vegan on Meetup.com who arranged the vegan meetup in Beijing, sent her a message and she suggested a traditional tea I could pick up for my flu – within a couple of days I was feeling better!
4. You’ve recently moved to Barcelona! How cool is that? I went to Barcelona for a week in 2006 but haven’t been back since; I really can’t wait to return! Where did you live before and how did your traveling prowess help with the move?
CGU: Barcelona’s such a great city and it’s really improved for vegans in recent years! The first time I visited was in 2011 and there weren’t many vegan options but the vegan scene’s really exploded in the last few years and now a new veggie place seems to open every month.
I moved from the US to London in 2008 and lived there until moving to Barcelona last summer. While I was in London I had the chance to travel around Europe a lot so I got pretty used to finding vegan food all over.
5. How does Barcelona’s veganness nowadays compare with your hometown’s? What would be the first piece of advice to you give someone traveling to Barcelona?
CGU: Hahaha – my hometown is in the middle of the cornfields and fields of cows (in the summer when the wind blows the whole town smells of manure) in the Midwestern US so Barcelona is about a hundred times more vegan! Actually, I hear there’s a vegan restaurant in my hometown these days so it’s made some progress (just goes to show you veganism’s growing everywhere!!).
Barcelona’s really vegan-friendly today so my advice would be to start familiarising yourself with the vegan restaurants here! I’ve got a lost of the vegan dishes you absolutely must-eat in Barcelona and I’m actually working on a vegan guidebook to Barcelona right now (you can sign up for updates on the book plus get my list of Barcelona’s best-kept vegan secrets here). The vegetarian and vegan restaurants in Barcelona are pretty concentrated in the centre and the alternative neighbourhood of Gracia, so you’ll run into most of them just walking around, and if you’re seeing the main tourist sights you’ll never be too far from one! While there aren’t as many veggie places as in London I’d say they’re more concentrated here in Barcelona so you’re more likely to stumble across them. For example in my neighbourhood, Gracia, I live within 10 to 15 minutes’ walk of an all-vegan supermarket, vegan bakery, vegetarian bar, a vegan deli, plus a couple of vegetarian and vegan restaurants and countless small health food shops.
6. Part of being a good traveler is having respect for other lands and cultures, buuuuut, if you could change one aspect of a place you’ve been lately, what would it be?
CGU: Apart from making everyone vegan? 😉 I’d say I’d get rid of the ham here. Barcelona’s really good for vegetarian and vegan restaurants but I’d definitely get rid of all the jamon (Spanish ham) if I could. People eat way too much of it, they put it on absolutely everything, rendering otherwise vegan dishes non-vegan, and there are giant ham legs hanging from ceilings all over the city – so gross!
7. Do you prefer traveling alone, or does it depend on where you’re going?
CGU: It depends who I’m going with! Haha. I generally prefer travelling alone, because I feel like I see more. I get really distracted when I’m talking to someone and don’t really pay attention to my surroundings. Plus sometimes when you’re travelling with another person or a group, you end up in a little bubble and don’t interact with locals. However there are some places I haven’t been that I’ve heard are generally safer to visit with someone and I’ve saved those to travel to later….Now I just need to find someone I can travel with without wanting to kill them.
8. Do you collect souvenirs or something similarly tangible on your travels? When I was younger, I strongly eschewed souvenirs and claimed I was ‘collecting experiences’, but now I’ve started buying personal souvenirs to remember those experiences. My stance fully switched. Have you completely changed views on some aspect of your traveling?
CGU: I tend to spend most of my money on food so I never have any left over for souvenirs! However I do fairly frequently end up buying some item of clothing that I forgot at home, like a scarf or gloves, and I always enjoy looking at it later and remembering where I bought it.
I used to try to spend the absolute lowest amount of money on travel I could (like so many 20 year old backpackers!), which often meant taking a flight at some ridiculous hour of the morning. I always insisted that was absolutely fine and I’d never pay extra for a flight, but now I have completely changed my mind and I’d much rather pay extra to not have to get up in the middle of the night to catch a plane!
9. Name three people that you wish would buy your book, whether you know them or not. What do you hope they will gain from it?
CGU: Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero, because they are my vegan heroes and their book Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World made me go vegan. I’m sure that Isa and Terry are vegan travel pros though so they probably don’t need it!
And then this is cheating a bit because it’s not a specific person but I’d say anyone who is vegan but struggles with travelling. I’ve heard so many stories of people eating non-vegan stuff on their travels (like this) and it makes me super sad! I usually end up reaching out to them and offering them a free copy of my book – which is probably bad for my bottom line but I think it’s way more important to make sure that people are informed about finding vegan food on the road. (this is a cheater answer I really just wanted to know if you knew any celebrities just kidding really nice answer 😛 )
10. If an anonymous benefactor wanted to bankroll one month of travel for you, where would you go and what would you do? Is this a place you’ve already been?
CGU: Ooh! If an anonymous benefactor’s reading this (hi! 😉 ) I have this dream of doing a vegan Lenten tour of Eastern Orthodox countries. In the Eastern Orthodox church, devout followers eliminate meat, dairy and eggs (though sometimes not fish) for Lent and for other religious festivals during the year. I found out last year during a trip to Romania that these countries become incredibly vegan-friendly during this time. Most restaurants offer vegan Lent menus, even in really unexpected places like fast food restaurants. I’ve heard in Georgia Dunkin Donuts does vegan Lent doughnuts! So one of these days I’m going to plan a road trip through Eastern Orthodox countries during Lent so I can report back to everyone on vegan Lent delicacies. I’m just waiting on that anonymous benefactor… 🙂
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That’s all folks! Go buy “The Essential Vegan Travel Guide” and have better vegan travels!
Eating Vegan in Kyiv: Decent Food Around Town as Veganism Grows
Arriving in Kyiv (that’s the proper way to say Kiev, Ukraine; remember?), I was nervous about the food since my travels as a vegan through other parts of Eastern Europe have been less than thrilling. Luckily, that’s all in the past, it seems, because Kyiv’s vegan game was off the chizzy! Okay no it isn’t off the chizzy – wait till we get to Warsaw and Berlin! THOSE are off the chizzy – but Kyiv at least made a convincing argument that it knows the chizzy exists. It is fully aware of and in close proximity to the chizzy! (Chizzy means chain.) We had a good amount of time to explore the vegan options and traverse the whole range from delicious to disappointing and back again.
The first order of business was to go to Bessarabsky Market. This is a centrally located indoor market full of stalls, farmers stands, and larger restaurant constructions all in a tidy square space (not to be confused with Square Space, the company who has recently acquired this here blogging platform!). There are several vegan options in this market, and so, considering how hangry I was on arrival (remember we were waiting for our room to be ready after getting off another overnight train ughhh) I figured going to this one-stop shop for all things food would be my best bet. It was still early in the morning when we got there and lots of stuff wasn’t open. In fact, we had to wait for the two all-vegan spots in the Bessarabsky Market to get cracking. But it wasn’t a bad wait – because we saw the best sign known to (non-celiac) man:
Georgian bread may be the best on earth, and we are obsessed. So obsessed that just last week we returned from a trip to Georgia, I don’t want to say entirely planned because we wanted that good bread but it kind of was. This stall in the Bessarabsky Market lived up to its dern good name. We watched the bakers ease balls of dough into the giant stone cauldron-like oven, perfect for this witchcraft, and just a few minutes later retrieve gorgeous loaves ready for me to attack.
The handles on these loaves make it easy to hold and fun to pull apart. #breadfacts
So delicious! We ate our amazing bread and explored the just-waking-up market as we waited for the vegan places to open so I could look upon their treasures and see which I wanted. There’s also a natural shoppe in this building, called Eco Chic, which has organic produce and a small selection of supplies. It was closed of course but the vegan options abound here!
Finally the two places I came for opened – Green 13 Vegan Kitchen and Sumasbrod. These two all vegan joints were RIGHT NEXT to each other in the market! It was like the vegan sandwich showdown or something equally awesome. I felt a little awkward going back and forth between the two in order to investigate the menus and make informed decisions, like I would feel bad for whoever’s wares I didn’t purchase first. They don’t care. They’re used to it. I tried Green 13 first but we ended up going back to Bessarabsky several times over our stay so we tried both places several times. Let’s talk about errthang.
As you can see in the picture above, the two vegan places were kind of like buildings within the larger building. You order and get your food inside and then there is general shared seating in the open market space. The seating was actually nice, with cute pillows tossed hither and thither. Save for when we arrived that first day before it opened, the whole place was always crowded with vegan food lovers, which is awesome, and if I wasn’t so socially awkward and/or tired at this point in our trip (not to mention without a word of Ukrainian to my name) maybe I would have talked to some of them. But honestly come on there was eating to do, not talking! We tried a good deal of what Green 13 had to offer, including wraps and burgers – what it primarily does and does well – as well as salads because of my salad obsession.
English menu yassssss
On my first visit, I had to try the grilled tofu wrap. It was AMAZING. Like really amazing. Maybe I just had gone so long without proper delicious vegan food or maybe I had been soyless since China or maybe I was just so magoo from the overnight train and the lack of shower yet that day but man alive this wrap was so good I might cry because I want it now. (I may also just be remembering it in such high esteem because I am hungry.) First of all the wrapping seemed gigantic and poufy so that was fun, and the grilled tofu was nice. Filled with cabbage and parsley and carrot and tomato, the wrap would have checked all my boxes as is, but the sauce on it took it to another level. They call it ‘tartar sauce’ on the menu but that does not do it justice. It was a really delicious white sauce that was like…really good. I might not know what tartar sauce is. Anyway it was fantastic and probably my favorite thing I ate in Kyiv.
We also tried the burger with vegan bacon. If you look at the menu pictured above, you’ll see that the first detail about that burger is ‘loaf with barn’ and I will tell you that nonsense group of words is 80% responsible for why we ordered it. We had to see what loaf with barn meant. We still don’t know what they were going for but the burger was wonderful. Soy cutlet check, soy bacon check, tomato onion cucumber mayo sweet & sour sauce check checkity check check check. Such a great, classic burger! No wonder it has HIT written next to it on the menu. Less impressive was the Green 13 Burger, which obviously I ordered because it says it’s on a green spinach bun and I will never turn down wrongly colored breads. It sounds like it should have been aces with that grilled tofu and tartar sauce that I loved in the wrap but with added pesto and mushrooms and it was good, but not as great as the bacon burger. Not bad but it is third on the list.
As I said, I also tried the tofu ball salad because it’s a salad. It was okay, but I wish the balls were bigger and that there were more of them. Hehe balls. It was fine. I’m fine. Best of all, the staff at Green 13 was uniformly friendly and so helpful, even at my first visit when I was like ‘hey you’re not open but I’m here also what should I order???’ they were still all very nice. And you can see in the picture there’s a little fridge out front that says ‘molochko’ – they make their own nut milks and sell them in glass bottles. I had an almond milk that was pretty good for being unsweetened and not being used in cereal. All around, everything about Green 13 was great and I recommend it wholeheartedly.
You’re probably wondering at this point ‘hey where are all the pictures of the amazing food’. Sorries, but at Green 13 and Sumasbrod the food is packed to go as default (since there’s no seating inside their actual storefront) so everything was ugly with the expected takeaway smush. Even I have limits to what photos I share.
or do I
Moving on to Sumasbrod, a foot away from Green 13. I’ve mentioned their proximity several times now and I think it’s because my god man, if you are there, there’s no reason not to go to Green 13. I’m sorry Sumasbrod but you were disappointing in most aspects. The food was fine – when they had it. Every time I went to their counter, the (quite rude) staff would tell me that they only had this one wrap or this one soup available that day – even though the wraps are made hot for each order so I’m pretty sure they had most of the ingredients (considering they were all very similar). The salads were even more upsetting. See the above picture, how they have salads in plastic cups? Dude, it is NOT EASY to eat salad out of a plastic cup. First of all, that means the dressing (when it existed) fell on like, one piece of spinach and did not reach any of the other ingredients. And you couldn’t mix anything together. It is not a smart idea. And you’d think that if you were serving salad in a tall cup that maybe you should cut the ingredients up small so it would be easier to eat but instead the ingredients were like, extra larger than normal. One stupid long and thick strip of carrot took up half the cup. Also, the cup display salad situation meant that they only offered what was already made and displayed. When I first ordered a salad on the menu, the girl said they only had what was in the case – one option. It was right at lunchtime too but they didn’t have any plans to make anything more that day. I could see the rest of the staff was laughing and joking and eating back in the tiny kitchen instead of making more food for the big crowds but I guess they don’t care.
So the salad was too hard to eat and impossible to dress properly. As for the wraps, our conversation literally went like this: Can I have the tofu wrap? No we don’t have it. (They had tofu and the same veggies as everything else…so…) Can I have the Fishless wrap? No we don’t have it. What wraps do you have? The seitan sausage wrap. That’s it? Yes. Man aliiiive. Honestly considering that everything has basically the same ingredients, they make the wraps fresh for each order, and there was always staff just chilling and not working, I think it’s just down to lazy workers. Anyway, I had the seitan sausage wrap, and it was neither seitan nor sausage but more like pink ham half moons. It was decent, but small and with tiny amounts of fillings, so if you have the choice (and you do), always always get your food from next door. Green 13’s food is much better and the people are much more accommodating, even though on paper the Sumasbrod menu feels much more my style.
The only thing you should go to Sumasbrod for is the dessert.
In that display pictured above, Sumasbrod has those poorly conceived salad cups, but also chia pudding cups and mousses. The best thing they make is this Chocolate Cake Trifle and it was AMAZING. Truly. True I hadn’t had a proper dessert in many moons but Z agreed that this was fantastic and we got it several times. The chocolate cake was probably dry, as most places’ chocolate cake is (it’s not hard guys!) but it didn’t matter because it was covered and moisturized by chocolate mousse that was pretty damn fantastic. So definitely go next door for everything except dessert, and be sure to grab this. We got one for our train out of Kyiv too, and honestly nothing helps elevate an overnight train experience than a cup of chocolate cake trifle. Well except clean sheets and maybe a non-flooded bathroom but we aren’t talking pipe dreams here!
this will be the one non-food related picture in this post so enjoy
Another mixed bag experience awaited us at Tri, an upscale restaurant definitely catering to the Gwynnie types of Kyiv. This place had rave reviews on HappyCow so I made sure it was at the top of our list. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the HappyCow reviewers just haven’t had good food before so they were like ‘oh I guess this is what good food is because it looks cute and is expensive so I’ll just give it five stars so I don’t look bad.’ No. Or maybe we went on a bad day for them, but it’s still unacceptable. The restaurant is lovely inside and clearly gives off a more fancy vibe than anywhere else in town. Some of the food was generally interesting but the service was horrendous. It literally took hours. A family who came a half hour after we did got their food first. I don’t want to hear that nonsense about ‘but you don’t know how long the kitchen needs for each dish!’ because we were the only patrons there and I ordered a salad. It would take AGES to find someone just to ask what was going on with our food – and like I said, there were only two tables in the giant room. It shouldn’t be that hard to find staff. What is this, the National Theatre?
Tartlets? Tartlets? Tartlets?
We started with the raw tarts with cashew hummus and microgreens. It was pretty good, but it was not hummus so much as a definite cashew cheese., tasting like like any other raw cafe’s dollop of raw cashew cheese. Fine, though, whatevers.
Then an hour went by.
Then my salad came. This was supposed to be a ‘guacamole, kale, and hemp seed’ salad.
Ahem. Does that look like kale to you? It is not. It is merely green curly lettuce. Plus sprouts and tomatoes instead of hemp seeds, which I really don’t understand as a substitution so it has to just be a mistake. There was indeed a lump of ‘guacamole’ in there – a very lemony mush of avocado – but come on, this is not what the menu says. It is a green salad though and it was fine tasting so I wasn’t going to send it back (also it took an hour??) but still, what’s going on in the Tri kitchen??
Then we ordered the polenta with grilled vegetables. This one took an extra hour after the incorrect salad. I wanted to leave and really almost did but we were in so deep and I was trying to be optimistic about my beloved polenta. Polenta is sooo good and I was picturing this lovely pile of it with all kinds of vegetables in like a sauce or something amazing.
I got this tiny little tower of terror instead. The polenta rounds were good because it is hard to screw up polenta but yes you’re right, those are discs of eggplant and tomato with it. JFC. I should have known it was going to be grilled eggplant. Even at a vegetarian restaurant I have no other choice! There was nothing else to it, no sauce or anything, just grilled Vegetable of the Summer and two 50p-coins-worths of polenta. Bahhhhh. I wish we could have dined and dashed, I really do for the first time ever, but by the time this came we were alone in that big white fancy room and they would have caught us. Maybe. Actually, maybe we could have slipped away considering how hard it was to find a waiter. Darn. Next time! Just kidding we’re not going back there. I really don’t understand all the glowing reviews, unless everything else is really that much better (doubtful) or maybe I’ve just been lucky enough to have something better to compare it to (literally every restaurant seems more functional).
Next we tried Nebos, the famous raw restaurant. Raw foodists (omg is there a worse word than foodist to describe a person? oh yeah foodie) all over the globe rave about this place, so after our trip to Chernobyl we checked it out. I figured eating a big meal of raw vegetables would undo some of the negative effects of radiation or something? No it’s just right at Independence Square where the tour left us. Anyway, like with Tri, the reviews online were almost embarrassingly effusive. People were going on and on about how this is the best raw restaurant in the world and ‘trust me I’ve tried them all’. Bitch please. I’ve tried them all. This is not the best. But it is fine. Too much of the food had that vibe that is common in raw restaurants of being too…warm and sludgy, like it had been sitting out. Raw restaurants should be better at that but alas. But a lot of the food was really good, so overall Nebos is a positive for me, with caveats on things to avoid.
I started with the Olivier salad. They had a really impressive salad section (I mean every raw restaurant should come on but this is one of the few) and it was hard to pass up things with broccoli and arugula, but Oliviers are so common in this part of the world that it’s required to try them when you have the chance. I had a vegan one before, I think at a Mongolian Loving Hut, I want to say? and it was great so I had to try again. Also, this was the one salad that the Nebos menu had starred as a customer favorite so I trusted the public at large even though you should never really do that about anything really. Luckily it was really good! It was a mix of carrot, cucumber, avocado, peas, peas, zucchini, microgreens, and of course ‘Olivier sauce’ and it was very enjoyable. I also adore how they always come in the same weird shape.
Okay deciding on the Olivier wasn’t as hard as I made it out to be because we also got a Caesar salad! Double salad what a life! I was intrigued by the promise of cashew cheese sticks covered with pitta sauce in the Caesaw. It didn’t sound like a Caesar and it didn’t taste like one, but I really enjoyed it. Those cashew cheese croutony things are legit! They were so plentiful (look at that plate it is positively covered with them) and had a great sharp cheeziness with a z. It could have used more lettuce but it was pretty interesting. And really filling. Cashew cheeze is filling! I just jump back and forth between spelling raw vegan cheese like a normal person and an ass so don’t mind it.
Next was the tasting plate, with flax breaded cutlets (I don’t know either), falafel cutlets, and vegetable balls. I don’t know what the difference between all the different cutlets or balls were – they’re all made of the same nuts and vegetables – but they were all pretty good, and the three sauces they came with added some nice flavors. Approved!
Lastly was the thing I urge you not to order, even though like everything else I chose it is listed on the menu with a little thumbs up to show it’s a customer favorite. Well, the public is wrong so often so I was bound to get screwed listening to other people. Don’t listen to other people. (Well except me of course.)
The Dragon Roll. I’m actually starting to gag just remembering trying to eat this. I was soo excited for some raw vegan sushi – I hadn’t had sushi in ages, and it was even longer since I had good sushi. Well it would be a lot longer, I learned. The Dragon Roll promised epic tales of nori, avocado, cauliflower, cucumber, cheeze, something called ‘false flax seeds’ that I am sure is just lost in translation, sunflower mayo, and more ingredients that sound good but when you stop to really think about it you should think ‘wait how is all of this going to make a sushi roll’? Remember it’s raw, so without the structural integrity afforded by sticky rice, they were going to rely on minced cauliflower to hold all the gloppiness together. It didn’t. Forget Gwynnie’s website (how many times will this post mention her, I wonder), THIS is the real goop. The toppings blended in with the middle and it all mushed into one beige bland blob of oozing warm sludge and I tried to eat one and had that immediate reaction where if you eat any more of the thing you are going to be sick. Shaaaaaame. The consistency was so off-putting and so wrong, like when I try to eat mochi but 100x more. Sushi should not need to be eaten with a spoon! Bleh what a soft slimy mess. Bleh!
The rest of Nebos was decent though. Just never get the sushi.
The last of the vegan food I’m going to share might be my favorite in Kyiv. It’s not a restaurant, it’s more like a counter service. And the place is not vegan, or even vegetarian, but it has a few options. Now, what’s my favorite thing? If you follow my instagram (see link at top corner of page!) you probably know I make soup for dinner 90% of the time. Yes it’s because it’s a one-pot thing and that’s best for me but also because soup is amazing! Well, lords and ladies, Kyiv has a soup counter around town called Soup Culture! And best of all, they serve it in a BREAD CUP. Not a bread bowl, not those things that you don’t know really how to attack and you’re like wait so do i eat all the soup and then this bread but I want bread with the soup I’ll just take a little piece and ahhhh now there’s soup spilling everywhere! No, Soup Culture has perfected the bread container method by putting the soup in a much sturdier carbolicious cup, and so you drink the soup (I hate using the word ‘drink’ when discussing soup because it’s FOOD but here you kind of must because it’s a cup and you drink from a cup anyway) and chew the cup as you go down. It’s splendid.
They always have one or two vegan soups on the daily menu. We tried the lentil, which was delicious. And the bread cup is SO fun. Like I said, it’s sturdy so it retains its integrity as you take bites of it. SO FUN! There are a few locations around town so it’s a wonderful little lunch stop as you explore town.
Kyiv has a lot of vegan options – we barely scratched the surface! Even when we weren’t looking, we would chance upon vegan friendly places, like this place in a major underground food court/mall under Independence Square.
Hopefully, this roundup will help you make decisions about what to prioritize (go to Green 13; skip Tri; bring me back a bread cup). I have heard that even in the past few months, even more vegan food has popped up in Kyiv. I think the scene there is going to get better and better and it’s definitely a city to keep your eye on.
2 Comments
I am currently travelling in China and have been enjoying your blog very much.
Thanks to your post, I was able to both find the bun lady in Tangkou and get the vegetarian ones; they were indeed delicious. Thank you!
(And they are still 1.5 yuan 😊)
Oh my goodness this is the best update ever! Thanks for letting me know my fave bun lady is still going strong! I hope you have the best time!