Veganizing "Friends": Three Kinds of Potatoes (& Mario's tots!)by Randi / September 23, 2013
Strolling in Lisbon, in view of the 25 de Abril Bridge
A few years ago, I traveled all through Portugal. This post will focus on my favorite part, Lisbon.
Lisbon gives you excitement and attractions of a big city but in a smaller, calmer (and cheaper) package than, say, cities in Spain. In fact, it reminded me a lot of certain parts of Spain, but on a smaller scale. It’s like how New York compares to Philadelphia, although I don’t think Lisbon could match Philly’s crime rate if it tried. Anyway! It’s a lovely city to visit, with great sights, nice people, and good food. In fact, Lisbon is where I learned to love olives! Prettayyy cool.
Lisbon gives you excitement and attractions of a big city but in a smaller, calmer (and cheaper) package than, say, cities in Spain. In fact, it reminded me a lot of certain parts of Spain, but on a smaller scale. It’s like how New York compares to Philadelphia, although I don’t think Lisbon could match Philly’s crime rate if it tried. Anyway! It’s a lovely city to visit, with great sights, nice people, and good food. In fact, Lisbon is where I learned to love olives! Prettayyy cool.
Torre de Belem
One of the coolest parts of Lisbon is the Torre de Belem, or Belem Tower. Overlooking the Tagus River, Belem Tower was constructed in 1515, commissioned to be a part of the defense system of Lisbon and a gateway to the city. The gray stonework cuts an imposing figure against the often cloudy view of the water, providing a real Medieval feel, separated from the modern city life. You can climb all through the tower and see various examples of canons and other weaponry. And, of course, there’s a gift shop, where you can buy a 3D replica puzzle of this Tower with about 3000 teeny tiny little wooden pieces that all look alike and your boyfriend can buy it and spend months trying to construct it all over the living room and you can find wood fragments in random places nearly two years later if you want. It’s a nice puzzle. (And he finished it, go him!)
 Torre up close  Me in a chimney. I was quite silly back then. Good thing I outgrew that. I’m just kidding. I really didn’t. Really really. |
 Nothing I love more that photos taken through holes in walls  View of the Belem Tower as we leave towards the Monastery |
Near the Belem neighborhood of Lisbon is the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, the Hieronymites Monastery, originally built in 1459 for monks of the Order of Christ who helped pilgrims in the region. It was also the site of the 2007 Treaty of Lisbon, which provided for reform of the European Union. Like the Belem Tower, it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and boasts a beautiful courtyard.
Monastery from below
Praça do Império (Empire Square), in front of the monastery
Also in this area is the Monument to the Discoveries, representing Portuguese exploration. It was built for the 1940 Portuguese World Fair, but was destroyed shortly thereafter. Luckily, in 1958, the government decreed that a permanent monument should be rebuilt. The one standing now is larger than the original model. As monuments go, this one has a pretty interesting facade, with 33 statues positioned along the lower ramp, honoring important people from the discoveries, including Vasco da Gama, Ferdinand Magellan, Pedro Escobar, and lots more I didn’t learn about in elementary school.
After exploring the Belem section of Lisbon, it’s definitely time to climb up to the Castelo de São Jorge, the Moorish castle that overlooks the city of Lisbon. It’s considered a Medieval castle, but fortification of this hill in some form dates back to before the 2nd century. As the major tourist attraction, the castle will likely be crowded. Try to visit it at the end of the day, so if you spend enough time there, you get to see the view before and during sunset. It’s so beautiful. Instead of sunset pictures, however, we have more silly pictures of me in the light at the castle.
 O’er the ramparts we walked |
 I am in a tree |
Measuring for when I move in?
You may have noticed in some of the early pictures that the 25 de Abril bridge looks an awful lot like San Francisco’s Golden Gate bridge. In fact, this bridge was built by the same company that built SanFran’s Bay Bridge, not the Golden Gate! The Bay Bridge and the 25 de Abril are thus considered sister bridges. Perhaps the Bay Bridge people wanted to prank its rival Golden Gaters and decided to make a copy in Portugal? Good one! This bridge is called the Ponte 25 de Abril in honor of the Carnation Revolution, the military coup that overthrew the regime of Estado Novo in 1974.
Lisbon has old-fashioned trams! You must take one. It’s pretty fun.
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One of my favorite things to photograph when traveling is street art. How cool is this graffiti I saw around downtown Lisbon?
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Ok, now we’re getting into nightlife in Lisbon. First and foremost, you must – MUST – see some authentic fado music. Fado, a cultural staple of Portugal, dates back to early 1800s at least. The music is depressing, haunting but beautiful. It’s kind of the European version of the Southern blues. Fado is often described by the Portuguese word for loss and the resulting personal damage. This is all very depressing, but the music is lovely. You’ll see signs outside of establishments advertising that they’ll have fado some nights, so keep your eyes open. Do that anyway if you’re walking around.
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Praça de Dom Pedro IV, the main square downtown
There’s also a vibrant nightlife in downtown Lisbon, with people about as late as I was out (which isn’t saying much but still). Our favorite thing to do downtown at night was get ginjinha, a liqueur made from sour cherries and sugar. It’s served in little shot glasses with a few sour cherries at the bottom. I actually drank and enjoyed this (it is bitter and strong!) because I wanted to get to the fruit, obvs. There was this adorable stand frequented by locals called A Ginjinha, where you queue up behind a single counter and get your drink.
 In line for ginjinha Well, that was boyfriend’s favorite thing to do downtown at night. Mine was to buy paper cones full of plain roasted chestnuts from the plethora of vendors all over the main squares. Oh my goodness, these chestnuts were amaaaazing. I miss them. I’d go back to Lisbon just for the chestnuts. Speaking of food, I didn’t do much restaurant research before going, but we did have a great meal at Terra Restaurante Natural, which has a vegetarian buffet with many great vegan options. This was before I blogged, and before Instagram made taking pictures of your food cool, so all I have is a picture of the ice cream. Suffice it to say, they had vegan ice cream.
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I really enjoyed Lisbon overall. It felt relaxed but still hip, and I would love to go back (and get more chestnuts). Stay tuned for posts about the rest of Portugal – we saw it all!
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Yekaterinburg: Surprisingly Pleasant City, Though it Could Just Be the Hotel
After the 24 hours on the train that you read about in the previous post, we had crossed the Europe-Asia border and landed in Yekaterinburg, capital of the Urals. The Urals are the mountains that effectively make up the border between the continents, though it’s rough considering it’s all still Russia and kind of nebulous. But it counts! We’re officially in Asia! That means, we’ve crossed into Asia by air (when we flew to Thailand and Cambodia, which I promise I will finally write about after this trip…so…November?), by water (when we took a ferry in Istanbul to the Asian side of the city (which I promise I will finally write about after this trip and after I write about Thailand…so…December?), and now we’ve crossed into Asia by land. So fun! I was so ready to get off that train that my expectations for what kind of city to expect were super low, and I didn’t care. So I was surprised by how much I liked Yekaterinburg, at what a nice place it seemed like, with beautiful vistas and open spaces, good food, and a nice vibe. But, of course, it could just be because of the hotel.
I love you Hotel Renomme
Because we had just gotten off a 24-hour train journey with questionable hygiene, and because after 24 hours in Yekaterinburg we would be getting on a THREE DAY train to Irkutsk that would change my preconceived notions of how disgusting I myself could be, we booked one night in a fancy hotel instead of a hostel for the first time this whole trip. Treat yo self! The Hotel Renomme was a very charming, clean, lovely little boutique hotel right outside a metro station and a mall. We checked in, apologizing for how disgusting we were in their clean, beautiful space – we were literally Bert’s chimney sweepers when they break into Mr. & Mrs. Banks’s house. Then we were shown to a room that actually made me cry. It was so cute. Nothing out of the ordinary, but mine eyes have seen some shit lately. It was a lovely room, with a big clean oh how clean bed, a little sitting area with adorable chairs and a cute table, a dresser, a closet with a safe and a minibar (I forgot such things could exist!), and a little balcony with French doors that opened onto the loudest street noise you could ever imagine (a bar below played loud music all day and night) but it was still a dream. It was about 10pm, and despite how badly we wanted to shower in that gorgeous, clean, oh so clean bathroom with its actual living breathing shower (no showers on the trains….hell there’s barely sink water) and oh I was gonna wash my haaaaair — that had to wait because it was super late and we were really hungry so had to find food first before things closed.
Hilarious fashion mag menu |
weird matrioshka guy on our table |
ADORABLE matrioshka the bill came in |
The mall looked promising, open still, so we walked around trying to find something and looked at a few menus before finding literally my new favorite restaurant, Schastye, a Georgian restaurant on the top floor with an incredibly vegan-friendly menu, you can’t even believe. The menu had so many vegetables and interesting preparations too that I wanted to cry for the second time in one hour. We ordered several dishes, including a Georgian specialty green called jonjoli that was a little pickly and sharp and was really good. The menu extolled its nutrient dense properties. Oh the menu itself was hysterical – fashioned like a huge magazine with ‘articles’ on the cover highlighting different Georgian dishes. So fun and so big. The table also had the super weird matrioshka (above) on it, which we were like what.
DELICIOUS cheeseless dilla kinda thing 
cucumber-tomato salad with walnut cream |
the slightly pickly jonjoli 
eggplant rolls |
We also had an eggplant rollup dish, with the eggplant filled with a walnut paste. It was really good, and came sprinkled with pomegranate seeds which I love. I had a salad, because I needed fresh vegetables too, and even though it was mostly cucumbers and tomatoes and that’s the only veg we can consistently find and I’m pretty sick of them, I didn’t even care, it was good and fresh and in some kind of great walnut-based dressing I don’t even know. Then, after working out with the waiter which of the fun breads could be veganized, (he was WONDERFUL with the veganness) I got my favorite thing, this roti-like flatbread baked with spinach and other greens inside. It was soo goooood why am I writing this I want that now!
While Husband got a traditional dessert that he said was really good, I got a ginger lemonade over crushed ice that was perfectly gingery and burned my throat in that good gingery way. I really liked it even though I had forgotten that we’re not supposed to be drinking the water and the ice may have been made from tap water. It seemed like a nice enough restaurant that they wouldn’t voluntarily poison the customers though.
It was such a great dinner. I love this restaurant! Who has ever found great Georgian vegan food in a random mall? After dinner, we went to the big supermarket in the basement and stocked up on water for the night. And I saw this glorious vision:
(i was so glad to see my old friend Alpro non-dairy milks, and in flavors I can’t find even in london! unfortunately, without a fridge on the train and no small sizes, it didn’t make sense to get a whole carton sad face)
After dinner, we dropped all our laundry at the front desk while begging them to do it by the next evening (they were so nice) and then took the longest showers in human history. My hair was so clean. I know this is boring and no one wants to hear about when we showered but we play by my rules here and also this hotel room and the bed and this shower and clean laundry were like the strongest argument I’ve ever known for that whole cleanliness is next to godliness business.
Yekat main square
The next day, because we only had the one day in Ye old Katerinburg before catching the 3-day train that night, we booked a private tour guide. I knowww I know but we had things we wanted to see and that was the most effective way to do it. And it wasn’t super expensive either, and we both felt afterwards that it was 100% worth it. We booked through UralTerra and our guide Evgenia was excellent. She spoke the best English so far of anyone we’ve met, I think. She arrived with a car and driver and taught us so much about Yekaterinburg. We started by going to a central plaza that commemorates when the town was built, in 1723, and is right near the big city dam that was the most important thing leading to the city’s success.
Let’s find a rock…I mean a big ass rock
damn
When the dam was constructed, it could generate water-powered, um, power and so Yekaterinburg quickly became an industrial center, with factories all over its jawn. And its success and booming population generally lasted, with it now being one of the four biggest cities in Russia.
another church on more blood
Next, we drove a few minutes to the Church on the Blood (if a Russian church isn’t about depositing a robe, it’s because it’s on blood), the site where the Romanovs were executed. We saw their tombs in St. Petersburg, and now we saw where they were betrayed and executed. Heart don’t fail me now am I right. They were being hidden on the site for a long time, before Sverdlov, whom the city was named after for a short time because of this, ordered their execution. Apparently, the whole family was taken down to the basement and told it was for their safety, and then lined up in their family order and told it was because they wanted to take a photograph, but then Sverdlov and his team just shot them all, including the children. People are monsters. It gets worse. The girls had jewelry lining their corsets so that if they ever got out they would be able to pawn it to survive, but it meant that the bullets didn’t penetrate and they didn’t die right away so the worthless monsters used bayonets. It’s such a grim history, and later that day we’d learn even more horrific details. What’s really strange, though, is that the entire family was canonized as saints, in an attempt for the country to maybe to try to seek forgiveness for this very dark history. So in this cathedral, where all this terrible evil happened, everyone is praying to the Romanov saints. It is very strange, to make them saints because they suffered a horrible death, and a whole lot stranger for people to base their entire religious fervor on praying to them for the same reason. It just felt very odd.
Ganina Yama monastery
After visiting the cathedral (no pictures allowed inside), we drove back to Europe (hi Europe!) to Ganina Yama (not to be confused with Goitery Yana (or Baba Yagga)), an absolutely stunning monastery with the most peaceful atmosphere and the freshest air I’ve breathed in weeks (no smoking! actually taken seriously!). This land was like a small piece of heaven in a forest, with beautiful wooden cathedrals and smaller churches and lovely pathways and everything so in tune with nature. I felt so calmed and so relaxed, which is a very rare thing.
The vast monastery land had tons of beautiful buildings, some of which were churches and some of which were just cafeterias
And then I was told why we were at this monastery, and I no longer felt so peaceful. That and because I had to wear a headscarf borrowed from the site’s bag of public I-doubt-ever-washed headscarves and I thought I was getting lice. Um, so this is where, after the Romanovs were executed at the place we just left, their bodies were carted for a mass burial in an abandoned mine shaft (which we saw, pictured below). They were cut up and burned in this mine:
the pit of despair
Some people were tried and executed for the deaths, but by the time it came to light that Sverdlov was the ringleader, politics had changed and instead of punishing him or ruining his name (he was already dead after all), they changed the name of Yekaterinburg to Sverdlovsk. Like…that’s not how you punish murderers, guys. Luckily the name is now back to being for Catherine and not some psycho child murderer.
The Romanov children
It’s too bad this site is so beautiful, because knowing why it’s consecrated and revered is, again, very strange.
Aside from all this horror, our guided tour of the area included what’s probably the highlight – the Asia-Europe border! So fun and silly!
“I’m on the EAST side, I’m on the WEST side! I’m on the one side, I’m on the other side!”
It was so cool to have one foot in Asia and one in Europe! Even if the border line isn’t actually exact, it counts.
Over 4000 km to London! (faded one near the top)
kind of weird right
The last stop on our tour, after we were briefly shown the new modern Boris Yeltsin Center and strongly urged to visit later for a much longer time (we would have if we had the time), was the Military Museum. It’s a small museum that doesn’t have much to it, but we wanted to go because it has a section about Gary Powers, the American pilot who was shot down in Yekaterinburg in 1960 — you know, the guy causing the trouble in “Bridge of Spies”! The guy traded for Mark Rylance, Greatest Actor of our Generation and Probably Most Others! So the movie/Mark/Hanks connection made me eager to see this. As it stands, it’s just a few pieces of his aircraft that they have displayed, plus some photos and a weird life-size mannequin of Gary in a uniform, sitting in a pilot’s seat. Errmkay! At first, the two people running the museum (no one else was there) told us that the Gary Powers stuff upstairs was ‘closed for renovation’, so we were like okay then peace out, that’s literally all we want in your museum, so then because we weren’t going to buy tickets they changed their minds and let us upstairs. So weird. Apparently most of the remnants of the crash are in Moscow, which we didn’t know, but I guess we saw enough. Made me want to watch a movie though. Three weeks without television so far! Ahh!
pieces of Powers’ aircraft in the Military Museum
Another light and audio diorama presentation!! Russians love these! This was in Russian so did our best to just follow the flashing lights
After our tour, we wandered around the city, brought provisions for the 3-day train and bought food and chocolate. We went into this famous candy shop called Alyonka and found some accidentally vegan bars! Yum!
We went into another giant grocery store in another giant mall to get canned beans and produce for the train (they love their big malls and fancy grociers in Yekat!), and I know I already shared a picture of the Alpro nondairy milks from the first store, but I have to share this store’s stock too, BECAUSE WTF IS SOYA FOR PROFESSIONALS???
anyone?
If anyone knows what they mean by that, please tell me in the comments.
We also stopped in the famous Uralskiye Pelmeni, a restaurant with a cafeteria style vibe (very common all over Russia) that has amazing pelmeni, or meat dumplings, for husband. Little did I know I’d find some of my favorite food of the whole trip – this stewed (or braised) cabbage dish. Oh my goodness, this was so simple and more delicious than it had any right to be (and incredibly cheap). We fought over the last bites when we should have just gotten more. SO GOOD. I also had a little raw cabbage salad that was merely perfunctory for its rawness and vegness but tasted better than I needed it to.
best cabbage dish of all time OF ALL TIME
So, we had a grand day in Yekaterinburg. Maybe I was just so happy to be clean, short though it lasted. Maybe it was because the hotel was beautiful and they did our laundry for super cheap to apologize for an unrelated mixup. But I think the city itself just exceeded my (admittedly basement-level) expectations. It’s cosmopolitan, it has beautiful open spaces and paths along the river. There are at least two restaurants I would be happy eating at 100 times each. It seems like a nice place to live, at least compared to a lot of what we’ve seen east of the Urals. I think we saw all the things we had to see, in just one day, but it wouldn’t be terrible to spend more time there.
“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!
