Monthly Archives: July 2025

Weekend trip to Graz Austria

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Graz is only two hours from Portschach and we had never been. So we decided to take a weekend trip there. It is the second largest city in Austria. We stayed in the Schlossberghotel. Just at the north end of the old town. The building dates from the 1500s and was originally an artisan wood workshop for the aristocracy. Now a boutique hotel known as the art hotel. The owner has commissioned over 100 works of art specifically for places in the hotel. Our room has several. Here are a couple hotel pics.

Gift on arrival
I got a suite. it is the biggest room we ever had. But not expensive.

After we arrived we checked in and went for a walk. We stopped for a glass of wine in a plaza near us but it was also home to the amazing staircase up the Schlossberg to the clock tower and where the castle used to be. There is a lift and a funicular if you don’t want to do the stairs.

We decided on a place for dinner. Schmidhofer im Palais. We had a nice time. We enjoyed the ambiance. Not fancy. Good people watching. I had fried burrata with tomatoes and watermelon and branzino.

Schnaps

We woke to pouring rain. it was predicted. But it was a deluge. We had breakfast and stayed in for a while. We finally donned our raincoats and went down the street to the Graz museum. Mostly history of Graz but a special exposition had some art too. It was interesting. Graz was bombed during the war by the Americans. 30% of the city was destroyed. I delved into it a bit and found that Austria is a neutral nation. The Russians liberated them and in order for them to remain independent they agreed to that. They are not members of NATO.

Rainy morning

After the museum it had cleared so we went for a walk to check out the Murinsel. Built in 2003 in conjunction with the European Capital of Culture celebrations. They have an outdoor arena where they screen movies.

Then we walked into the altstadt where we explored a shopping street and visited the main square. There were some exquisitely decorated and painted buildings. The sun had come out and so had the people.

Door to an old bakery
Decorated buildings

Time for lunch! Luther chose Steirisches Wirtshaus, a very traditional restaurant. There was a great outside garten but it was very wet so we stayed in the outside, undercover area. I had forelle, which is trout served whole. One of my favourites. So good.

This concludes my trip report on our short trip to Graz. I really liked the city. Tomorrow we head back to Portschach. Our home away from home. Our house sitter sent us pictures of what we are missing. I miei pomodori.

Back to Portschach tomorrow. Ciao for now!

The excellent adventure begins…

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Well, here we go! We have embarked on our excellent adventure. We left pretty early on Friday and the google person said it would be a 6.5 hour drive. It ended up being more than that because of what looked like the removal of a burned out truck. It sure slowed us down. This was in Bologna. The traffic there is always bad. Then we continued north, passing Ferrara (one of my favourite towns) and Padua. Then Venice and finally Udine. The alps were now visible ahead, the traffic sparse and the air clean. ahhhh.

We checked into the Werzer Strand Casino. It is apartments that are part of a hotel. Despite the name it is not a Casino. We have a one bedroom apartment with a nice terrace right on the lawn that slopes down to the lake.

There was a mishap in the underground garage. Luther scraped the Porsche against an Audi parked in the spot next to us. He met the owner and they have worked out an agreement without getting the police involved. I felt sorry for the German guy who was just trying to enjoy his Urlaub in Austria. In fact he lives in Aschaffenburg very close to where we once lived. Cars can be repaired so no real harm done.

We had stopped for groceries before we checked in so I got us all unpacked and by then it was near dinner time. So we went to the closest place which abutted the property we were on. It was a beach restaurant called Werzer’s Boothaus Café. It was right on the lake next to the boat landing. We sat outside and watched the world go by. A family came up to the dock in a beautiful solid wood oversized rowboat with electric motor. it had a nice table aboard.

Here are views of the lake. It is just north of the the Alps so some mountain views too.

I can’t say the dinner was amazing. I did like my appetizer. It was sliced beets with feta and grilled octopus. A nice combination.

Since Austria is still very old fashioned and nothing will be open on Sunday we went looking for a wine store and a farmers market on Saturday morning. We were successful on both fronts. The wine store was amazing! It had so many Austrian wines which are among my favourite wines. We bought a lot. They also had more spices than I have ever seen. Maybe more than Penzeys!

Then we navigated over to the farmers market which turned out to be very nice. Not huge but nicely varied. There were two vegetable stands, a couple selling fresh and cured meats, at least 3 cheese stands and a wine stand. I bought some pork chops for dinner and we bought cheeses and meats for our lunch. It is open on Saturday and Wednesday mornings. Excellent find.

It was a laid back day. We enjoyed the nice weather and watching all the activity on the lake from our terrace. I cooked the pork chops which were good. We ate them with fresh tomatoes which are quite nice and new potatoes. Ciao from Österreich. Until next time…

Upcoming trip

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We have been madly getting ready to go for a whole month to an apartment we rented in Austria. When I made these reservations last fall it seemed like a good idea to plan a trip to the mountains to beat the heat. The memories of the summer heat wave were fresh. I reasoned we could close up the apartment here and bring the cats along. The drive is about 6.5 hours.

Now that the time has actually arrived I had second thoughts about bringing the cats on such a long trip. I would have been bringing them for me and not thinking about them and the stress it would bring them. So in the end I engaged a cat/house sitter. She is an American who lives in Rotterdam. She has three cats of her own. I know I will miss my boys terribly and I hope they will be healthy during our trip. They turn 16 in August so I know they won’t be with us all that much longer.

We will stay in Wörtersee. It is a pretty lake surrounded by mountains. We will do some short trips to other spots in Austria while there. Two nights in Graz and 3 nights in the Bergenland which is a big wine producing area. We will stay in one of the old buildings the winemakers used while working. They have been repurposed as rooms. We also will do a side overnight into Slovenia. Anyway, the time will pass and I am hoping I don’t get too homesick. I am always happiest in my home.

Our friend Vera came last week and brought me some globe zucchini and some cucumbers. She told me to stuff the zucchini with ground beef and rice. So I took her advice and did just that but I added some tomato paste, garlic, onion and thyme. Plus a good amount of grated pecorino. I parboiled the zucchini and sautéed the rest. Stuffed and baked them. Luckily we have had about a week of cooler, nicer weather which allows for some baking. Here is our dinner.

I also bought a new MacBook Air so I could bring it along and post about our trip while gone. I am doing my first post using the new Mac right now! Stay tuned for some posts from our Austrian retreat. Ciao!

Luther’s birthday

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We are still dealing with heat but we did have some people over lately. Our friend Karen from Toronto came for lunch Wednesday. It was great to see her, and then Thursday our newest friends Don and Sarah came for aperitivo. The terrace has a decent breeze most of the time.

Saturday was a busy day. I had books for dogs at eleven. But I needed to go earlier to get tomatoes and also to take pictures of the biggest field of sunflowers (girasole) I have ever seen. But even more important was to leave in time to get home and change clothes because I was taking Luther out for a birthday lunch.

Not the best pictures but you get the idea. It was very hot today. It is high summer in Umbria.

I drove to a place to park but had a ways to walk. Then the market had been moved out of the piazza because of a basketball event with a court set up there. So I walked to find the vendors. I did finally find them and bought a few tomatoes and then headed back up into Centro. I stopped into Bar Mary for a bottle of water and then sat out at the tables until my shift. But by this time I was sweating copiously. 😳 I worked my shift and I left a bit early to go home and try to make myself presentable for a fancy lunch.

When I got back to the car the car thermometer said it was 40C. That’s about 105F. When I got home and walked up the 61 steps to our apartment (did I mention our elevator died?) I was dripping. I got in a cold shower. That helped some. I put on my new linen dress and got all ready but my hair was still very wet, from sweat. Is this TMI? If it is, I’m sorry. I’m just trying to paint a picture of living in this heat. Anyway. Off we went to our Birthday celebration pranzo.

Luther had always wanted to go to Reschio. It is the enclave of the rich and famous in this part of Umbria. They say the rooms are €1,500 a night. It is hard to describe. It has evolved over the years we have been here. The first things they did was to sell lots, build houses and restore all the old out buildings and dependencies. Some of these are rented out to families for vacations. They constructed a huge barn and arena and outside horse rink for their equestrian center. They began renovations on the castle and then opened it as a hotel. There is a LOT of money invested in this place. I don’t know who is doing all that investment. A lot of movie stars come and stay here. And many other notable people. It is where Meryl Streep stayed for her birthday party a few years ago.

There are two restaurants. One, in the castle, called Ristorante al Castello, the other, more casual, near the equestrian center called Ristorante alle Scuderie. Only this last one is open for lunch. Here are pictures from their terrace where we dined, and also of the food we had.

Overall we liked it quite a lot for a splurge. The food was good, not great. There were many families there having lunch. The wait staff was very nice. The pacing of the dishes was too fast for me. A little time between the first and second courses would have been better. We had some of the Reschio wines and their own olive oil. Both of these were super. I am glad Luther enjoyed his Birthday.

Here is Rocky, trying to keep cool. He knows how to do it. I also harvested my first big tomato from my plants. I’m glad I got to do this before we left for our summer vacation. My house and cat sitter will be the beneficiary of many others. I do hope there are some left when we come back home in August.

I call him Moby Pomodoro. He got more ripe and I cut him from the vine today. We will have him for dinner. Stare fresche! 🥵