On our recent very quick trip to Florence, I found out the city hosts a gelato festival. Knowing how much I love gelato, Niko was excited to show me the flyer. After all, a gelato a day keeps the doctor away. Unfortunately, the flyer was a little out of date. We missed the festival by two months. Oh well. Now we have a good excuse to go back next year.

It’s official. There will be a writers workshop in Zurich featuring Novelist and University of Oxford Fiction Tutor Amal Chatterjee and New York Times Bestselling Author Susan Jane Gilman on October 1-3, 2010. Yours truly has had a hand in making this happen.

Visit www.zurichwritersworkshop.com for more information.

Yesterday, while I was lounging around at Frauenbad, the last thing I expected to see was a helicopter fly to and then hover over Grossmuenster church. As if that sight were not strange enough on its own, I then watched a person descend from the helicopter towards one of Grossmuenster’s two salt-and-pepper shaker-esque towers. Later, that person was picked up by the helicopter and hauled up, this time accompanied by a stretcher. Oh my, did I wish that my phone had a camera.

Fortunately, 20Minuten had both the scoop and some pictures. Apparently, some tourist broke his thigh bone while trying to get to the top, and this was the easiest way to get him medical (and all sorts of other) attention. It’s nice to know that Rega does both city and Alpine rescues.

One of my favorite things about summer is the fresh local fruit. Check out the gorgeous Swiss strawberries, blueberries and cherries that I picked up at the Bahnhof market today.

Also, I love how everything is labelled in three languages in the country. Hey native German-speakers, why does the word “Schweizer” not agree with the word “Früchte”? I thought adjectives in German declined to agree in gender and number with the nouns they modify. (And to further my linguistic confusion, the French and Italian adjectives agree with their modifiers.)

Maybe I should think less about the fruit and just eat it.

It seems fitting that the second smallest country that I have visited covers a grand total of two square kilometers. To put that in perspective, it would about 20,000 Monacos to fill Switzerland*. Seriously, it’s so small that you would miss it if you did not make a concerted effort to find it. We-my friends M,T and myself- made that concerted effort on our way to Hyères on the Côte d’Azur. As you can see here, it was all too easy to get the royal palace in the background of a self portrait.

and here is a picture of the royal rock sans les belle dames

The rest of Monaco is not nearly as picturesque. I don’t think the added presence of the aforementioned belles dames will do much to beautify these ugly modern high-rises.

We did see the tomb of a beautiful woman, Gratia Patricia aka Grace Kelly. May she rest in peace, unperturbed by tourists.

*Switzerland is 41,290 square kilometers.

When we booked our tickets to Santa Fe, we went straight to Niko’s sister for restaurant advice (she studied at St John’s.) Knowing that we are big fans of spicy foods, she gave us some excellent recommendations including Horseman’s Haven.

Horseman’s Haven is known for its potent green chile sauce. In fact, it is reputed to be the hottest green chile in Sante Fe which means that Niko absolutely had to order it. The hottest version on the menu is known as Green Chile #2. It is so potent that they will not cover your enchiladas with it. They will only serve it on the side.

And it is potent. I tried some and decided it was too hot for me. My mother tried it and then said over and over again that no one had to eat it. Niko of course spooned it all over his enchiladas with no thought to his intestines.

I stuck with the Green Chile #1, the sauce that they will gladly lavish on your enchiladas. Speaking of enchiladas, they don’t mess around. Check out my plate before digging in.

Wow, just look at that picture is making me salivate for that green chile sauce. Horseman’s Haven’s green chile is worth moving to Santa Fe for. It went well with every morsel of food that you see on that enormous plate. Now, we went to Horseman’s Haven after climbing to the top of the mesa at Tent Rocks. Despite this, I could only make this far into cleaning my plate:

American restaurants have a tendency to overfeed you, but at least you can take your leftovers home. Trust me, my leftover enchiladas were happily consumed at a later time. And Niko got to take home the leftover #2 sauce too.

So I am starting to go through the pictures that I took on my most recent trip to the US. This time around, I started out in Massachusetts and then ended up two time zones to the west in New Mexico. As if the three thousand kilometers between Boston and Santa Fe weren’t enough to prove how vastly different these places are, I give you the following pictures:

Rockport, MA

Tent Rocks National Monument, NM

In Zurich, the most common street food comes in the form of a cervelat sausage. On a recent trip to a small coastal town in Massachusetts, we saw this stand at a town festival:

On a fun linguistic tangent, did you know that the word “chowder” comes from the French word chaudière which means “stew pot”?

Last weekend, I took a trip to Paris with les filles, and as befitting a ladies trip, we indulged in a few pink beverages.

First up, a Monaco.

I first discovered this pleasant girly drink when I was a high school foreign exchange student in Lille. None of my female companions had ever heard of the drink before, and it was a splashing success amongst mes copines de Zurich.

Next, a cassis sorbet soda from Berthillon on Ile St Louis.

I had heard of Berthillon’s famous ice cream before, but this trip was my first trip there. Sure, there were lots of interesting ice creams on the menu with all kinds of accessories like whipped cream, fruit, liqueurs,etc, but somehow, it seemed fitting to order a magenta beverage on a summer’s afternoon. Definitely a girly indulgence.

However, my friend K ordered the ultimate in girly gourmandise: a glass of champagne with a scoop of peach sorbet.

Ok, so this drink is not exactly pink, but the pastel-ness of the peach sorbet and the general awesome-ness of champagne sure does make it pretty,

Sundays in Zurich can be a bit dull, but there’s nothing like an elephant running through the city to spice things up.

Apparently, Sabu the Elephant managed to elude her circus handlers as she was supposed to be loaded onto a trailer, She was then chased by Swiss police for an hour. Sabu even had the good sense to take a summer dip in the lake.

Unfortunately, I did not get to witness this with my own eyes, but the 20 Minuten is there for both pictures and video.