October 12, 2008
I just noticed that this post marks the 425th blogspot that I've posted in the almost 3 years of blog existence (the first blogspot was posted on October 22, 2005). Sweet goodness, that's a lot of posts and many, many pictures of food.
TUESDAYOn Tuesday afternoon, I headed to
Lucerne, Switzerland with a group of folks from my department at Genentech for a two-day meeting with one of our collaborators. I was off for only four days (two days of travel, two days of meetings, oy!).
The bonus was that we were traveling in business class on Lufthansa flights, so we had the pleasure of enjoying the "lie-flat" beds. The first flight was SFO to Frankfurt, Germany, and then to Zurich. Once in Zurich, we were shuttled one hour to Lucerne. I'm not a big plane-sleeper, so I watched four movies and took in as much of the Swiss landscape before getting to Lucerne.
WEDNESDAYWith the travel, we arrived in Lucerne around 5 pm on Wednesday. I had enough time for a quick nap (sleep, yay!) before a welcome reception at the hotel. Our hotel was in the heart of Lucerne, close to Lake Lucerne (
Vierwaldstättersee) and the train station, and within walking distance of the famous Old Town.
For dinner, a few of us walked to
Ristorante La Cucina in the Hotel Astoria, featuring up-scale Italian food.
I started with the beef carpaccio, served with freshly shaved parmesan, arugula and pine nuts. This dish was fantastic, it reminded me of the wonderful carpaccio dishes that I had when I was in Italy.
For dinner, I had the braised osso bucco served tagliatini pasta and fresh fall squash and tomatoes. The osso bucco was deliciously tender and the pasta balanced out the richness of the meat. Very tasty indeed.
After dinner, we walked back to the hotel and by the time we got back, the jet-lag was just settling in and I was exhausted. I was pleasantly surprised when I managed to sleep through the entire night.
THURSDAY
We had an early start on Thursday morning with the meeting at 8 AM with our collaborators. We were in meetings all day until around 5 PM, which were very productive. In the evening, the entire group headed over to the lake for a pre-dinner cruise. Coincidentally, there was some sort of carnival being held along the lakeshore, so there was plenty of action along the piers.
Views of Lucerne from the boat:
We unloaded on the other side of the Lake and walked to the Hotel Montana for dinner.
The Hotel Montana is situated on the hillside, and there is a unique elevator that takes you up the hill to the restaurant:
Dinner was held in the Scala Restaurant, next door to Louis Bar and we had a set menu arranged for our big group.
To start, we had a duet of tuna and spicy salmon with Ratatouille cream, avocado filo dough rolls and green horseradish. The fish was really fresh, though I didn't find the salmon spicy at all. The green horseradish was really nice and light.
For the entree, it was a saddle of Schwyz veal with a crust of almonds and Americanello grapes on Savoy cabbage and mashed potatoes with thyme. The veal was delicious, with the crust enhancing every bite. The mixture of the cabbage and potatoes were a little runny, but the taste was spot on, there must have been butter in that side. Oh, delicious butter...
For dessert, we had an amaretto fig parfait wrapped in cake with caramel tuile and fig compote. The was pretty good, but the best part was the caramel tuile, delish!
After dinner, we walked back to the hotel around the lake, a really nice 20 min walk to aid the digestion and take in the city lights at night. Back at the hotel bar, Luce, we had some wine before bed, and had a chance to catch up some more with everyone who hadn't hit the hay yet.
FRIDAY
We had a shorter agenda on Friday, so we were able to finish all the items by early afternoon. At that point, we bid adieau to all our collaborator colleagues. Here is a pic of the folks I primarily work with on the collaborator project:
The rest of the afternoon was spent touring Lucerne on foot, walking the historic wooden bridges, checking out Old Town, and buying chocolate (of course!)
Below is a series of pictures taken walking across the Kapellbrücke (Chapel Bridge), Europe's oldest wooden bridge that allows you to cross the Reuss River that runs through Lucerne.
There are a series of paintings from the 17th century depicting events from Lucerne's history:
After crossing the bridge, we headed in to Old Town. I was fascinated with all the architecture and art on the buildings, as evidence by the pictures below:
Downriver, we crossed the Spreuerbrücke (Mill Bridge), also touted as one of the oldest wooden bridges in Europe. This wooden bridge also features 17th century paintings, these done by Kaspar Meglinger called "Dance of Death" about the plague.
After a couple hours of wandering Old Town, we headed back to the hotel for some quick nappy zzz's before dinner with the Genentech crew. For dinner, we headed to the Old Swiss House.
To start, I had the smoked salmon, served with warm brioche, horseradish cream and the biggest capers I've ever seen. It was very tasty and a perfect starter.
The Old Swiss House menu features their trademark item, the deluxe wienerschnitzel. According to their website: We have been serving this speciality for more than fifty years; with up to one thousand servings per month, it remains our most popular dish!
The process: Very tender cutlets of veal are dipped in a top-secret blend of beaten egg, Swiss cheese and herbs. The cutlet is then coated in specially prepared breadcrumbs and cooked in pure butter at the table. The wienerschnitzel is served with half a lemon and fresh egg noodles.
I didn't order this dish, but thankfully two others did, so we got to see the entire process at our table. It was very entertaining. 
I had a chance to try a bite of the deluxe weinerschnitzel, and it was delicious. There's nothing like a meal cooked in pure butter....mmm....
For my entree, I had the filet of beef, served with crispy french fries and gratinated herb butter (see below)...the Swiss sure love their butter...
I had a chance to try the house dessert, the chocolate mousse (touted on the menu as "a must"). It certainly was one of the best mousses that I've ever tasted:
After dinner, we went for a quick walk to the nearby Lion Monument. Some folks had found it earlier in the day and took us to go see it. Though it was dark, it was a beautiful thing to see. I couldn't take any pictures because it was too dark to show up, so I borrowed the pic below from Wikipedia:
According to Wikipedia:
Bertel Thorvaldsen's famous carving of a dying lion (the Lion Monument, or Löwendenkmal) is found in a small park just off Lowenplatz. The carving commemorates the hundreds of Swiss Guards who were massacred in 1792 during the French Revolution, when the mob stormed the Tuileries Palace in Paris.We had another nice walk back to the hotel after dinner, and a nice night cap before catching some zz's.
SATURDAYOn Saturday morning, we caught a group shuttle back to Zurich to catch our flights out. Our quick trip to Lucerne had ended as quickly as it came. The trip back was through Munich and I managed to squeeze in five movies before landing at SFO. I've definitely hit my quota for newer releases and I can delete a big chunk off my Netflix queue.
Although brief, it was a fantastic trip. Lucerne was beautiful and made me want to go back to Switzerland very soon (maybe a ski trip later in the winter??). Prost!
Yup, that's right, no toilet yet. Hopefully it will be installed early next week. Until then, we're shuttling back and forth to the old place (only three blocks away) when needed.
Key provided some pre-race cupcakes for good luck from That Takes The Cake:
After dinner, Will and I picked up Shaun and headed downtown to the Elephant and Castle. Why, you ask? Well, our good friends with Zanecrawl were in town for Zanecrawl SF, so we were meeting up with that crew on their last stop, which happened to be at Elephant & Castle. It was great to catch up with Zane, Steve McKenna, Karen, Kristin and Wes, in addition to Rudy, Nancy and Ryan, who were also on Zanecrawl Chicago with us...
