…Now with Curie and Elia
There is a gazebo surrounded by a beautiful lake in the middle of a botanical garden called Meadowlark in Fairfax where we spent the day feeding the koi, and catfish, and turtles swimming in the pond. The garden abounds with flora and fauna and is remarkably peaceful, which is exactly what we needed; thunderstorms were predicted, but held off, lending only beautiful clouds and a relaxing breeze for the day.
So it should be said that pho is probably Albert’s favorite meal, so much that once when he was sick, Erin didn’t really believe it until he couldn’t finish a bowl. Now, we have had thousands of bowls in hundreds of restaurants all over the world, though we have not been to southeast Asia yet. And, while Albert once tried to compile all the pho restaurants he has ever eaten in with reviews on noodle texture, soup complexity, and temperature, we are not trying that here. In fact, Albert will claim the best pho he has ever eaten is still in Little Saigon at Pho 79 on Hazard, but he hasn’t eaten there in a while. So instead of trying to talk about the best pho in the world, we will only talk about NoVA (Northern Virginia). That being said, Albert will even say that Pho 75 may rival Pho 79, so there is that.
Read the rest and find our ratings here.
Erin’s father came down to visit while her mother and sister were in France, in a moment of spontaneity, we decided to go to Strasburg for a little adventure. If you recall, the Strasburg Railway and Train Museum is where Curie kindled her love of trains. While Elia had been here before, this is the first time she could see the trains with wonder, and pointed out a lot of things to us. We actually found Strasburg before we had children, and, even then, we wanted to take Erin’s father.
Thomas comes to Strasburg three times a year apparently and as we were leaving Erin’s father noticed a covered engine in a shed with remarkably familiar colors. You can see it in the picture right above the little Thomas picture. We had to tell Curie that Thomas was asleep; she was so excited.
Okay so you know that Erin and I have been to Tokyo for Thanksgiving to have 7 bowls of Ramen, and that some of the best Ramen we have had are in New York City and California. Pho is the same way, we have an Excel spreadsheet of Pho places across the country. You might also know we like urban hiking and food crawls. So we have had better versions of some of these noodle soups in many other places. However to have four (five) types of Asian noodle soups that are pretty good in stones throw from each other is remarkable. Food crawl anyone?
In NoVA (Northern Virginia for the un-initiated) where we live there are four restaurants in stones throw from each other that make pretty good noodle soup.
1. Beef Noodle Soup – A&J Restaurant, 4316 Markham St., Annandale, VA 22003
2. Pho – Pho Hot Restaurant, 7442 Little River Turnpike, Annandale, VA 22003 (Now note that we prefer Pho Factory Inc, 6237 Little River Turnpike, Alexandria, VA 22312, and Pho Deluxe, 9675 Fairfax Blvd, Fairfax, VA 22031, also local – okay an update Pho 75 – we may need a separate post on Pho)
3. Ramen – Tanpopo Ramen House, 4316 Markham St, Annandale, VA 22003
4. Udon – Miso Cafe Japanese Restaurant, 7410 Little River Turnpike, Annandale, Virginia 22003
5. Jjampong – Lunch Time, 7630 Virginia 236, Annandale, VA 22003 (we actually haven’t been to this one, but it is Korean Noodle Soup a couple of blocks away)
6. Floating Market Noodle Soup – SakulThai, 408 S Van Dorn St, Alexandria, VA 22304 (this is no where near the place I am talking about, but it is Thai Noodle Soup and we eat here all the time – though we have not tried the noodle soup – sadly SakulThai is now closed)
I’ve also had Cambodian Noodle Soup once in Brooklyn, and Indonesians must have one too, but I have never tried one.
Vacation 2012. Quite frankly, we haven’t taken a vacation longer than a long weekend since our honeymoon in Tokyo five years ago. Albert had never been to Europe despite two missed opportunities; Erin had lived in France for a year, so like Albert showing Erin Tokyo five years ago, Erin now showed Albert and Curie London for three days and Paris for four. Above are one row for each day. the first column is one of the locations, the next is Albert and Curie except when we didn’t have a picture. The third row are pictures of Erin and Curie, the fourth, a family picture, and the last, a picture of Curie.
We are not normal travelers, now don’t get us wrong, we saw all the touristy things, but in the vein of our urban hiking and food crawls, we just couldn’t get into the normal things people do. Instead, we looked for ramen, pho, and had local market hotel picnics in our hotel room. The second-best part of the trip was Curie’s fascination with statues in Rodin’s garden and the Louvre. We traveled with a baby backpack to carry Curie and a stroller, one light enough to take on the Tube and the Metro. The stroller is great for rain, but otherwise we liked the backpack Suephy and Ed gave us.
The best and most exhausting part of the vacation was Curie’s jet lag. We got to spend very intimate time watching our daughter laugh and hug and play standing on a king sized bed as if it were a stage. When she stands on the bed, her knees prop against your side and she stands her total two feet, three inches, and she smiles at you, and makes you laugh. Then when she would sleep, she would wake up with her tousled head and a big grin because she had her parents next to her instead of the cold of the slats of her crib. Yes, we saw the Eiffel Tower, and the Tower of London, yes we rode the Eurostar/Chunnel and went to the Louvre; we had terrible English breakfasts and fantastic croissants; is it terrible that we loved being with our daughter the best?
Curie at three months is almost 10 pounds, going to school (okay, child care), feeds from the bottle and breast (the secret was to feed her when she was asleep for the bottle – child care), has gotten sick (child care) and is a talkative, and smiley little baby.
This month she met her Ah-gong (Albert’s father), Ah-Jiq (Bernard), Ah-Jim (Agnes), and her big
Biao-Jie and little Biao-Jie (Miranda and Eleanor). She went to Niagara Falls (Canadian and United States) and the family went Urban Hiking together for the first time on a Food Crawl in Toronto (though Albert was sick – from Curie – from child care).
The concept of urban hiking is not new. Where hiking is usually planned out over trails through a wilderness, urban hiking can be more about wandering relatively aimlessly to see as much as you can.
Erin and I visit many cities and take the time to explore them without a tour group, and many times, without a map. We usually wander the city and hunt for food. In New Orleans, it was blue crab, in New York it was our 9 restaurant crawl, in Chicago, well, there was the Taste of Chicago, Lawry’s, and Heaven on Seventh.
While in Japan, we realized that we urban hike, so much so, in fact, that we wore hiking shoes specifically for the purpose there (they are not the most stylish, but they were functional). We carried pedometers to see how far we walked (Personal Training Walking for the DS) and realized that we are going to have to start carrying GPS Data Loggers for people to see our maps.
We had two days in Japan and walked 30,000 steps a day (the daily goal is 3,000 on the Personal Training Walking for the DS). In Japan, we had 5 bowls of ramen in one weekend, each very different and each very good. The picture above is of my 5; both full when served, and after I had finished each one (in the movie Tampopo, you are supposed to finish all of the soup to tell the owner that it was good, the Kazuki one was huge and it was very hard to finish). Erin will add to this article about each of the ramen, and what made each of them so good. Next to each bowl is the front of the restaurant and next to that, the owners at work. The last one there is Erin covering her bowl so you can’t see she didn’t finish; I use this because I forgot to take a picture of the owner.
To see the different stands and restaurants including the one featured in the New York Times (we had discovered them on our honeymoon before that) by the fish market, be sure to go to our photos (once they are up – at this initial writing, they are not up yet 🙂 ).
Chuka Soba Inoue Ramen at Tsukiji Fish Market – Shoyu
Kouryu Ramen at Akihabara Station
Nadai Fuji Soba in Ebisu
Hakata Tenjin Ramen in Shinjuku – Pork Bone Broth
Kazuki Ramen in Ebisu – Tonkotsu
From our Honeymoon:
Kagoshima Ramen in Aqua City Odaiba – Kagoshima
