Sunday, December 9, 2007

L'Escalade!


Badges
Originally uploaded by hellomizk
We have had quite the weekend!

On Friday night we went to Mr K's annual work Christmas party, only this time it was in CH and not VA. The food was wonderful - we had truffle ravioli and I hit a new personal milestone- I ate a fishy food and didn't hate it! Before the pasta was served we had salad with thin slices of smoked salmon on it and, having fortified myself with a couple glasses of wine, I decided to brave the fish. I speared a minuscule sliver on my fork, wrinkled up my nose, and nibbled the corner off - before enthusiastically eating the whole thing and chasing it with the rest of the salad. Who knew! I'm going to pick up some smoked salmon from the grocery tomorrow and continue to experiment with it...

On Saturday we met up with one of Mr K's visiting coworkers to spend the day in Geneva and were pleasantly surprised to find ourselves visiting the city for the first time during one of their biggest festival weekends of the year!

"L'Escalade, or FĂȘte de l'Escalade (from escalade, the act of scaling defensive walls) is an annual festival held in December in Geneva, Switzerland, celebrating the defeat of the surprise attack by troops sent by Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy during the night of 11–12 December 1602. The celebrations and other commemorative activities are usually held on 11 December or the closest weekend." Thanks, Wikipedia!

Before we made it to the center of the festivities, we stopped to grab some nice hot street vendor food to tide us over for a couple hours. I had the most wonderful tamale - it was just perfect. Chris had a ham and cheese panini and we had CHURROS for dessert! After this snacking, we went wandering around and found ourselves surrounded by cannons, kids in costumes, adults in "historical garb" (costumes), guns, vin chaud, more cannons, and pigeons. Part of one street was blocked off and filled with snow and people were skiing down it.

Mr K posted several pictures on his blog as well - go check them out!

13 comments:

Fabian Trunz said...

Wow, you do like to eat a lot, don't you? But here I can empathize, I don't like fish much either. Smoked salmon sounds okay, though.

Miz K said...

Ah, no - I like foods a lot - subtle difference. ;-)

Fabian Trunz said...

Oh, don't worry, I wasn't insinuating that you were... oversized. You're female, and I'm not crazy. Well, not crazy enough at least ^^

Miz K said...

LOL fair enough. How goes the writing break? Relaxing?

Fabian Trunz said...

Agitating... but need to read a lot of Thomas Mann today... and Syntax homework... grrrwwarrgh! Tomorrow it's back to writing though, so this guy gets something better to read: http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/funny-pictures-scary-cat.jpg

Fabian Trunz said...

And the url got killed... maybe like this: http://icanhascheezburger.com/2007/12/09/it-were-a-dark-n-stormie-nite/

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

I can has HTML:

It were a dark n stormie nite…

Fabian Trunz said...

Indeed, I did indeed not think to use such magicks. Thankee!

Miz K said...

Virginia Nerds: 1
Swiss nerds: 0


;-)


Squid and his Mrs Squid and Squidlette were our BFF for Mexican food and art night - so fun!

Jen said...

Congrats on finding a "swimmie" that didn't make you want to barf! And kudos especially for continuing to try it - a lot of people aren't that brave!
I'm totally game for meeting up - our town or yours? Or perhaps somewhere in the middle?

Miz K said...

Woo hoo for meet-up! Location is your call - we have plenty of space here and if you come here we can go to Kasia's tea shop!

Kasia said...

You ate salmon!!!!!!!! That's very good to know ;) Anyhow, your pics look fab and I'm so glad that you and me share the love to the food ;)