The Best Ice Cream in Malmo?

I was ready for it. I was armed with an address and a name. I planned for it. I got up early for it. I was ready for the best ice cream in Malmö.

In August, I spent an unfortunately brief 48 hours in Malmö. Upon the recommendation of local travel blogger, Ebba of Ev_adventures, I went in search of the best ice cream in Malmö. She suggested Köld, which has a shop in a mall, but when I was in Malmö, they also had a pop-up shop near the annual Malmö festival. Ebba recommended we check out the pop-up shop while it was open.

On our last morning in Malmö, we got up, ate breakfast, and headed out for ice cream. It was a little on the chilly side for a cold treat, but we couldn’t miss the best ice cream in Malmö. We walked about 20 minutes from our Airbnb to the cute primarily pedestrian street, Södra Förstadsgatan. When we arrived at Köld, it was closed, and the sign said they wouldn’t open until 12pm. It was 11am at the time. We debated giving up or waiting but decided that the best ice cream in Malmö was worth it. We walked a bit further to Triangeltorget, where there’s a fountain, a hot dog stand, and a couple of swings. We grabbed a swing and hung out for an hour, just relaxing.

At 11:57 we walked back to the pop-up shop. It was dark and totally empty. A sign on the door said that they would close when the weather is bad, and we were afraid the breezy day was chilly enough to close the shop. At 11:59 a young woman showed up and unlocked the shop. Yes! My husband chatted with her in Swedish while I stood by stupidly (I don’t speak Swedish). He later told me he asked her what her favorite flavor was, and she said the salted licorice. She opened up the ice cream case and it was apparent something was wrong. Aside from the subtle lack of a tell-tale hum of a freezer, the ice cream all looked like soup! Apparently, the freezer had been left off overnight, and the ice cream was ruined.

Defeated, we left the shop and headed back to our Airbnb. I guess the best ice cream in Malmö will just have to wait until next time!

Photo of the Week: Cute Elephants and City Views

Please enjoy the first of many photos from my recent travels in Europe.  The photo above was taken in Malmö, Sweden last month.  I can’t wait to share with you a post about our adventures in Malmö trying to find ice cream; hopefully I will share that within the week.  Follow me here to see it first!

Photo of the Week: National Cousins Day!

Today is National Cousins Day! (Cousin’s Day?  I’m not sure.)  I’m celebrating my smart, amazing, beautiful, unstoppable cousins, Ava and Holly!  They both also recently had birthdays, so happy belated birthday, summer babies.  The three of us have maintained a group chat for a couple of years now and I have to say I love Facebook for keeping us together (we don’t all live in the same state). We always have amazing adventures, so it took me absolutely forever to pick just one photo!  Love love love.

 

Take a break

Hello Globetrotters,

Have any of you seen (or at least heard the soundtrack of) the musical Hamilton? Well, #1 Lin-Manuel Miranda is a genius and #2 it’s been out awhile, so I don’t feel bad about the following #spoilers. (Also, it’s based on historical events, so technically I suppose it’s “been out” for over 200 years. But I digress.)

In act II Hamilton’s wife and sister-in-law are trying to convince him he needs a summer vacation. They want him to come with the family to upstate NY and relax with them by the lake.

He refuses, because he is dedicated to his work in Washington’s cabinet, and has a specific plan he’s trying to figure out how to get through Congress. So he stays in the city (NYC was still the capital then).

This is when he meets Maria Reynolds. “Someone under stress meets someone looking pretty” and they have a scandalous affair. Their affair essentially ruins his career.

His dedication without taking a break and some family time was ultimately not worth it! In the short term, he did work hard and move forward in his career, but long term it was detrimental.

Okay, cool story. But what does it have to do with anything other than proving what a huge nerd I am?

I, too need a break. Between working, moving, and the blog I am overwhelmed. I don’t want to have a career-ruining affair! Lol

So I’m going to take Eliza Schuyler Hamilton’s advice and take a break. You’ll definitely still see me here, but I’ll be focusing on my photo of the week and giving some old posts a makeover. I’ll still be present on social media, so be sure to follow me on Facebook, *Instagram, and *Pinterest.

My goal is to be back to writing weekly after we get settled in the Czech Republic. We’re planning a big multi-country adventure before we finally end up in CR, so I’m confident I’ll have exciting material to share with you.

I hope you’ll stick with me because I already can’t wait to get back to it!

Lots of love,

Allegra, The Globetrotting Scientist

*This is my personal Instagram. I’m working with insta to get my blog Instagram back online. Also my personal Pinterest, but I pin tons of travel, food, and craft stuff.

Photo of the Week: Happy Birthday, Dad!

Happy Birthday, Dad!

I’ve always loved this cute photo of us.  I hope you have a wonderful birthday; Love you!

NYC Part 6: Our final day

A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I spent a long weekend in NYC. Catch up now with part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5.

We woke up on Monday morning, our last day in New York feeling blue. Our flight home wasn’t until 8pm, but we didn’t have much planned for our last day. Another of David’s friends, Ella, was in the city visiting family, so we made plans to met her at a Swedish coffee shop in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

After showering and storing our bags (thank goodness our Airbnb had a locker we could use after checkout!) we walked to the subway and headed from Astoria to Greenpoint. The coffee shop was a little chain store called Konditori, but David was excited because it was Swedish. We got drinks at the counter, Ella and I both ordered hot chocolate, while David and I split a muffin, then crowded around a little table in the back of the shop.

We chatted and enjoyed our hot beverages, then decided to explore the neighborhood we were in, which is known as “Little Poland.” Little Poland wasn’t as strictly defined as Little Odessa; while it had something of an Eastern European feel, there were still sushi restaurants, people speaking English, and Swedish coffee shops. We stopped in a few little shops in search of Prince Polo candy bars, my favorite Polish treat. There’s a cute Polish Deli not far from my work, but I still wanted to find Prince Polo in New York.

We wandered all over the neighborhood, explored bodega after bodega before finally finding a shop selling Prince Polo. You could tell right away we were in the right place: the store took me back to my study abroad days. They had a selection of Polish snacks and drinks, and a small deli counter. Everyone but us was speaking Polish. We picked up 3 Prince Polos (Ella was excited to try the chocolate bar) and headed back into the bitter cold.

Next on the agenda: Polish food for lunch. Between google maps and some good, old fashioned wandering around, we found ourselves in a Polish market. We ate potato pierogi dipped in mustard and chatted until Ella had to head back to her brother’s. She told us about a bookstore in Manhattan that supposedly had Urdu language books (David speaks Urdu) so David and I decided to check it out.

We said goodbye to Ella at the subway; David and I made our way uptown to the Upper West Side. Upon entering the bookstore, we looked at each other–it didn’t look like we’d find any Urdu books there. It appeared to be a children’s bookstore, and while we found a handful of Spanish learning materials for kids, we didn’t find anything close to Urdu resources.

What were we to do? Our uptown adventure was a bust, we only had a few more hours in New York and we weren’t at all familiar with the neighborhood. So we decided to just walk around in the cold and see what we could see. Two broke 20-somethings quickly saw the Mexican restaurant having happy hour $5 margaritas. Sold.

The restaurant was really cute and the bartender was nice. We ended up hanging out for a while and ordering their happy hour boneless wings to share. Finally, it was time for us to go. We took the subway back to Astoria to retrieve our bags, then ubered to La Guardia. Our plane was delayed because it was SNOWING in NC, but otherwise our trip home was fairly uneventful.

Whew! When I set out to share my NYC journey with you, I did NOT plan for it to go on for 2 months nor for it to expand into 6 posts. I hope you enjoyed it, because I certainly enjoyed experiencing it and sharing it with all of you. Tell me about your experiences in New York or your favorite city in the comments below. If you liked this post, be sure to hit the subscribe button, share this post on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest and keep following me here on WordPress for more GREAT content like this!

Margarita picture: https://www.houstoniamag.com/articles/2015/1/27/a-margarita-a-day-january-2015

Photo of the Week: Must-Watch TV Show

This week I want to share with you a show I really enjoyed watching.  If you know me, you know that, like the rest of my family, I adore television.  My family ate dinner together every night, but we certainly did it plopped down in front of M*A*S*H or The Dick Van Dyke Show or Hannah Montana.  TV is great.  Fight me.

I generally stick with sitcoms, but now and again I’ll get fully immersed in a good drama.  This was one of those times.  Deutschland 83 is set in Germany in 1983 during the height of the cold war.  It follows Martin, an East German soldier as he is blackmailed into spying on the West German military and NATO operations.  There was one episode that was so intense I had to take a break from the show for a few days.  If you watch the 8-episode series, I can almost guarantee you you’ll be able to tell which episode I’m talking about, but I don’t want to spoil anything.

You must either speak German or be cool with subtitles to enjoy this show.  I don’t speak German, and I felt the subtitles were excellent and I never felt lost or as though the translation was insufficient. It’s streaming on Hulu, go check it out!

Big News!

This fall, my family will be moving to the Czech Republic!

 

It has been a dream of mine for half my life (since I was 12, literally half my life) to move to Europe. If you want to read more about how that dream began, check out How I Fell In Love With Traveling. I am incredibly excited! I’m also extremely proud of my husband, because he will be an English Teaching Assistant through the Fulbright scholarship, the most prestigious international relations grant in the world. While we’re there, I will be continuing to blog, furthering my education, and of course, traveling!

Over this summer, however, we’ll be trying to pare down our belongs, learning Czech, and preparing to move abroad. I will continue to work hard to bring you great content, but I wanted to warn you that there may be a brief break in my regular posting. Hopefully, I will be able to bring in some guest writers and blog in my down time, but we’ll have to see how life goes.

I can’t wait to share my experiences in Europe with you! I look forward to blogging about our adventures for the next year and hope that you’ll enjoy sharing them with me. I hope that friends and family will come visit us when we’re there.

Ahoj!

Have you ever lived abroad? Where did you live? What were your experiences like? Tell me about it in the comments below! Share this post via Facebook or Twitter and, as always, follow me here on WordPress for more GREAT content like this!

Photo of the Week: Poznań, Poland 2014

Four years ago, in May 2014, I rekindled my passion for traveling.  That’s not to say the passion ever truly went away, but finances and school, and blah blah blah, life in general just got in the way.  Between my first international trip in the summer of 2006 and my study abroad trip in May-June of 2014 I traveled within the US.  I became more comfortable on a plane, I saw more big cities but I did not have the opportunity to experience a different culture.  The idea of studying abroad in 2014 was scary, but I am eternally glad that I did it.  I needed to step outside my comfort zone and really start working towards the things I was passionate about.  Na zdrowie!

NYC Part 5: Broadway Show and Cocktails in Manhattan

A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I spent a long weekend in NYC. Catch up now with Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

After taking some cheesy photos and finding our way to our seats, Holly and I were able to take in the set of the Broadway musical, Once On This Island. (David was exploring downtown on his own, with plans to meet back up with us later on.) The setup was different than any theatre I’d been in before. The theatre is in the round (the audience surrounds the stage instead of being on one side of it) and is very open. Some of the cast was already on stage, milling around while the audience was settling in. The floor of the stage was covered in sand, and there was a “river” flowing in from one side. The first row of seats are on stage, with the audience seated with their feet in the sand. In addition to human cast members, there was a live chicken and a live goat on stage (my cousin’s favorite part)! I don’t have any pictures of the set because photos in the theatre are not allowed and they’re actually pretty strict about it.  The photo below is a model of the set that I found online.

Once the audience was settled (the show was standing-room only, but luckily we had seats) the show began. During a storm, the village storytellers tell a frightened little girl the story of Ti Moune. Ti Moune is an orphan girl who was adopted by peasants from the peasant side of the island. The island is also home to the grands hommes, wealthy descendents of French settlers who live on the other half of the island. In a Romeo and Juliet style story, Ti Moune falls in love with a grand homme, Daniel. I don’t want to spoil the ending, although if you’re curious, the synopsis is available on Wikipedia. The performance was incredible and the fairly young leading actors had phenomenal voices and stage presences.

After the show, we waited by the stage door for the actors to (hopefully) come out and sign Playbills. The first to come out was Sparky the goat! We got to feed him some goat food and take a few photos. Next to come out was Phillip Boykin who played Tonton Julian, Ti Moune’s adoptive father. He was really nice, signed both of our Playbills, and took a photo with us! Unfortunately no one else came out, but I’m not that surprised since it was a matinee and they had an evening show to prepare for. I was disappointed that Isaac Powell (who played Daniel) didn’t make an appearance, since he went to high school with my best friend and they were in their school’s production of Pippin together.

We met back up with David and decided to get drinks before Holly headed back to CT and we returned to our Airbnb. Holly picked the place, an Italian restaurant called Da Marino with allegedly really cool bathrooms. We sat at the bar and each had a cocktail. Holly had one of their signatures, an espresso martini, I had a cosmo, and David had a vodka tonic. We chatted with each other and with the bartender, who could tell we weren’t New Yorkers right away. We were the only ones at the bar, since it was like 6PM on a Sunday.

David and I checked out the men’s and women’s restrooms respectively, and they were indeed pretty cool. The women’s room was like a fantasy enchanted forest. When I returned to the bar, the bartender was singing “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You” with piano accompaniment. She was great! I guess she came to New York to become a singer, but was bartending to pay the bills.

We left shortly after her performance, Holly to Connecticut, and David and I to Astoria. David and I picked up some ramen and snacks to eat at home, rather than trying to go out to eat again. We had a chill evening for our last night in New York.

Read about our last day in the city in my next NYC post! (Update 5/20/18: part 6 is the final piece of the story!) Did you enjoy this post? Have you visited New York before? Did you see a Broadway show? Where do you think the coolest bathrooms in New York are? Tell me about it in the comments below! Share this post via Facebook or Twitter and, as always, follow me here on WordPress for more GREAT content like this!

Once On This Island wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_on_This_Island
Once On This Island set photo: https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Broadway-By-Design-Dane-Laffrey-Clint-Ramos-Bring-ONCE-ON-THIS-ISLAND-from-Page-to-Stage-20171216