European Vegan Food Tour

Over our four week trip to Amsterdam, Prague, Budapest and Vienna, we enjoyed some delicious vegan food! One of our favourite parts of travelling is checking out the local vegan scene. Some think being vegan while travelling means missing out but we find the opposite is true. Being vegan means you get off the beaten path to find restaurants and local vegan specialities. As always, our number one vegan travel trip is the HappyCow Worldwide Veg Dining Directory available as a free website or smart phone app. The site has over 40,000 listings, and I have contributed over 740 photos and reviews!

Starting in Amsterdam my favourite spot was Vegabond a simple vegan cafe with limited seating and a well stocked vegan specialty grocery. They make a great sandwich with locally made cashew basil pesto cheese. The coffee and desserts are also terrific. The shop has all the required vegan staples; faux meat, non-dairy cheese (including my favourite Vegusto), cookies, candy, ravioli and pasta. We ventured further out and went to the Loving Hut which had some nice filling dishes including a devious crispy faux chicken and a great tiramisu for dessert. Another further out spot is Koffie ende Koeck which had a nice sandwich, baked goods and coffee. I had high hopes for the vegan butcher I had heard about; De Vegetarische Traiteur, but we were a little underwhelmed with the offerings. It is still a good place to check out and their frozen take home items look good. In fact, we more than once enjoyed their delicious faux chicken product available on a bagel at the chain Bagel and Beans. A local recommended we check out Golden Temple, a vegetarian spot with a fun atmosphere. The flavours combinations (Indian, Asian and Mexican) sometimes were a bit different than expected, but we did enjoy our meal. The pakoras were particularly tasty. We checked out the TerraZen Centre one evening for an interesting mix of Japanese and Caribbean food. The space is small but the staff are friendly and we had a nice time. A favourite spot around Europe is the vegetarian falafel chain Maoz, which we enjoyed a few times. The best part is the all you can fill toppings bar with the great cilantro sauce. Amsterdam also has a candy shop, Candy Freaks, with vegan options clearly marked. We picked up some great licorices and chocolate covered raisons, which I haven't had in years! Amsterdam is also lucky to have a vegan shoe store; VegaLife, where J picked up a new belt. We found over all that Amsterdam vegan spots were more casual and cafe like and the city could do with a nice fancy vegan option.

Cupcakes from Vegabond Cafe

Part of the reason we opted to go to Prague is that we heard the vegan scene is really growing. We picked out our airbnb to be closed to a vegetarian spot; Etnosvet and Etnosvet Cafe. The cafe is all vegan and was our regular breakfast spot for yummy grilled panini with vegan cheese and espresso. It is a small shop with a few seats at the window. The vegetarian restaurant (with vegan options clearly marked) is around the corner. The setting is fancier - a great spot for a nice dinner. I loved the mock Peking duck, and peanut satay the best. There are few vegan options for both appetizers and mains; it is just lacking a vegan dessert. Our other common spot was Moment Cafe, an all vegan spot across from a nice park and near the train. We loved the vibe and the great staff. We ate many meals here and often stopped in later for a coffee break too. It is a great place for breakfast, lunch or supper and they have lots of desserts. Items I particularly liked; vegan egg spread, waffles, seitan bagel, and the soups. They also have great daily special meals. Prague also has a small shop and restaurant called Puro which is affiliated with the awesome vegan grocery chain, Veganz. We stopped in a picked up a few vegan snack items. However, we found the health food store, Bioobchod, near our accommodations to have more of the items we were looking for. It is all vegetarian, with lots of vegan items. There was a great selection of violife and other vegan cheeses, vegan sliced meats like wheatly, and vegan snacks. It also has pasta, canned goods, and a bakery area.

After connecting on social media, we also met up for coffee with Randi, one half of the full-time travelling duo behind the Veggie Visa website. We had a great visit! "Veggie Visa’s mission is to discover vegan lifestyle options all over the planet. Whether it be a delicious restaurants to dine at, great places to shop, vegan recipes, or health and wellness information, the site is devoted to traveling the globe to bring you great vegan resources, tips, and stories."

Grilled Panini from Etnosvet Cafe

Now Budapest has quite a few vegetarian and vegan restaurants, unfortunately due to the holidays some were not open the entire time we were there and others were only open part of the time. We were grateful we booked an apartment with a kitchen as we used it a few times. We stocked up on items from the Bio ABC health food market and picked up fruits and vegetables at the Great Market Hall (central market). However, Budapest is home to one of the most amazing things I have ever eaten; vegan fried cheese from Napfenyes Restaurant and Pastry Shop. This delightful dish was recommended to us by our new friend Randi, of Veggie Visa. She does a nice review of this delicacy in her article; Vegan Food Tour in Budapest, Hungary. Napfenyes is also home to amazing vegan cream filled eclairs. I admit we packed a few (several) for the train ride to Vienna. This spot also had great pizza and salad options, plus J's new favourite, a vegan napoleon square for dessert. Another great spot is Kozmoz Vegan Restaurant, and the highlight was the layered chocolate pancake dessert. HappyCow lists Madal Cafe as vegetarian friendly but it did not have a lot of options other than a few raw dessert items. However, the espresso is excellent so we stopped there regularly. There are also many Hummus Bar franchises with a good selection of vegan friendly hummus, falafel, soups and salads. 

Vegan fried cheese!

And on to Vienna, the highlight here was not one but two all vegan grocery stores: Maran Vegan and Veganz. Veganz is a chain of all vegan grocers, the first of which we went to in 2012 in Berlin. The Vienna store is terrific and we picked up some European favourites including vegan ravioli. Maran Vegan is actually a larger store and has a larger deli and produce area. Both stores had expansive selections of vegan cheese, faux meats, snack items, pasta, bakery items, personal care items etc. Whenever we visit a vegan grocer I always pick up a new reusable bag for a souvenir, and I particularly loved the all black one from Veganz. With the lovely groceries we made dinner a few times in our flat, after long days of wandering. We regularly visited Swing Kitchen, and all vegan burger joint. We went to both locations and loved the burgers, sides, and the soft dipped ice-cream cones! It was a novelty to have such a yummy vegan fast food joint with a fun atmosphere. For a more upscale and health focussed option, we loved Tian Bistro a vegetarian spot with lots of marked vegan options. The baked potato stuffed with cashew cream, and the tempeh salad were our favourites. Pirata Sushi was also a good spot with a variety of all vegan sushi. 

Vegan groceries 

To check out more vegan food photos see: https://www.flickr.com/photos/8751723@N02/albums/72157658369449113

Amsterdam, Netherland

We started our Europe trip with 2 nights in Amsterdam, to settle into the new time zone. We stayed at the convenient WestCord City Central Hotel. Then we spent the next nearly 3 weeks travelling around Europe before returning for our final week in Amsterdam. We stayed in an Airbnb flat in the core of De Wallen, which was much closer to the Red Light District than I anticipated (3 windows were a few feet from our door).

Some come to Amsterdam for the legalized pot and prostitution, but I was all about the cat museum, adorably called Katten Cabinet. The museum is in a tall row house, with cat related art exhibits and small museum store on the first 2 floors, then vacation rentals above and finally the owner's suite on the top floor. The exhibits are very diverse with the common theme of portraying a variety of cats. There are posters, sculptures, paintings - including a Rembrandt, etchings - including a Picasso, textiles, signs, advertising pieces, household items emblazoned with cats, ornaments, photos and a few real life cats wandering around. I loved the experience and saw many, mostly women, also enthralled, (some with bored looking husbands/boyfriends in tow).  The backyard contains several cat related tin signs and a few chickens running around, and the staff person said the owner calls them his two-legged cats.

Some of my readers may not know this but I started collecting cat related items when I was a young child. It all started when my maternal grandmother gave me a small china ornament of a cat sitting on a boot. From there I amassed many cat related items in my childhood. A highlight was shopping at The Bay and finding a cat comforter with matching cat sheets, which complimented my cat wallpaper, and the little cat foot prints I insisted my mom paint on my dresser. I slowed down on my cat collecting in my tweens and focussed in on the vintage Shafford  black cat collection from 1950's Japan. The first one I bought was a mug in a small antique store in Red Deer, Alberta, which was later joined by a teapot from a BC flea market. As an adult I've added more pieces to this collection. In 1986 I also desperately wanted the Franklin Mint "Cats of the World" Collection and they were simply too expensive. Last year, at an estate sale, nostalgia won out and I bought 15 of them for a bargain (which joined a few my sweet husband had previously purchased for me). Surprisingly our house is not overrun with cat kitsch, most of it is regulated to an old steamer trunk, and I promise we only (currently) have one real life cat; Milli.

Ok enough about cats... Amsterdam offered many other sights and things to do. The city is very picturesque with all the water filled canals and we often spent time just observing the street life. The streets are quite boisterous in the evenings but we did not have any negative experiences. Pro Tip; the 'coffee shops' don't actually sell coffee which is evident by the plumes of pot smoke spilling onto the streets; to find coffee you need to look for a cafe. We don't tend to do a lot of shopping but we did visit the Tesla store and picked up some shirts. We also visited the Sea Shepherd store where I added a towel to my collection.

We used the trams to get to the further out lying areas. We visited two excellent museums; Van Gogh Museum and Stedelijk Museum. The Van Gogh was a truly immense collection of Van Gogh works and information on his life. Stedelijk is dedicated to contemporary and modern art and design. I particular enjoyed the design portion with art in everyday objects such as, well designed kitchenware and furniture. On a different note, we also visited the Red Light Secrets - Museum of Prostitution, which gave a informative overview of the issues and history. One particularly powerful exhibit was set up like a Red Light window, with the museum visitor on the side of the woman working, and a life sized screen on the other side playing a video of the many types of people who pass by, including the curious, the friendly, the embarrassed, the rude, and the abusive.

Amsterdam is also home to Anne Frank's house, the young jewish girl who wrote a diary of her time in hiding from Nazis during the second world war. The exhibit is extremely informative, and is well set up items that belonged to the Frank family, Anne's diary, photographs and educational video. It is is an important and popular place to visit, so we opted to purchase booked tickets online, which allowed us to go at a specific time and avoid the line up. The canal house contained a business owned by Anne Frank's father Otto, while the hiding place is in a annex out back and above, the entrance hidden by a movable bookshelf. Anne Frank's family hid there with four other Jewish people (Hermann and Auguste Van Pels and their son Peter, and Fritz Pfeffer). Four of Otto's employees risked their lives to hide everyone and provide all their provisions over the more than two years they hid in the annex, before they are discovered by Nazis in 1944 and sent to concentration camps. Otto was the only one to survive the camps. It was an emotional experience to walk up the narrow staircase and stand in the rooms seeing the same walls that surrounded these eight people.

Anne Frank's life would have been much different had she and her family not been denied entry to the USA as refugees. Canada also turned away Jews fleeing persecution and death in Nazi Germany. "It was 1939 and 907 Jewish refugees aboard the German transatlantic liner St. Louis were seeking sanctuary from Nazi Germany. Canada refused to take them in and the ship sailed back to Europe, where 254 would later die in concentration camps." (source: The Chronicle Herald) As a global community we need to learn from history and respond to the worlds' suffering, injustice, poverty, war and those fleeing, in a compassionate manner.

“I think the purpose of life is to be useful, responsible, honourable  compassionate. It is, above all, to matter: to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.” - Leo Rosten