Perfect Pistachio Cake from Etna Coffee, Sicilian Street Food. (What is street food?)

Perfect Pistachio cake from Etna Coffee on Baker Street, London, England. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

 Yes, those are pieces of pistachio on top of the cake. Crunch, crunch. Suck, suck. Lick, lick. Yum, yum.  Do you like baklava made with real nuts, not just, peanuts? Then you will probably love this crunchy, creamy cake just as much.

A few yards down Baker Street from Baker Street station is a fabulous little find. Etna coffee. I feel like Sherlock Holmes with his magnifying glass. I was given a piece of perfect pistachio cake by a relative who visited 'a Sicilian place in Baker Street'.

I said, "Go back. Get some more. Buy a case of it." 

I asked, "What is the name of the place? Do you have the receipt?"

No luck. So I looked on Google maps. I typed in Baker Street Sicilian Cafe. Up came a picture.

I found it. But could there be more than one? Could Baker Street be a Sicilian cafe centre? Could a man have opened up to spite or copy a successful rival? Could the brother or son or daughter have opened another two doors down.

He who knows looked at the picture. "yes, that's the one."

Well, I would never have guessed it was so special. Why would anybody want to call themselves street food? 

On the contrary, Indian restaurants call themselves names like big palace, Taj Mahal - palace, big  - the adjective comes after the noun.) 

Is it something to do with Baker Street?

Or Sicily? 

Or food you eat in the street?

No. Street food is ready to eat food. That suits me. I am always ready to eat. I looked them up online. The shop is run by two brothers.

On my next trip into central London I wanted to check them out. We took a bus from Baker Street station along Baker Street and passed the Etna Cafe too fast for me to photograph it. But I got to see it. A tiny place. One day I shall get back there. We took bus number 13 or 74. We took the bus towards Hard Rock Cafe and the hotels. On the way back the bus took a road parallel to Baker Street.

You may recall Mount Etna. It is an active volcano and erupts periodically on the East coast of Sicily. As a result of an eruption this century it grew 100 feet. Tourists go to see it. The area has a cable car.

You might discuss this or ponder the point while eating your cake from the Etna cafe. You might also think about Sicily as a tourist destination.

If you can't get there, you might consider tracking down the recipe. I looked at recipes for Sicilian pistachio cake, italian pistachio cake, pistachio cream cake and pistachio layer cake.

And if you are planning to go, you might check on the recipe in advance to be able to check with them on their ingredients and what makes their cake so special.

Etna Cafe

54 Baker Street

London W1U 7 BU

+44 20 7935 1600

Useful Websites

http://www.etnacoffee.net/

https://app.ckbk.com/recipe/heav81738c01s001ss003r029/sicilian-pistachio-cake

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pistachio_cake.png

https://lifemadesimplebakes.com/pistachio-layer-cake/

About the Author

Angela Lansbury was born and bred in Britain, and has lived in the USA and Singapore. Her family have worked in or lived in Spain and Switzerland. She is a member of Toastmasters Clubs meeting on Zoom with visitors from the UK and USA, India, Sri Lanka, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australia. Through the Toastmasters mentoring program Angela has connected with individuals in Vietnam and Romania, a different connection each month. Please come to the next BHA Toastmasters meeting on the 3rd Saturday afternoon every month. 

What is masl? Mystery solved!

The caption reads:
At the summit of Gunung Raung, Indonesia, 31100 masl at 6 am on the crater rim, the usual route, not the highest point on the rim, 3332 meters, which is beyond.
Photo courtesy of Trevor Sharot.

Problem
I got an email accompanying a photo from a climb up a volcano in Indonesia. The caption read, ... masl ... I puzzled over this. I looked up mas and Indonesian and discovered that mas in Indonesian means sir or brother (to a man the same age or older) or gold.

Eventually, I gave up and had to reveal my ignorance. I wrote back:
What is Mas1 - a mountain, a peak, an area?

Straight away an email came back. It wasn't a one but a lower case letter l.
masl means metres above sea level. Initial letters.

As they say, learn something every day.


Useful Websites
In case you want to go climbing in Indonesia, many miles above sea level, some links:
In case you were wondering:
www stands for World Wide Web (a website, as opposed to an email or fax or phone contact)
The dot coms are international and / or for the USA.
GB stands for Great Britain.
in stands for Indonesia.
Home is the home page or landing page which then directs you to other pages contact page (email, address, tel); or hotel or restaurants or things to do or events or transport or buy now.

More photos:
trevorsharotphotography.com
indonesia-tourism.com
indonesiatourismboard.com
balitourismboard.or.in
https://www.facebook.com/Visit-Indonesia-Tourism-Office-Singapore-436644356438445/
http://www.indonesia.travel/gb/en/home (Official tourist board in the UK)

Author, Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Strange things about Madeira, Volcanoes, Water, Waterfalls, the wet Westerlies, the world's islands and wet places

Problem
Where? Most people don't know of Madeira but don't where Madeira is. I had been there before but had forgotten the location. It's the fate of many islands, such as Singapore and Malta.

Black Volcanic Ash
The island is made of black volcanic ash. It was formed from a volcanic eruption. So were many islands. Think of: Hawaii.

Indonesia's Eruptions
Everybody has heard of Krakatowa. It was well documented by survivors.
Another of the Indonesians' islands was a greater disaster for local people and the whole world.  On Sumbawa an eruptions created the year of endless night, which reached as far as England and Europe in the early 1800s.

Red Earth
So the volanic eruptions leave black ash and black beaches. But Madeira also has red earth. Like Singapore and parts of Africa and Devon in England. I know. I spent a lot of time wiping Madeira's red dust from my shoes off the sills of the hire car. Then more time wiping the 'red' - or rather orange, stain off my white and turquoise trainers.

The World's Wet and Windy Places
Wet areas of Madeira and Singapore are on one side of the island. The winds blow one way because of the rotation of the earth. As the earth spins the air moves past. The air drops water vapour on the mountain tops so you get streams and waterfalls running down towards the sea at sea level.

The West and the West and the Westerlies
The west of Singapore, around places called Bukit, which is Malay for hill, gets more rainfall, more than the drier East near Changi airport.

Madeira Levadas - Water Channels
On Madeira the farmers built levadas or draining channels or waterways taking water to their land. The rainfall means green grass, bushes, trees.

Tropical Weather and Plants
Heat means tropical colourful flowers, and palm trees.

Madeira is south of England, hotter. Heat and wet means tropical plants, bananas, coconuts from coconut palms, cane for sugar and rum.


Useful Websites
lastminute.com
opodo.co.uk flight comparison website
tripadvisor.co.uk
tripadvisor.com
visitmadeira.com
Wikipedia.org Madeira
Wikitravel.org Madeira
Wikivoyage.org Madiera

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

What You Learn From Visiting Volcanoes

Problem
Is it safe to climb a volcano? What's it like climbing a volcano?

Answers
As a child, when I read about volcanoes, I wondered why anybody would take the risk of doing so. What sane person would go up to the rim of a volcano? A member of my family.

Oddly enough, I was really keen to visit volcanoes in Hawaii, USA. I suppose it was the novelty. Like looking over the edge of a cliff, another dangerous activity, which most people like to do, going as near the edge as they dare. Initially, from a distance, you want to go as close as you can, out of curiosity.

Logically, my desire to see volcanoes in Hawaii, was no different to another member of my family wanting to trek up tp the edge of a volcano in Indonesia.

Trekking up in a business and a pleasure. Children, adults, locals, foreigners, all want to climb up. Local guides carry rucksack slung from a long pole carried over the porter's shoulder.

My family's photos show the path starts at base level us dry brown, mud-coloured, sandy earth, with tree roots, so you have to step carefully.

Higher up you reach scree, thick black cold cinders, piece rock thrown up by the volcano, material which is the size of table tennis balls, with pieces the irregular size and shape of a fist, but loose as gravel, so on the way down you slide about.

From the top of one volcano in Indonesia you can see the lake in the middle of the volcano. The volcano is like a bowl. The raised edge was thrown up. the baby volcano to one side was thrown up later.

Is it safe? You may be told it is a 'dormant' volcano. Yet the baby volcano is constantly growing.You might be able to come back later in your lifetime, years later, and see a new higher size and different shape of the baby volcano on your later photo.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share my posts.

Want to climb a volcano? Vesuvius? Italy. Easy.

Hikers in Indonesia Java Lava, often hike up to the tops of volcanoes and take photos out and in. I thought volcanoes were all dangerous because of the rising gas, not to mention the heat. Or the danger of another eruption. But hiking up volcanoes worldwide seems a very popular pastime.

(Not, perhaps amongst us sewers, knitters, myopic former stamp collectors and retired armchair travellers.) However, even if you are interested in only armchair travelling, you might still like to take a look, shake your head and tut-tut at what the rest of the world gets up to. (As if there weren't enough dangers.)

Seems pretty well organised for tourists. Last reckoning was 5 Euros for parking and 8 Euros for entry and you can hire a walking stick.

Last erupted 1944. That's a bit recent for my liking. Not within my lifetime but within the last century, in my parents and grandparents lifetime.

This is the famous volcano which destroyed Pompeii in Roman times and whose after effects killed Pliny the elder, whose memoirs you might like to read, recorded by his nephew Pliny the younger.

Another famous Italian one is Etna on Sicily.

Millions living nearby. Plans prepared to evacuate, within seven days. (And what if it erupts before the seven days are up?)

Don't forget to:
Pack your camera.
Write your will.
Many a true word spoken in jest.

hippos://globeriders.wordpress.com/tag/climb/

Dormant or extinct? What's the difference? As far as I can tell, one is sleeping and hasn't been a threat for some time and is not thought likely to erupt. The other has shown no signs of life so you are much safer. But please check: latest definitions; and classifications for a particular place.

Kilimanjaro, in means mountain of light, maybe, according to one of various theories. Kilimanjaro has three volcanic cones.
In Tanzania.

Others in Indonesia are: S e m e r u in Java' Anak, (means child) ,Krakatoa, Tambora, Rinjani in Indonesia, Kerinci.
In Bali, mount Agung volcano is g u n u n g in Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian language), G u l u n g B a t u r.  (Marapi exploded in Java, Indonesia before my family could get to it. )

If spell checker has made a nonsense of the proper names or any words after I have careful checked and confidently left the page, please look for the nearest spelling to identify what I meant.

Angela Lansbury
Travel writer and photographer, author, speaker.

What to do in an earthquake: in Nicaragua, the USA and worldwide

At the World Travel Market at Excel exhibition centre in London I was given an attention-getting hat which I wore last night when I gave a talk on travel to a Toastmasters speakers' group.

I don't know what this hat protects you from. I presume the sun. But those spikes might come in handy frightening people nearby to keep a safe distance. Two of my friends leaned in to speak to me then told me they nearly got a sharp point in their eye. 

Nicaragua is the largest country in central America, and one of the safest, they say. 

(That's what I was told on a visit to one of the Greek island's. The welcome speech from the tourism minister to the visiting travel writers was interrupted by a mini earthquake. The earthquake didn't stop us touring Greece. Nor did it stop me visiting California regularly. But as a precaution I do return library books and pay all bills and debts before I take a holiday. I also read all the advice on what to do in an emergency.)

If you are not into adventure holidays, Nicaragua's website is a great place for armchair travellers to visit.You can visit the cultural capital and two main cities with their colonial Latin American architecture. (National language Spanish, no surprise, with lots of English spoken, plus a native language.)

Outside the cities, the big attractions are scenery, sports - trekking around volcanoes, which I class as a dangerous sport, and watching wildlife. If you want to get involved, there are programmes for volunteering, monitoring the effect of volcanic activity on wildlife, conserving turtles and even chasing natures' s prettiest but most delicate and elusive creature, the beautiful butterfly.

Today I was looking at the information on Nicaragua and I was reminded that Nicaragua is in central America. I came across the US government information site and clicked on the link to what to do in an earthquake. The site says that every state in the USA is prone to earthquakes. So I suppose the fact that Nicaragua is as well, will be no deterrent to the adventurous American tourist.

I knew that California is prone to earthquakes. I visited San Francisco after the most recent major earthquake in the late 1900s. (No I wasn't around in the famous one in the early 1900s when singer Al Jolson said, "You ain't heard nothing yet", referring to either his own singing or the earthquake or both.)

I remember in San Francisco standing on the roof of a skyscraper hotel when the PR told me that the building was designed to sway when shaken. Also the reason why the rooftop reclining sun lingers were chained down was not to prevent theft but to prevent them being thrown about during an earthquake. I associate earthquakes with crevices opening up in the earth and tidal waves. However, in a building or near a building one of the dangers is being hit by falling objects.

If you want to read the US government advice on what to do in an earthquake go to this site. What I remember after my first reading is that if you are in a kitchen, dining room, living room or office, crawl under a desk to protect your head, as in an aircraft, used your arms to protect your head, and in bed use your pillow for protection. Keep water and food nearby. Also documents and a fully charged

If trapped signal by tapping pipes or using a whistle. Maybe I should add a whistle to my traveller's first aid kit. As the boy scout's motto says, be prepared. If you want attention, get a whistle, or wear a Nicaraguan hat.

http://www.ready.gov/earthquakes
nicaragua tourism
http://visitnicaragua.us

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author, speaker.
Wonderful, weird, wine, words.