WoWftVoE: Strawberries & A Brief Travel Summary
WoWftVoE: Strawberries
Never EVER (and I mean, absolutely NEVER) eat strawberries without washing them first.
I got e. coli in Zurich, Switzerland doing this. Bought some strawberries from a market in the rail station, ate them on the way back to our hotel.
My host in Zurich, the lady who co-owned the hotel where we stayed, sympathized & told me she got roundworms from eating unwashed strawberries in Los Angeles. When I expressed concern that maybe I had roundworms rather than e. coli she told me I'd be able to tell. "You can feel them." AUGGGGGGHHH!!!
A Brief Travel Summary
So my trip was... interesting. Much improved after my digestion normalized. I was sick for 2 of the 4 days we spent in Zurich and 3 of the 6 days we spent in Malta. Yeah, 5 days of our 10 day trip. Bleah. I completely lost 2 days to it, managed at least one small outing 2 of the days and one big outing one day (3 hour bus trip with an hour's break in the middle).
Zurich is wicked expensive. Malta was delightfully cheap.
Zurich has nice breezes. Malta is cook-your-eyeballs hot.
Zurich may be old but Malta has 7,000+ years of documented history. It was daunting. Lately, as I've been reading about Malta's history, I've been thinking in terms of large chunks of time, 50 years, 150 years, 400 years. Malta's "new" capital (Valletta) was established in the 17th century, replacing the "old" capital (Mdina) which had been their capital for around two thousand years. Since just after the Phoenicians. Remember the Phoenicians? They were conquered by freakin' Alexander the Great.
But Zurich does have amazing chocolate made by tiny chocolate gods with perfect little hands so it's kind of a toss-up which was my favorite.