Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Backpacking Europe Veg and GF with Child

We just returned from a 10 day trip to Europe. We spent 5 days on a backpacking trial-run and had 100% success gluten free and vegetarian. We plan to do a month long trip in a few years when my daughter gets older. We carried only a backpack with change of clothes an all of our electronics (nintendo, iphone, ipods, and cameras). We did not have room for much food. I knew we would have good luck finding food so we just carried a few bars and packaged nuts.

We traveled to Amsterdam, Marken and Volendam in the Netherlands, Paris, Brussels, London and Windsor. We traveled by train, stayed at 1 star hotels. We had no problem finding food, actually it was easier than finding Gluten Free food at home!

We traveled by train from city to city, we took mostly Thalys and EuroStar trains and were able to pre-order gluten free meals on most of the trains. The train stations in Brussels and London had great gluten free options at the airport and train stations.

London Heathrow Airport - British Airlines International Connections (Terminal 5, After Security)
Wagamama
http://www.wagamama.com
http://wagamama.com/food/dietary/wheatandglutenintolerant
Has a gluten free menu with excellent stir fry, noodle soups, miso soup and rice dishes.
They have locations all over the world. They had an extensive special diets menu.
(We also ate at Wagamama in London, at the Windsor Central train station, and in Amsterdam)

Wagamama #38 Yasai Itame
Grilled bok choy, fried tofu, red and spring onions, red peppers portabello
mushrooms, and bean sprouts served with rice noodles in a coconut and
green chili soup, garnished with coriander, mint and a lime wedge.
Naturally GF and Veg!


London Heathrow Airport
EAT.
http://www.eat.co.uk - In Terminals 3 and 5
All salads and soups are marked if they are vegetarian and or gluten free.
They have locations all over the UK at airports and train stations as well.

YoSushi
http://www.yosushi.com/ in Terminal 3
They had a menu listing all allergens and what dishes were safe or could be modified.

Brussels Midi Train Station
EXKI
http://www.exki.be
Had salads and soups that were marked if they were vegetarian and gluten free. Also sold packaged rice cakes.

Paddington Station in London
Salade
http://salade.co.uk
Had salads, soya deserts, juice bar, salad bar everything was marked if it was gluten free and vegetarian.

YoSushi
http://www.yosushi.com/
They had a menu listing all allergens and what dishes were safe or could be modified.


Amsterdam Airport Schiphol
Amsterdam City

Amsterdam Central Train Station
Albert Heijn Grocery Stores
http://www.ah.nl
They had an extensive selection of packaged salads that were marked as gluten free. Our favorite find there was "KoKos Sticks" which were slices of fresh coconut and a mango puree to dip them in. They had great packaged salads. The store also sell gluten free bread in the bakery at some locations, the bread is in the back in the freezer.
Amsterdam Health food Stores
DeNatuurwinkel (several locations)
http://www.denatuurwinkel.com
A organic healthfood store near the Rembrandt House. A gold mine for gluten free breads, crackers, cakes, homeopathics, and organic foods.

Paris Health Food Stores
Naturalia - http://www.naturalia.fr/
Touch of Bio - http://www.happycow.net/europe/france/paris/
Both places sold organic packaged gluten free items by Valpiform and Schar. Naturalia has fresh GF bread that you could order daily.

LegoLand Windsor
http://www.legoland.co.uk/park/Food+and+Drink/vegetarians.htm
They had gluten free and vegetarian foods available at 2 of the main restaurants as well as charts available at the park showing which foods were safe for a variety of special diets. We were able to eat a traditional English breakfast here and it was naturally gluten free and vegetarian- scrambled eggs, baked beans, hash browns. In the Italian restaurant we had an awesome broccoli risotto. The "chips" were gluten free at all of the restaurants. ("chips" = french fries.)

(Wagamama is also at Windsor Central Station)

Paris & Amsterdam
Maoz Vegetarian
http://www.maozusa.com/
Sadly we cannot eat their falafel but we could can eat their hummus and many things on their salad bar. At several locations the fries were safe. We ate there in Amsterdam and Paris.