Disney World 2009

Just returned from a week at Disney World. This is the ultimate celiac kids vacation spot! I have to admit that I over planned this vacation for fear of being caught in a theme park all day and not having access to food. I just could not believe that there would be so many options.

Pre-Planning
We made our restaurant reservations a couple months in advance. this was tricky because I had to plan what park we would be at when. Having been there now and knowing that the parks are sooooooooo far apart I would have planned differently. I called the Disney Dining line ( (407) WDW-DINE) to get a list of the restaurants that we could eat at. They emailed me lists of fast foods in each park and menus from the restaurants.

Where We Ate
Rainforest Cafe @ AK
We have eaten at this chain all over the country and have always had very friendly reception. However, we did not get the usual friendly reception at Disney. The chef acted like we were a bother. Eventually we got a great meal, they had a fabulous vegetarian stir fry! We ate here three times, twice with reservations and once without.

Sci-Fi Dine In @ HWStudios
This was the most amazing meal we had the entire time. The chef was so friendly and accepted the challenge of making us a gluten free and vegetarian meal. We had an amazing pasta dish with sun dried tomatoes, white beans and capers. We also had a great polenta and pasta dish.

Akershus Royal Banquet Hall @ Epcot
Princess Character Breakfast
This was fun. Not sure it was worth what we paid just to eat Gluten Free vans waffles, fruit and potatoes. But it was fun and it got us in early to the park.

Hollywood & Vine @ HWStudios
Play & Dine Character Breakfast
Again, lots of fun, got us in to the park early but was a bit pricey for waffles and fruit.

Tutto Italia @ Epcot
This was the only bad meal we had. It was also the most expensive meal we had. The service was very slow. We ordered penne pomodoro and it had no taste at all. They did not have the GF bread that so many reviews touted.

Main Street Bakery @ Magic Kingdom
This was an amazing experience. I read in the guide that the reservation line sent us that you could reserve a to-go lunch box here. So I called ahead to do so and the manager took our order over the phone and sent us an email confirmation. When we arrived at the park we walked right up to the counter and gave our name and our meal was ready in minutes. My husband (non veg) had a GF Philly Cheesesteak and KT and I had Veggie sandwiches on GF rolls. Both meals came with fries and GF brownies.

Our Hotel
We did not stay at a Disney property because My husband's convention was at the Gaylord Palms. We emailed ahead to the hotel to tell them that we needed gluten free and vegetarian meals. We arrived at midnight and were able to get a wonderful gluten free pasta and garlic bread when we arrived, after a long day of travel. The chef even made us veggie sandwiches to take on the plane with us on the return trip home.

Resources
DizAbled
This website and book has great info for a variety of special issues including food allergies.
http://www.diz-abled.com/Disney-World-Restaurants-Menus.htm

Of Vegetarian Interest
A must see/do ride is the Living with the Land ride at Epcot. This is totally amazing! This is a boat ride through the Disney Greenhouse where you get to see new farming technologies that Disney is researching to make agriculture more efficient and environmentally friendly. Warning to Vegans the fish farming part might be a little disturbing. The vertical farming and creative greenhouse was fascinating. Not sure how I felt about the biotech stuff, but overall it was interesting.

This photo is not upside down, these watermelons are growing from the
rafters in the Land at Disney's Epcot!

Cairo, Egypt

Just returned from week in Cairo. Another gluten free success!

I did tons of research on vegetarian options but we did not use any of it because we had had a Guide assigned to us that took care of everything for us because of the business my husband was doing there.

Actually, I am not sure this post will be much help to anyone visiting there other than to know that it is possible to have a great trip and eat vegetarian and gluten free.

We stayed at the Marriott in Mirage City. This is one of the nicest hotels I have ever stayed in. There were several restaurants in the hotel and food was available around the clock. The chef fixed us whatever we wanted. There were not any gluten free breads available but we ate VERY well, maybe too well! Our favorite was the Italian Restaurant, believe it or not. They had great soups, salads and the best gnocchi I have ever had.

We carried gluten free crackers with us everywhere. This came in handy for KT at the long dinners.

We ate almost all of our meals in the hotel, only one was on a Nile boat KhulKhal and it was ordered for us by our guide and was a very nice rice and vegetable dish.


Places we visited:

• Pharaonic Village, A living history museum that recreates life in ancient Egypt. A great place to take children!
• Great Pyramids of Giza
• Cairo Tower
• Egyptian Museum
• Khan el-Khalili Market

Our only struggle on this trip was the airline connection through Paris CDG airport. We had a 5 hour layover between the US and Cairo. There was very little that was suitable to eat and we were starving. My advice is not to connect in Paris- London or Amsterdam have much better options for veg and gluten free foods.

Chicago Itinerary

Another City, another success! 100% Veg and Gluten Free!

Here is our trip info from Chicago.

ARRIVE SUNDAY 8 AM

• Breakfast at Whole Foods (Huron & State)
• Walk to American Girl Store (Chicago and Michigan)
• Lunch at American Girl store (GF Pizza and GF Cupcakes!)
• Take bus to Art Institute
• Wall through Millennium Park
• Check into Hotel (City Center at Ohio and Fairbanks - not sure I would stay there again, not bad just better choices available.)
• Dinner at Big Bowl (Ohio & Rush, great gluten free/veg options)
• Walk a couple blocks to Whole Foods (bought GF banana bread, fruit, soy milk for breakfast and snacks like chips, power bars and water, cookies)

MONDAY

• Ate breakfast in the room (soymilk, fruit, banana bread)
• 9:00 AM took Bus 2 to Field Museum (there is NOTHING you can eat at their cafe, we took snacks)
• Took a Bus up Michigan Ave
• Ate lunch at Noodles and Company (On two things you can eat, it was okay- not a place I would return to. Fast food pad thai is not my favorite. There is a Whole Foods not far from the museums, but would be easiest to get to if you had a car:)
• Back to the American Girl Store
• Bus #66 to hotel
• Dinner at Wildfire (Awesome!!!! You may need reservations but this was worth every penny we paid! They even had Gluten free beer and burger buns!) http://www.wildfirerestaurant.com/
• Back to Whole Foods for breakfast items...

TUESDAY

• Breakfast in hotelroom
• 10:00 AM Swirlz Cupcakes (took red line to Fullerton)
• Walked to Nature Museum and Zoo
• Planned to have lunch at Adobo Grill but they were not open for lunch so we ate at Chipolte
• Walked down to Museum of Modern Art, American Girl Store again:)
• Navy Pier and Children's museum (could have spent 3 days at this place)
• Ate salads at McDonalds
• Dinner at Big Bowl
• Wholefoods again to buy snacks and breakfast

WEDNESDAY

• 10:00 AM Architecture Foundation and Exhibit
• 11:00 AM Museum of Science and Industry (took lots of snacks because this is far away- but we did not eat much because we were so distracted by the amount of things to do at this museum)
• Lunch at Chiplote
• Museum of Modern Art again
• 5:00 took car to DaLuciano's (Amazing! you must try this place. Be sure to call for reservations. Carnivore Husband had meat ravioli with meat sauce and fried calamari, I had eggplant parmesan and my daughter filled up on garlic bread before she even got her pasta primavera but mysteriously had room for GF tiramisu and cream puffs!) 8343 W Grand. Our driver took Grand straight there, took about 45 minutes from our hotel. Was perfect on the way to the airport, only about 20 minutes to the airport in a cab.
• 8:30 PM flight home.

We did not eat at all of the places we planned, some where too far away when we got hungry. Next trip we will eat at VegeDiner, Balanced Kitchen (GF and Vegan) and also Adobo Grill.

Here is a list of restaurants in the Chicago area: http://csagc.park-ridge.il.us/restaurantlist.htm

Budapest or Bust (Rules of traveling to Eastern Europe with only the clothes on your back)

We connected through London on a day when travelers were not allowed to take more than one handbag as carry-on. Everything else had to be checked. We carried on a few snacks and all of our electronics. We checked all of our adapters, staple GF food, clothes, charger cords for our electronics...)

Can you guess where this is going?

We had nothing but the clothes on our backs and a bunch of electronics that were about out of charge and 4 plastic lizard toys KT acquired at some point in an airport.

RULE #1
Pack a few things you need for the first night just in case your luggage gets lost. (ie, toothbrush, soap, underwear!)

RULE #2
Don't pack allergy medication in your checked luggage.

RULE #3
The quart size ziplock is meant for some travel sized toiletries not a variety of homeopathic jet lag sprays. Okay, the let lag sprays came in handy but toothpaste would have been great!

RULE #4
When the airplane gives you $150 allowance because your luggage is late, don't go splurge on vegetarian sushi and then wait until after 7:00 pm to try to find gluten free toothpaste, shampoo and soap.

Since we had no luggage to take to our hotel we set out to explore the area without thinking the luggage would never show up. At 7:00 Pm we got a little panicked when we realized we needed to find gluten free toiletries. We did find a homeopathic safe toothpaste and hypoallergenic soap at a pharmacy. Fortunately Boiron is the Merk of Europe and every pharmacy carries homeopathic remedies and homeopathic toothpaste.

We went to our self catering apartment and then realized that we had no clothes and no toiletries.

RULE #5
When using the all-in-one washer-dryer in your Eastern European self catering apartment check to see if there is a handle on the outside of the washing machine before you put all of you remove all of your clothes and put them inside and shut the door.

So here we are now with no clothes! We we went to bed and decided to deal with it in the morning. Maybe our luggage would come. My obsessing mind had it all worked out. I could wear the two items we had not tried to wash- David's jeans and Katie's nightgown (a stretch) and go buy clothes for everyone else. In the morning, no luggage. But we did figure out how to get the washer open. Se we all wore soaking wet clothes to go out and buy new clothes. My husband needed a suit to wear to speak at the conference at noon that day.

The Good News
On our shopping trip to buy clothes we happened upon a Gluten Free Store!!!!

Taplalek Allergia (ALLERGIACENTRUM)
H1134 Uaci Ut 9-15
In the Lehel Piac Hall Shopping Center
Located on the north side of the building on the top floor.
They had dairy free, gluten free and egg free products including fresh breads and pretzels. They also had lots of products for sample. This was gold mine!

Where we ate:
Hummus Bar
Kertesz u. 39
Across from Franz Linzt Music
Metro: oktagon on M1
Great salad bar and hummus.
We took the Tram #72 to the Zoo from here.

Lite Coffee
Andrassy ut 2
Multiple locations. Salad and coffee bar. Fresh salads mixed to order. They had lots of beans, tofu and cheeses to choose from along with a wide variety of vegetables including artichoke, olives and corn.

Govinda
Vigyazo Fernc utca
Near Roosevelt Park and Four Seasons Hotel
Vegetarian/Indian
They spoke English and were familiar with celiac and gluten free. We had a great veg GF meal!

Napfenyes izek (Sunny Tastes)
VIII ROzsa Utca 39
Awesome vegetarian food, staff was very knowledgeable about celiac. We ate here three times. They made us falafel with buckwheat flour instead of wheat.



Bread
We found Schar bread at Tesco and Kaiser supermarkets.

A Vegetarian Apartment and Guide Service
http://www.budaveg.com/
We did not stay here because they were booked. Next time!

List of Healthfood Stores on HappyCow

http://www.happycow.net/europe/hungary/budapest/

Gallert Bath: Re-enacting scene from the book Hanna's Cold Winter

Sights we saw:
Budapest Zoo
FunFair Park (Vidampark)
Szecchnyi Bath
Szechyi Bridge (Famous lions)
Buda Castle
Gallert Bath

In case you are wondering, our luggage arrived on our last day. We managed to have a great time and find great vegetarian and gluten free foods and stay healthy and 100% incident free!

Jamaica

This time I was teaching at a resort for 8 days and KT and my husband were the ones vacationing. We stayed at the FDR Runaway Bay. This was a great trip, the best part was the vacation nanny. Every family gets one at this all inclusive resort. Nanny arrives at breakfast and stays and plays with the kids all day long, she also cleans your room! Our nanny was so amazing! She decided to go gluten free for the week so that she did not accidentally expose KT.

I met with the chef when we arrived and he assured me that we would be well taken care of. this is an all inclusive resort and many of the meals are buffet style. The chef would come out at each meal and tell us what was safe to eat. At the sit down dinners he would prepare a meal specially for us. The food was always wonderful.

Do beware that the traditional jerk seasonings do have soy sauce in them so cross-contact on the grill is a potential issue. While we were there we discovered casava breads which are a traditional bread of the area made from the casava root (manioc aka tapioca). It was awesome. They made a "French Toast" out of it for us.

KT on kid's dress up night dressed as a waitress bringing us GF food!

We had lots of bean dishes, lots of curry, rice, fresh vegetables and fruit.

What we love about Jamaica is that you can drink the water and eat the produce.

Paris with a 5 Year Old

We were able to eat vegetarian and gluten free without any incidents. This trip came just 6 months after diagnosis of our 5 year old daughter.

We travel a lot. The first thing I do is look up the vegetarian restaurants in the country, if anyone is going to understand food issues it is going to be the vegetarians. Also, most vegetarian restaurants have English speaking staff.

Here are some lists of Vegetarian Restaurants and health food stores.
Be sure to do some research to make sure the establishments are still open and have not moved.

http://www.happycow.net/europe/france/paris/
http://nwfolk.com/vegparis.html

A good place to confirm the existence is in the "Pages Yellow" http://www.pagesjaunes.fr/trouverlesprofessionnels/index.do
This is an awesome version of mapquest where you get walking instructions and photos of the building when approached from all directions!

LANGUAGE
I do speak a little French and I spoke A LOT of French while we were there. I am now very good at explaining what we can not eat in French. If you do not speak French then here are some resources for you:

French Dining Cards:
http://www.celiactravel.com/gluten-free-cards/14-french.html
I just scratched out the words that referred to "meat"
Here are the same cards in English: http://www.celiactravel.com/gluten-free-cards/11-english.html

Vegetarian French Phrases:
http://www.ivu.org/phrases/westeuro.html

PLANNING
I plan all of our activities based on nearby veg restaurants or health food stores. That way we are not wondering around looking for food on an empty stomach.
The first thing I do when we get there is to find the nearest health food store and buy a stash of GF foods.

We carried, GF snack bars, GF bread and crackers with us everywhere. If you eat cheese then it is easy to eat on the run if you have your bread.

We always had GF bread with us- we even fed the pigeons GF bread.


BREAKFAST
Our hotel did provide breakfast. We brought our own GF croissants and used their butter, cheese and jelly and then drank their coffee and chocolate.

BREAD
Ask where the nearest "BIO" store is- This is the equivalent of a special-diet-store-slash-pharmacy. In these stores you can get brands like VALPIFORM, BIAGLUT & SCHAER.

Gluten Free Baguette

We found the VALPIFORM brand to be far superior to anything we have even had in the states. They had AMAZING baguettes, croissants, pain au chocotale and madeline cakes.

We actually brought back a small suitcase of baguettes and croissants and we dream about the Madelines- did not get back with any of them, as we ate them all while we were there.

Many stores place their special orders on Wednesdays, and they arrive on Sunday.

The Schaer breads were pretty good- much better than most shelf packaged GF breads here:
Schaer has a new line of Organic GF breads and pastas.

We did not really care for the Biaglut products, they were more similar to EnerG bread products.

PLACES WE SHOPPED AND ATE

RENDEZ-VOUS DE LA NATURE (store)
http://www.dietetiquemouffetard.com/
96, rue Mouffetard
75005 Paris
Tél: 01 43 36 59 34
This is where we did the majority of our shopping- they carry a great stock of GF foods and speak English.
There is a healthfood restaurant on the corner, near this shop. We had a good meal there.

LES 4 et UNE SAVEURS
72 rue Card Lemoine 75005
Close to Place de la Contrescarpe. Métro/subway station: Jussieu or Monge.
Tel: 01 43 26 88 80
Organic, Macrobiotic, Vegetarian & fish. No smoking.
Open Tues - Sun, noon - 3pm & 7.15 - 10.30pm (11pm in summer)
** We ate here 4 times, as it was VERY close to our hotel. The food was PREFECT! They were very knowledgeable about GF food and made meals especially for us.

AU GRAIN DE FOLIE
24, rue La Vieuville - Paris 75018 - M>Abesses
Amazing little place with about 3 tables. The food was AMAZIng the owner was very knowledgeable about GF food.
They do have limited hours- I think they open at 5:30 PM

THE STUDIO
41 Rue du Temple 75004
We were able to eat brunch here- however it is an overpriced spot. This is a place where ex-pats used to gather on weekends when I lived in Paris. I was able to get a GF veg meal. I think I had an omelet and a salad. This restaurant is set in a courtyard of a dance studio.

ELAN NATURE (store)
107 bis, av du Général Leclerc
75014 Paris Tél: 01 45 42 35 00
139, av de Verdun
92130 Issy les Moulineaux Tél: 01 41 08 06 17

NATURALIA
These store are everywhere! The last 2 digits of the zip code tell you what "AREA" something is located in.
http://www.naturalia.fr/

MAOZ FALAFEL
Rue Xavier Rivas (at metro: Saint-Michel towards Notre Dame, 2nd St to the right)
The french fries were GF when we were there- they may have changed things since...

We also at at a Lebanese and a couple Indian restaurants. I can't remember the names at the moment, but both types of foods are easily adapted by a willing chef.

Vegetarian and Gluten Free?

Just 6 months after KT's diagnosis we had a trip scheduled to Paris. I was VERY nervous and felt like we were traveling to the gluten capital of the world. One day it came to me that I was looking at it all wrong. I needed to approach it the same way I approached traveling as a vegetarian. Being vegetarian it always takes lots of planning before we travel anywhere. In the past I have taken suitcases of organic vegetarian foods with me to Mexico, Japan and Ireland. Whenever I had a trip planned, I would look up the local vegetarian restaurants and stores and made out a travel plan. I decided that traveling gluten-free should not be that much different from traveling vegetarian.

Some tips:

• I start with the vegetarian restaurants, thinking they would be most likely to be sensitive to our dietary needs and I am sure everything is vegetarian.
  

• I plan our sightseeing around the location of health food stores and vegetarian restaurants.

• The first visit in any city is to the nearest health food store to see what is available.

• I request "Gluten Free" meals on our flights. Opting for gluten free over vegetarian because the vegetarian meals usually contain lots of gluten- usually pasta, bread and cereals. I knew the GF meals would likely contain fish or chicken. So we take our chances that there will be enough extras on the tray to keep us entertained. Breakfasts are usually vegetarian and GF. Don't count on these meals because they are not always served.
  

• I pack lots of GF snacks in our checked baggage and carry on food for our travels.