Some people have asked me how I found being vegan was while traveling, well it’s pretty easy actually, aside from the two hard boiled eggs I may have had when there wasn’t much else (I ain’t perfect!) and accidentally ordering a stuffed pepper that had meat in it which I then gave to a friend. I had some of the most delicious food I’ve ever had while traveling and I also had some of the nastiest ( sorry Paris your pizza sucked… )
So here I’ll share with you all my good vegan food finds and hopefully you’ll see how vegan-friendly Europe can be.
British Airways let me request a vegan meal for my flight over and my flight home, it was bland but looked better than everyone else’s gross plane food!
London had some really good vegan food and is in general a really veg-friendly city. The two above photos are from the Vegetarian Pub that I went to, the meal I had was Tofu Fish ‘n Chips and it was delicious! A vegetarian pub seems like such a strange concept, and when you go inside it looks just like any other funky pub, but they don’t serve any meat! Yay 🙂
Here’s some goodies I found in London and carried them with me for a short while before deciding I had to eat it all to lighten my bag. PS that soymilk was the best soymilk I have ever had. And that VEGO bar… heaven.
These next few pictures are from Holland, which is slightly less vegan friendly than London, but I found a health food store which I frequented while I was in Bloemendaal and they sold vegan “chicken” (pictured above) which was frighteningly a lot like chicken. And in Amsterdam I had a lovely buffet lunch at a vegan restaurant/store. I also ate lots of fries 🙂 with ketchup not mayo!
These next two are from my favorite cafe/restaurant in Brussels called Le Pain Quotient, they had awesome vegan muffins as well as other food, and I always got a cafe au lait avec soya 🙂
The above pizza was from Paris and it was pretty disappointing, but in Versailles we went to the market and got food to eat by the Palace and I got a baguette with some tapenade, currants, and figs which was yummy. Paris didn’t impress me unfortunately, maybe because I was alone and so intimidated by it all, but Paris is where I broke down and bought a 6 euro jar of Skippy Peanut Butter…
This pizza I got in Pisa and it was pretty good, I was disappointed though because before I went I had researched this vegan restaurant super close to the Tower, when I got to the address the store was completely closed down, this was a recurring thing in Italy because so many people close their shops for the month of August to go on Holiday, which sucks if your traveling in Italy in August! But I made due.
In Florence I had some really good food, again some of the vegetarian places I had scoped out were closed (waaahh) but I had some great pizza and one night I had these tuscan beans as a side with my pizza (didn’t have my phone to take a picture) but they were delicious and so simple! White beans in a thin tomato sauce. I also had some delicious fresh fruit and found vegan gelato and sorbet at a famous family owned gelateria! I went there a few times 🙂
My hostel in Zagarolo made dinners for us and this pasta was one of the best I have ever had (and I’ve eaten alot of pasta!)
This is a shop in Bodrum that I frequented while I was there, here I stocked up on turkish delight, nuts, dates, and dried apricots. They also had tons of different kinds of tea and spices.
Okay so Turkey won overall with its amazing vegan food, and cheap too! The two pictures with vegetables and rice were both filling dinners from a canteen and only cost 6 turkish lira, which is approximately $3 Canadian! The cafe/store where I had cake was one that I simply stumbled upon while walking one day, I had a really yummy meal there and had planned to go back but didn’t have the time. The fresh fruit and juice in Turkey was also incredible and again, so cheap! These photos are from Istanbul.
These two pictures are from the vegan “fast food” place in Split. I was so excited when I saw their sign, I think I ate here 5 times while in Split but only took these two photos, they had one of the best veggie burgers I have ever had here with grilled veggies on it, yum!
and then there was another not so great pizza in Split.
In Dubrovnik our Contiki Rep took us to this vegetarian restaurant that we went back to a number of times while there, all the food there was delicious and most of the menu was vegan, I also had some delicious local organic blackberry wine from here which I bought a bottle of and drank all myself 🙂
This was my last euro meal, from the Heathrow airport, since I became addicted to olives in Turkey I ordered olives, a smoothie (finally a freakin smoothie!! ) and a cappuccino with soy milk which I probably shouldn’t have had because it made me super antsy for my flight.
holistichayley 