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  1. Loas – Luang Prabang

    January 14, 2015 by Arthur

    We did not spend too much time in Laos. We were only in Luang Prabang. Here are the recommendations from our trip:
    We stayed at Madison Delabua (maison-dalabua.com). The service was excellent and the hotel had a beautiful lotus filled pond in its court yard. We would recommend staying there.
    We would highly recommend eating at Tamarind which serves delicious high end Laotian fare. If any of you are interested, the restaurant also does cooking classes including trips to the local market.
    Three Nagas was also a really nice restaurant.
    There are a lot of elephant sanctuaries in the are where you can ride, feed and wash animals. I would recommend Nam Ou Elephant Farm, which from everything we heard takes the best care of their elephants and provides you with the most information about them.
    We would also recommend a visit to the Ock Pop Tok Living Craft Centrex for a learning experience about local crafts.
    Just wonder around the town for a bit. Its not very big but there a lot of cute little temples and monasteries.
    The main street has a night market which is mostly filled with souvenirs but there is a turn off the main street which takes you into the food section of the night market. The food portion is much more authentic. Try a little bit of everything. I would especially recommend the local river fish which they grill using bamboo sticks right in front of you.
    In the middle of the town there is a long staircase up to Pho Si hill which has great views over the town and surrounding areas, especially at sunset.

  2. Finger Licking in Chicago

    June 8, 2014 by Arthur

    Alinea was quite good but frankly for a 3 Michelin star restaurant it was not impressive. The food lacked the unique taste ingenuity of Eleven Madison Park, the Restaurant at Meadowoods or Chefs Table at Brooklyn Fair. At the same time it lacked the superb culinary perfection of perennial classics found at Per Se, Daniel and Jean George. Sure trying to find your twig shaped food in a nest of twigs, sucking down an apple leather ballon of helium, discovering the briquets in your tabletop bonfire are pieces of Weygu beef or devouring an abstract painting for dessert are fun gimmicks. But gimmicks don’t tickle the pallet. The most of the wines in the standard pairing were excellent. But it wasn’t by any means an impressive pairing. They would have been impressive on their own and they did nothing to the culinary experience. With that manny somoliers you’d figure they could get a little more creative. From a food stand point if definitely downgrade it one star but I guess the presentation is what pulls it through.

    Cicchetti has only been around for about 6 months and sports no Michelin stars or major awards but he food is delicious. The smoked whitefish, the burger, the scrambled egg bruschetta and the French toast were all delectable. We went back twice in as many days after our first visit.


  3. Santorini, Greece

    April 24, 2014 by Ford

    Adamant Suites

    Aquamarine Suite with indoor jacuzi

    Beaches

    Vlychada beach

     

    http://www.cycladia.com/best-beaches-greece/santorini/page/8/


  4. Patagonia, Chile & Argentina

    April 23, 2014 by Ford

    Patagonia
    We flew in to Buenos Aires and spent a day there. Then we flew to Calafate which is the gateway town to Patagonia. Patagonia actually spans both Chile and Argentina and each country has its own national park. From Calafate in Argentina we took a bus to Torres del Paine national park which is in Chile. http://www.parquetorresdelpaine.cl/ Its absolutely gorgeous and I highly recommend it. We did the W trail with theecocamp people http://www.ecocamp.travel/.  This is one of the most popular trails in South America and it was a great experience. http://trekkinginpatagonia.com/patagonia-hiking-trails/. The ecocamp people set us up in “Refugios” which are like huts in the mountains so we didn’t have to camp every day and they carry most of the gear so we only had a daypack for each of the 5 days of hiking. They take care of food etc so you can just focus on the physical effort and the incredible views of Valle Asencio, Valle del Frances and Mirador Grey.

    After we finished the trail, we took a bus back to Calafate and from there another bus to a hiker’s town in Argentina’s Los Glaciers National Park  http://www.losglaciares.com/en/parque/index.html called Chalten. Our hotels in Buenos Aires and Calafate weren’t good enough for me to recommend. Calafate has many excellent hostels and small hotels so no need to splurge here. The “public” busses are supper nice so no need to waste money on private transfers. They are generaly large Greyhound style tour busses; clean and with supper comfy seats.

    In Chalten we stayed the first night at a lovely hotel Infinito Sur www.infinitosurelchalten.com/eng/inicio.php. Then we took a two day Ice Climbing trip with Mountaneering Patagonia http://www.mountaineeringpatagonia.com/EN_INDEX2011.ASP. We hiked for most of the first day from Chalten to Glacier Grande next to Laguna Torre. Spent later part of the day walking around the glacier (just two of us and our guide…noone else on the ice..was amazing). He taught us about crampons, basic ice skills and we climbed insider the glacier. Absolutely awesome. Unfortunately it also rained the ENTIRE day so we go soaked. Got back to camp in the evening, got our tent up and slept pretty much in a sliding puddle. I woke up in the middle of the night vibrating uncontrollably and the next morning it was raining worse so all three of us decided to cut our loses and hike back to Chalten so we never got to do any serious Ice Climbing. Very sad :(  but i would recommend the tour company and I loved Chalten. Any outdoorsy person would fall in love with that town.

    A lot of people do the Perito Moreno glacier tour in Calafte but we decided it was not for us. They take like 30 ppl on a bus in a huge group to the edge of the glacier and then take the whole 30 like geese on a very well walked trail on a glacier and at some point they give u alcohol. Not really exciting or special for a real hiker/climber but I’m assuming fun for normal tourist. Some people also do smth similar on the Grey Glacier in Chile. We wanted something more authentic and thus chose to go to Chalten and Glacier Grande which is more remote (take a day to walk there) and thus a lot less touristy.

    Overall, Patagonia is like no other place Ive ever been to on Earth. Even when we just got off the plane in Calafate which is the “big” town in Patagonia it felt like we landed on Mars or on some alien/futuristic sci fi landscape. The glaciers, mountains, insane wind and weather, the trees and the lakes of different colors are all gorgeous and unforgettable. I can’t wait to go back and do the full circuit trail in Torres del Paine and spend a week in Chalten!


  5. Zero G

    November 20, 2013 by Ford

    Best birthday present ever!

    Explorers Club


  6. Antarctica

    November 20, 2013 by Ford

    On the short list
    G adventures recommended


  7. Vancouver

    November 20, 2013 by Ford

    Sun Sui wah amazing seafood and unbelievable squab


  8. ME Hotel London – Nice but not all about me

    November 13, 2013 by Arthur

    ME Hotel London on Aldwych in the west end has an excellent location whether you’re in town on a leisurely visit or there for business. The area itself seems a little touristy given that you have theaters with glitzy musical signage all around you but this is London, not New York, so in all reality the place is still very quiet in the evenings and on a Sunday night is downright dead.

    The hotel is just a few months old and is situated in a post modern building which, my cabbie claimed, formerly housed the BBC. The decor inside is kitschy-splashy-modern but stylishly done. The rooms are tastefully designed and appointed. It looks nice. I chose it based on the pictures and I was not disappointed. The staff is fairly friendly, especially by London standards.

    The hotel sports an Italian restaurant, STK (of New York’s Meatpacking district fame) and an upstairs rooftop bar with a killer view of the Thames and the city skyline. Between STK and the rooftop bar, the place can get quite popping on the right night. That being said, unlike its New York counterpart, STK can’t make a short rib worth a shit. The menu said “72-hour Braised Short Rib.” Generally I assume that means that the short rib has been braised for 72 hours but in all honestly I didn’t ask for clarification, so the fault must be mine. Maybe they just mean its 72 hours since it was cooked. Any short rib worth a damn (especially one cooked for that long or  even for a tenth of that time) should fall off the bone and never really require a knife for anything but the image of civility. To my great dismay I had to be far less than civil with the piece of subpar brisket that was served to me for my $32.

    Ok. So whats the issue with the hotel? The issue is that people don’t really think or don’t really care. The ME is considered a 5-star hotel. Despite the great decor, location, etc. I wouldn’t give it more than 4. A 5-star hotel must adhere to a completely different level of service. It must rise to a standard of excellence in service where every last detail has been thought through and taken care of.

    I drop and give myself 50 in the morning. Somewhere on pushup number 3 I notice the scent emanating from the room’s carpet. For god’s sake people, the hotel has only been open for a couple of months. There is no excuse to say its absorbed years and years of wear, tare and bodily fluids. Washed the damn carpets.

    I’m not a body wash sort of guy. I take the little hand soap they give you and use it in the shower. It disappears pretty fast. No worries, I’m sure housekeeping will get a chance to do the room before I get back in the evening. Evening: No Soap. Next Evening: No soap. Next Evening: I call, “Please bring me some soap.” If soap was part of the accessories provided with the room, there is no reason I should ever be missing a bar of soap from my room. But hey, everyone makes mistakes. In all honesty even my favorite 5-star hotels (the Mandarin Oriental in Bangkok, the Oberoi Udaivilas in Udaipur) can get things wrong or miss something. Its all about consistency, thoughtfulness and how the issue is remedied.

    I buy some Gu chocolate pudding on the way home. I love that stuff and you can’t get it anywhere else. I grab a spoon and a saucer from one of the two teacup sets in the room. I eat the Gu, leave the dirty spoon and saucer on the table and head out in the morning. When I come back in the evening, the room is clean, the dirty spoon and saucer are gone. But now I have just one spoon and saucer left. I proceed to use the second and last spoon and saucer with my second cup of Gu, slightly worried as to what will happen the following day. Surprisingly they replace the spoon and saucer but even more surprisingly they only replace one. So now on my cupboard stands one cup on a saucer with a spoon on it and one lonely cup, wondering what the hell happened to its little friends and why its neighbor got its spoon and saucer back but it didn’t and what wrong with it, how is it worse than the other guy, doesn’t it deserve a saucer and spoon… A cup can easily develop an inferiority complex like that. Frankly, so can a person. What if I had someone up to my room and I had to serve tea? Go saucer-less? Really?

    You won’t be surprised to know that my shower cap (yes I used the shower cap – long hair) was not replaced either and being in a hurry the following morning with no time to wait for them to bring in another, I had to contort myself to all sorts of back-wrenching angles to keep my hair from getting wet in the room’s beautiful (but limiting from a direction of water flow standpoint) rain shower.

    And now here is the clincher. I send out some shirts to be laundered. They are supposed to be done the following morning. The morning comes and as I enjoy the tranquility of sleeping in late on a Saturday morning in an attempt to catch up on sleep after my flight and dream away the jet lag… the phone starts ringing its head off not 12 inches from mine. “Sir, this is Stephane from downstairs. One of our guys is in front of your room with your shirts. There is a Do Not Disturb sign on your door and he didn’t want to knock.” Really? Are you fucking kidding me? The kid who runs around with the shirts was bright enough to figure out that the big red Do Not Disturb sign probably meant I didn’t want to be disturbed with a knock but you…. you whom they put in front of a desk, don’t have the brains to figure out that calling me inside my room might just qualify as Disturbing? “Huh? What? Oh yes. Just a second.” I say, as I reluctantly rise from the bed so I might go out of my way to offer the highest quality of service to the young man holding shirts outside my hotel room door and not keep him waiting. I know this a wild idea, but maybe, just maybe, a note slipped under my door would have sufficed. Maybe something along the lines of: “Sir, We sincerely hope you are enjoying your Saturday morning. Your shirts are clean, pressed and ready. As you did not wish to be disturbed, they are being held for you downstairs. Should you wish to pick them up yourself, you may do so at reception, otherwise please ring XXXX at any time and we would be happy to have them brought up to your room right away. –Regards, Stephanie” Or even “Shirts ready. Call XXXX.”

    None of these things are horrible. The hotel is fine. While they are new, you can get occasional discounts. Thus I would recommend it to a friend and stay there again. But lets not lie to our customers and ourselves and call it a 5-star hotel. If the prices were higher, I’d say you can get better “5-star” service elsewhere, even in London.


  9. A hunter and fisherman walk into a bar…

    October 26, 2013 by Arthur

    Fish and Game in Hudson, NY sports beautiful unpretentious decor, good friendly service, and exemplary smelling liquid soap in the bathrooms. Despite all the talk and attempts at creativity, the fish, the game and even the greens were generally underwhelming and unimpressive. The duck was the best dish and the only one that stood out. The wine pairing, though once again very “creative” was once again quite underwhelming.

    Verdict: not worth the 2 hour drive up from New York City.


  10. Austin

    May 25, 2013 by Ford

    In Austin, 6th street is the epicenter of party. It’s grimy and loud and obnoxious, teeming with college students and weekend tourists. The music is live and the drinks are cheap
    Shakespeare and Blind Pig have live music alternating with DJs playing pop songs (from the last three decades) and both have large outdoor patios for dancing late into the warm Austin night. Though not too late, most places close down at 2am which is a great time to hit up the food trucks that line 6th street. The German sausage spot on the way back to our hotel was our fave.

    In the midst of all the 6th street madness is a very NYC style speakeasy called Midnight cowboy. There is no sign on the door and best to have reservations if you are going on a popular night. The drinks are creative and the atmosphere more intimate. Great place to unwind.

    Rainey St is fantastic for a more laid back evening outing. Many of the houses on Rainey Street have been converted to bars and the huge backyards to lovely beer gardens. Many offer live music and dancing and some have food trucks inside the beer gardens serving tacos, ribs and fried chicken.
    My fave spot on Rainey St. was Blackheart. They had an amazing live band and a group of people from a local Lindy hop class were practicing their moves. The company is called 4 on the floor and its run by Matt jones if u want to take some dance classes while in Austin.

    As far as shopping, SoCo (South Congress) is the spot. My personal face there was the Kendra Scott store. She doesn’t have outlets on the east coast so what you get there will look unique when you come back home.

    For the foodies, Barley Swine is heavenly. It’s a tiny chef collaboration spot. Amazing flavored well worth the wait. For BBQ, those willing to stand in line should head to Franklin’s. For sushi and Asian fusion Uchi is the winner. Get there early for happy hour discounts.

    For the outdoorsy, Barton springs is a good place to hang out. There are many good hiking, walking and running trails around so if this is something you like, Austin will make you happy.