We made our (now 3rd) annual trip to the Big Apple recently. With the flight, I had access to some hotel deals and figured we’d go back old school and stay at The Palace. The Lotte New York Palace was the place we stayed the first time we went to NY together in 2016. At the time it was undergoing some construction. The location is also very convenient.
After landing a little bit earlier than scheduled, I definitely felt like there was more breathing room making our 10:30 pm dinner reservation (this was the ONLY reservation for this particular restaurant the entire 5 days that we were visiting). With traffic, we also decided to take the train (Skytrain and then subway) to get into the city which saved us at least 30 minutes compared to a taxi. After checking in and dropping our stuff, we caught another subway down to SoHo to Raoul’s.
Even though it was a late Wednesday evening, the place was packed and the atmosphere loud. After a short wait, we were seated at our cozy table (right in the middle of the restaurant with patrons squeezing past and a random little fish tank. For dinner, I started with the seared foie gras and D had a endive and blue cheese salad. Known for their steak au poivre, we both elected to get that, which came with house made fries and a salad. Of course we also had to get a cocktail. One of the things the establishment is known for is a very large painting of a nude woman lying in repose – D had the view during our dinner.
Day 2 started with me ordering some Liberty Bagel (lox bagel for me, cinnamon raisin for D) as well as some Black Fox coffee (both a convenient short walk from the hotel).
As we continue in our search for a place to settle, we took a trip back up to the Portland, OR region at the end of August into September. They were experiencing their own heat wave, which actually at least may give us an idea of what it is going to be like moving forward as the whole planet heats up. Their “heat wave” was in the mid to high 80s. While the temperatures were similar to soCal, it didn’t feel as warm, possibly with all the trees and greenery. We also decided to stay in an AirBnB this time instead of a hotel to get a better idea of what “living” there would be like.
Our flight brought us in just before/around dinner time so after getting our rental car, we stopped at Lovely’s Fifty-Fifty to pick up some pizzas. Lovely’s has been a James Beard finalist and they also use the locally milled flours (we picked up some flour from the mill on our last visit). They were already very busy with wait times of like 1.5 hours (this was a Tuesday at around 5 pm) so we elected to get some to go orders and eat at the AirBnB. We chose two different pizzas along with a salad (semi-healthy)? We had the Fresh Mozz with Basil pizza and the House made fennel sausage with lacinto kale, sleeping beauty, and rosemary.
Overall both very good pizzas. After dinner we swung by one of the local specialty grocer chains (New Season’s market – think similar to Whole foods, sprout’s) to pick up some items for breakfast and some fruit as well.
Our AirBnB location was off of Scholls Ferry Road just south of the 26 and east of the West Slope neighborhood. It reminded me of Palos Verdes estates some – very hilly, big nice houses, lots of trees. Honestly aside from the steep hills with no sidewalks/narrow streets, it would be a good place to live, though probably not the best place to be able to walk out of the house and go for a run.
The following morning we decided to do something touristy because we were going to be there for 9 days and figured maybe it wouldn’t be as busy during a weekday (with Labor Day weekend upcoming). Both D and I love our cheese and even in southern CA we busy Tillamook. We hopped on the 26 heading towards the coast and then switched over to the 6 making our way through Tillamook State Forest and popping out at Tillamook right near the Pacific Ocean. Turns out that the school year hadn’t started yet and many people were doing one last trip before the start of the school year so it was fairly crowded at the Tillamook Creamery. You can do a self guided tour on the 2nd floor that overlooks the factory area and packaging. The first floor has a large gift shop area and also a counter order place to get food, ice cream.
We decided not to get food here and drove down the road to the Blue Heron French Cheese Company. This was a much smaller operation and had more of a local market feel, with just a few blue cheese samples. D ordered a sandwich from here but I saw across from Tillamook was the Old Oregon Smokehouse and I wanted to get some smoked fish, seeing as we were so close to the ocean. I purchased some clam chowder and some smoked salmon and then went back to Blue Heron to eat with D.
Previously (many many moons ago) I had driven up the Pacific coast with my family and do remember the Oregon coast being quite beautiful especially the beaches with large rock formations just off the beach in the water. D hadn’t seen them before so we headed north up the 101 past Bay City, Rockaway Beach and over to Cannon Beach. Unfortunately it was a very overcast foggy day so difficult to see the rock formations. We did walk around the downtown shops and drove back to see Haystack rock some. As I was making a turn onto a street, suddenly we were confronted by 3 large elk hanging on the side of the road. And then down a smaller street there were maybe a herd of 15-20 just laying down by people’s houses. D looked it up and I guess the Roosevelt elk like to hang out in this area.
Continuing on our exploration of green, a few weeks ago we headed on up to the Portland area. We had visited twice in the past but mostly stuck with the downtown area and a little bit of east Portland. The goal this time was to explore the surrounding neighborhoods including crossing the northern state border into Washington. Since we were also going to be doing lots of driving, we tacked on a stop in Eugene as well (given my hobby of the last 15 years of running).
Luckily there are direct flights out of John Wayne Airport. Arriving in the early afternoon, we picked up our rental and first stopped for a late lunch before making the 2 hour drive to Eugene. We hit up Nong’s Khao Man Gai at the southeast Portland location and enjoyed some chicken rice (IYKYK) and tried their Chicken Salad Rolls, and I had to get the chicken skins as well. Still very tasty.
And then before the drive we stopped at Push X Pull coffee shop. The barista was nice and also a runner and told me how he just ran the Eugene half marathon and how great it felt to finish on the famed Hayward Field track. He mentioned the drive was a little boring, which I agree with, though it was still prettier than driving on LA freeways.
For spring break (well not ours but the nieces/nephews), my sister had mentioned taking her kids to Chicago (to check out colleges for the oldest). We decided to sorta tag along (they were flying to the East coast and then driving to Chicago whereas we would just fly into the city). D had never been so I thought it’d be fun to show her around the city, and also I wanted to visit my alum, Northwestern University.
I found a decent deal for flights on Southwest but that also meant flying into Midway (at least the flight there was direct). From Midway, we grabbed a taxi into the city to our hotel, Intercontinental Chicago Magnificent Mile. We had previously stayed at the Intercontinental in NYC and figured we’d stick with them – cost was comparable to other places. The location was fairly ideal in that we were in the River North neighborhood right on Michigan Ave, which is also known as the Magnificent Mile.
Chicago is definitely an eater’s town and we had planned much of our meals prior to arriving. We didn’t plan far enough ahead to get reservations at a steakhouse that we wanted to try, Bavette’s. Given Chicago’s history as the center of the country’s meatpacking industry we knew we had to get steaks at least once. D had read that you could possibly get a walk-in table at Bavette’s, especially on a Tuesday night. After dropping off our luggage we walked over to Bavette’s. We put our names on the wait list but eventually found a spot at their downstairs bar (which also serves a full dinner menu). I started with a couple of fresh oysters and we shared the mixed greens and apple salad. They’re also known for their hand-made sourdough bread so we got some of that. I will say that the bread and butter was a highlight of the meal. For our main, we shared the Dry-Aged Bone-in ribeye (20 oz 42 day dry aged) along with a side of broiled asparagus. For drinks I had a Rittenhouse Rye Old Fashioned and a Cognac Sazerac. Both very good.
On the walk back we stopped at CVS to pick up some things and happened upon the Wings of Mexico, a permanent art installation by artist Jorge Marin in the Plaza of the Americas. We grabbed some pictures here. I had seen people posting pictures of this but didn’t know the backstory.
I used to work and live in the San Diego region for a year about 15 years ago. A former colleague of mine let me know she was retiring and moving away and so we decided to head down for a few days to see her and just enjoy San Diego. Unfortunately we have been on the mend from our first bout with COVID so weren’t 100%. At least I was no longer shedding so I felt okay still visiting. After moving back to southern CA last year, it’s a relatively short drive down to SD. We left on a Sunday morning making the drive that much easier without any traffic. Our AirBnB wouldn’t be ready to check in until the afternoon so we headed straight for Pacific Beach (PB) to get some lunch.
We haven’t been down to the area in probably 10 years now so I had done some research on food places. We settled on the Pacific Beach Fish Shop. This place is unique in that you choose the fish and then the means of getting it into your mouth (taco, salad, sandwich, plate). D had two of their pre-made recipe tacos: TKO Taco (Mahi Mahi) & Pineapple Express taco (Mahi Mahi) while I had their fresh catches of the day: Halibut taco & Rockfish taco. Overall I think they were tasty though one of D’s fish was kinda dry and there wasn’t any sauce on that one. We grabbed some coffee two doors down at Elixir Espresso Bar.
We then made our way over to the actual beach in Pacific Beach (we tend to go towards Law Street Beach). It had rained very briefly while we were getting coffee but cleared up by the time we made our way to the beach, though it was still quite windy so we didn’t stay too long.
StewsCat 