Domo Arigato, Milano Gelato

I was assigned to do some work in Milan for two and a half weeks (not too bad, I know), so Jenn came along for part of the time. We had been to Milan previously, but only for one night on our way to meet the Harts in Cinque Terre. My work schedule was demanding during the week, but we were able to get out some at night for dinners and then for the weekend, we explored quite a bit, though the weather was miserable. It was cold and very rainy. We had umbrellas, but that didn't keep us from getting soaked throughout the day. We managed our way through it though and still saw a good portion of the city.

Milan, itself, doesn't get a lot of attention from a tourist perspective because Rome, Florence, Venice, and others are much more popular (and charming), but don't sleep on Milan. Yes, it has more of a "city" feel than the others, but the food is excellent and there are plenty of things to do and see. It's also very easy to get around by metro and tram.

WIA:
I had dinner with my team the first night at Antica Cucina Delle Langhe, a traditional trattoria on Corso Como, a popular pedestrian only area. My cotoletta alla milanese (breaded veal) was very good. Jenn arrived on Thursday night and we headed downtown to eat at Obika, a mozzarella bar right next to the Duomo, the huge church in the middle of the city. It's really impressive during the day or at night. The food was not at Obika. We should have stuck with mozzarella, but we both were hungry so ordered entrees that just weren't very good. We topped off the meal with gelato from Cioccolati Italiani, which was outstanding. You know it's a good ice cream place when they have six different types of chocolate. We ate there a couple more times during our time in Milan.

Friday night, we had dinner with a co-worker and his fiance at Ristorante Zucca e Melone, which has a homey feeling (bordering on tacky, but not quite). The highlights were the thinly sliced mozzarella and the gnocco fritto, which is kind of like a beignet. We ate lunch in the restaurant at the Museo Novecento, which is a new modern looking museum, which houses 20th century art. The prime tables are in a room filled with windows overlooking the Duomo, but since we didn't have a reservation, we ate in back. It was pouring outside and we were hungry, so we couldn't have cared any less, though the waiter did not like it (and told me so) when I tried to take pictures. I had a plate of risotto and Jenn had a cheese plate with burrata cheese. It was overpriced, which was expected, but good. We didn't tour the museum. I'm including a picture of the building at night because it looks cooler.

That evening, we had each had a panini at De Santis, which was a tiny place. I'm surprised more places don't grill their sandwiches on a panini press. It makes even mediocre sandwiches taste 10 times better. I think I had roast beef and Jenn had salami if I remember correctly. Dessert was gelato at Shockalat, which was really good. It's hard to distinguish one good gelato place from another. Good gelato is good gelato. We had a huge "American style" brunch on Sunday at Hangar Bicocca, which is a big warehouse that houses modern art installations. The food was hit and miss, but overall enjoyable. It was a fun experience seeing all the large Italian families come in and have brunch together. The Italians do long lunches. The same families that were there when we arrived were still at their tables after we'd finished eating and walked through the art exhibits.
We weren't as hungry at dinner time, so we just picked up a few things. We didn't get out as much the 2nd week there due to work requirements for both of us, but one other highlight was our meal at Trattoria Rondine, which was small, unassuming, and served very good traditional Milanese food. My boss (who is Italian) brought our team out one night to a place called Puro e Semplice, which I really liked. For a first course, I had veal with parmesan and truffle sauce and my main was tagliatelle with wild boar sauce. Dessert was what they call beignets, but, for all intents and purposes, were profiteroles. 

WID:
We began our Saturday early with a visit to see Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper. I didn't realize this, but it is painted on the wall of a church, Santa Maria delle Grazie. Jenn was able to find someone at the hotel to call and arrange tickets for us, which was a surprise because we'd read and heard that you needed to book months in advance. Maybe we just got lucky. Visitors are allowed a 15 minute window in which to view the painting. It was originally painted at the end of the 15th century, but still is in decent shape due to ongoing maintenance and restoration, but it continues to detoriate. What they say is that what we saw is the painting in its most original form due to the most recent maintenance work which cleared away a lot of the previous "touch ups". It's always a little surreal to me to see things like this in person after you've heard about them your entire life. The painting is incredible to see in person, particularly when you put it in context of the time and place it was created.

The rain gradually was getting heavier. We took shelter in the Triennale Design Museum, which opened a few years ago in Sempione Park. The inside of the building is big, open, and white, much like many other modern art museums. This isn't just a modern art museum as I think the exhibits change pretty regularly. Again, I think this is the case. Right now, it has Italian design furniture, which was kind of interesting. The best part was a temporary exhibit called O'Clock, which showed different ways of keeping time. There were clocks, modern, traditional, and bizzare, but also hour glasses, digital creations, and lots of other things that are difficult to describe. It was extremely cool. My favorite piece was a clock that shows time using words. For example, if it was "5:45", it would show "quarter to six".
We walked past the Sforzesco Castle, but didn't go inside. We were getting very hungry, and very wet, and we needed to go somewhere and sit down for a while. After lunch, we walked through the Duomo, which is the fourth largest cathedral in the world. It feels like it. It's an incredible sight, both inside and out.
We then walked down the famous shopping streets, Montenapoleone and Via Della Spiga. It actually wasn't bad to this on a rainy day because it wasn't crowded. I could see it being quite miserable during high tourist season and when the weather is nice out. We took refuge from the rain in our hotel and napped for a while before heading back out later for dinner.

On Sunday, we slept in and then took the metro a little ways out to the Hangar Bicocca. There were only a few art installations to view, but they are very large scale, huge in fact, and really interesting. The most interesting to both of us was a room set up with electric guitars hooked up to amps and a whole bunch of birds. The guitars are set up in a way to entice the birds to perch on them. This then creates sound from the guitars. As you walk through it for a few minutes, I wouldn't say it makes beautiful music or anything, but the contrasts in sound between the footsteps of the visitors, the chirping of the birds, and the guitars is pretty cool.

WIS: 
We stayed at the Sheraton Four Points, which is located a few blocks from the central train station. It's not the most scenic location, but it's also not too far from anything by foot or metro. The hotel is interesting in that they have three styles of rooms, traditional, modern, and a hybrid between the two. We stayed in all three during our stay. The traditional style room was not only old, but pretty dated as well. The modern room was a little too modern. There was no space and they didn't have ethernet cables to plug in a computer for internet access. This is important due to the fact that the wireless internet in the hotel was abysmal. The last room, which was our preference was still a traditional style, but had been updated so was in good shape, had a nice bathroom, and also had a line for internet. The buffet breakfast was adequate, but nothing to write home about either.

WAM:
Why does the croissant have such a vast global presence while focaccia flies under the radar? I ate a healthy (or unhealthy, depends how you look at it) amount of focaccia on this trip, the majority of which was really tasty. It's hard to beat a good piece of focaccia. I love croissants, but I encourage everyone to give focaccia another look. You might be pleasantly surprised.

WTF:
I was in Italy for two and half weeks eating pasta, focaccia, pizza, and gelato and I can't for the life of me figure out how most of the Italians are still so thin. I think I'd weigh 300 pounds if I lived there permanently.

To view more pictures, click here.

The Wachau Valley

We took a day trip on Saturday to the Wachau Valley, Austria's wine region, visiting the cities of Melk, Spitz, Durnstein, and Krems. The day started very early, but not early enough. I hoped to catch the end of World Series game 7, but I was too late. It didn't last into the early morning US time like game 6. Unfortunately, I didn't have Micah to call me to wake me up to watch as he did for game 6. I did catch some of the celebration though on ESPN's coverage, which was cool.

We met Caitlin and Mackenzie (who also works for Dell and just moved to Bratislava) at the tram stop a little after 7 and headed to the train station, where we set off for Vienna. The Wachau is not so simple to get to without a car, so we had to switch train stations in Vienna, take a train to St Polten, and then switch again for the train to Melk. The whole journey took about 3 hours.


Caitlin had promised "mostly sunny" weather and though she tried to convince us all day that the sun was coming, it never really made it through the clouds. It wasn't bad at all though. It was a little chilly, in the low 50's probably, but overall, it was a perfect autumn day for a bike ride. We used this service that has bike racks throughout the region and all you have to do is call and they give you the lock combination. When we were finished at the end of the day, we dropped it off at a different bike rack (in a different city) and called to let them know. At 1 EUR per bike, I have no idea how they make money (or if they make money), but I love the idea.

We got a quick glimpse of the Melk Abbey before we got going on our bicycles for the 17km ride to Spitz. The ride along the Danube with the backdrop of hills and trees filled with leaves of all colors was beautiful. I say this every time we ride bikes, but I like the idea of riding bikes so much more than the reality of it. It turns out a kilometer on a bike takes much longer than I would have expected. We eventually made it to Durnstein where we did some wine tastings and walked through the small town. We bagged the bikes there, after roughly 30km and took the bus to Krems where we boarded the train to Vienna. We were exhausted by the time we got there, but thought a Mexican dinner at Los Mexikas sounded good. We hadn't eaten anything all day besides a few snacks. The Yeagers happened to be in Vienna also, so they met us there.


The food at Los Mexikas is good, but not great. It's enough to satisfy Mexican food cravings, but not to make one forget about the Tex-Mex food back in Austin.

We definitely want to try and go back to the Wachau. It was a great day trip for the Fall, but would probably be excellent in the Springtime.

Belated Airplane Reviews

During our travels in the past couple of months, we watched several movies on airplane trips, and I would be remiss if I didn't share my thoughts on them.

From Hong Kong back to the US, we took Cathay Pacific, which was a nice change from American Airlines, our usual carrier. I am loyal to American, frankly, because that's where all my frequent flyer miles are, and for no other reason. I'm happy when I get to fly British Airways, Cathay, or another One World Partner because when it comes to comfort, service, and all around experience, American is really lacking.

We began the trip with... The Trip, a British film starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. We had heard really good things about it and from the reviews, we anticipated something absolutely hilarious. In reality, it was pretty slow, but had its moments. There was a lot of humor in there that we didn't get that I'm sure others would appreciate more. Not knowing the background of the two actors worked against us as that seemed to play a lot into the story and the comedy. It was also a lot more serious and introspective at points, which we did not expect. If you like Michael Caine impressions, you will love this movie. The camera shots of the food were oustandting.

We followed it up with Super 8, which we had wanted to see in the theater, but never got around to it. This movie had so much potential, but it didn't quite do it for me. The train accident at the beginning was pretty awesome, but unless it was carrying a bomb, it made no sense why there were explosions and train cars going all over the place. The movie continued to not make sense for the next hour or so and after a while, I just got bored. It seemed like it was trying to appeal to viewers who were nostalgic for ET and Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind, but JJ Abrams seemed to concentrate all of his time on the visuals instead of putting together a decent script.
 
By the time we flew back to Europe, it was October, which meant the new slate of movies was out on the plane. We watched the Hangover 2, which was a big mistake. One may ask, was it a mistake to have watched the movie or to have made the movie, and the answer to both questions, is yes. The stuff that monkey could do was amazing, but besides that, the movie was an absolute waste of time. They caught lighting in a bottle once. Why can't Hollywood just leave well enough alone?

As a bonus, we have also watched Horrible Bosses and Contagion since we've been back. We enjoyed Horrible Bosses. It was funny. Jenifer Aniston should take more roles like this where she isn't trying to be sweet and do cute Jennifer Aniston type things. It's much more enjoyable to watch her like this. It didn't hurt that she wore very little clothing. Contagion played like a documentary and was believable in that it's exactly what I think would happen if there was a deadly virus outbreak today and captured how people more than likely would react. In that respect, it scared the shit out of me. I already am overly aware of germs when I travel, so this didn't help. It was cool seeing Gwyneth Paltrow get de-scalped. The most horrifying parts of the movie though are the close-ups of Jude Law's teeth, which I had no idea were that bad.

Hong Kong

This was my third trip to Hong Kong. We purposely scheduled plenty of time there and scheduled it as our last stop because there aren’t a lot of touristy things to do and we could take it a slower, more relaxed pace. We were tired by this point in the trip. The city is best compared to New York. It’s a city with a lot of skyscrapers, people, shopping, and congestion.

WIA: The food in Hong Kong is outstanding. It’s kind of like Las Vegas in that they import all different types of foods and restaurants, so you can get the best in everything. We ate lunch at the food court in the mall next to our hotel at a Shanghainese place. It was quick, easy, and pretty good. Dinner was at Din Tai Fung, the Taiwanese dumpling institution that has since opened locations in several international cities. There was a long line, but we got in pretty quickly. I’m not sure what all the hype is about, but the dumplings were tasty. I actually really liked my noodle dish in peanut sauce. It tasted like noodles with peanut butter. Lunch on day two was at Classified, a mozzarella bar, next to Stanley Market.  Jenn had a cheese plate and I had a salami and cheese sandwich that wasn’t nearly as good as I hoped it would be. We took the ferry to Macau in the evening. While walking, I had an egg tart, which was delicious. It’s apparently the thing to eat there.  We had a late dinner at Il Teatro, an Italian restaurant, at the Wynn Hotel. Our table was next to the window and overlooked the fountain, so we saw the fountain show about 6 times during dinner. I know it seems silly to travel across the world for fried mozzarella, spaghetti and meatballs, and pizza, but everything we ate was really good. It may not have been worth the premium price we paid for it being at the Wynn, but we knew that going into it. I had two Macau beers. It was light and not too bad.

 

 On our third day, we ate at afternoon tea at The Peninsula. The food wasn’t substantial, but the scones and finger sandwiches filled us up. We had higher expectations of the tea. It’s right in the lobby once you walk in the hotel and there are all levels of dress. I’m not a big tea guy, but I feel like there is something nice about getting dressed up (even though we weren’t) and going to a nice hotel for tea. I can appreciate that. There is something to be said for sticking with nostalgia and keeping things the same if it works the way it is. I’m sure it would be a pain for people to get dressed up to come to tea, but there are so few things left in life that we haven’t marginalized by trying to keep up with the times. It was also all very systematic. The waiters went through the motions and were efficient in getting people in and out so the next group in line could sit down for their tea. We’re glad we went to experience it. 

We ate dinner at Zuma, which is super trendy, and serves up a nice (and very expensive) Japanese menu. I had a couple sushi rolls that were fine, but not nearly worth the price I paid for them. Jenn’s salmon was really good. The people watching was excellent. We finally saw who all the people were who are buying all the clothing in the extremely high end stores that blanket the city. We had a non-traditional dim sum brunch on Saturday at Tim Ho Wan. This is a very small (6 or 7 tables), pretty dumpy looking place that serves up incredibly good dumplings. We were aware they didn’t take reservations, so we arrived at 10am, which was the time they opened. We were given a number and were told to come back in an hour. We did. We were then told to come back in another hour. We did. I get extremely frustrated when things don’t work the way they are supposed to. I had no issues with them giving me a number and telling me to come back in an hour. What I did have a problem with was traveling back across town to make it back at the time they told me and then be told to go away for another hour. I was pissed. Jenn had to talk me down. When we eventually did eat, the food was worth the wait. We had a few different dumplings, but the highlights were the deep fried shrimp and chives dumpling and the baked pork bun. We don’t actively eat pork, but the pork bun is the most famous dumpling, so we had to eat it. The barbecued pork was surrounded by a sweet tasting biscuit that was soft on the inside and flaky on the outside. It was out of this world good.
That evening, we met my cousin Allison and her husband Mario and first had a drink at the ICC, the bar at the top of the Ritz Carlton, which is the tallest building in the world. The drinks were obscenely expensive, but the views were worth it.

For dinner, we ate in the Temple Street Night Market. I don’t even know the name of the place, but it was one of the open air places right off the street. It was far from fancy and pretty far from sanitary, but the food was hot and good and the beer was ice cold. It was a lot of fun catching up with Ali and Mario. They have lived in Hong Kong for a few months. She works at a university and he is starting an art organization. We haven’t seen them in a while, so it was great to talk and get updated on their lives.

WID: We started off at the top of Hong Kong by taking the tram up to Victoria Peak. We went on a walk that got us away from the main commercial area and all the people, so that was nice. The views were incredible.
That night, we walked along Avenue of the Stars and took in the Hong Kong light show. The city is packed with skyscrapers, one after another, and from the Kowloon side, at 8pm every night, one can watch a synchronized laser and light show being projected from many of the buildings on the Hong Kong side. It’s cheesy, but still kind of cool. It’s something to see once. This was my second time to see it.

We took a 30 minute cab ride out to Stanley Market the next morning and realized quickly that it was a waste of our time. We’re not clear why this market is so popular and why any guide book would recommend making the trek out there. The area is nice along the water though and it’s nice to get outside of the city for a little while, but it ate up a whole lot of time. In the early evening, we took the ferry to Macau, the Las Vegas of China. It’s a former Portuguese colony which in the past 6 years has exploded with huge Vegas style casinos. There is an MGM, a Venetian, a Wynn, the Sands, and many others, with many more to come in the future. It’s of course packed with people. There is a lot of shopping and very nice casinos and shopping malls, but besides the gambling, it doesn’t quite pack the debauchery that makes Vegas Sin City. We walked through the Venetian, the extremely impressive Galaxy, the MGM, and ended up at the Wynn for dinner. We gambled a little and contributed to the future development of the city. They play blackjack differently there. The dealer takes one card, then deals out to the table and doesn’t take the second card until everyone at the table has played out their hand. I’m not sure if this changes the odds or the playing strategy, but I just played it the way I know how to play. We started out with a nice little run before losing everything.
On Friday, on the way to The Peninsula for tea, we walked through the Ladies Market (which sold the same crap as every other market) and the Jade Market. We bought (and most likely overpaid) for some “jade” bracelets for Jenn. We shopped at the Shanghai Tang flagship store and did some damage. We liked a lot of stuff we saw, but had to limit ourselves because it’s an expensive store and they don’t negotiate like the other markets in town. We’re trying to do better about buying things when we travel, not to accumulate junk, but to have some mementos from our travels that we can have for the future.

After dinner, we walked through Lan Kwai Fong, the expat bar area, and Soho. We didn’t go in anywhere for a drink, but just took a stroll through the streets to observe. I haven’t mentioned this yet, but it was supremely hot and humid the entire time we were in Hong Kong, so anytime we went anywhere, we would become drenched with sweat quickly and found our faces, hands, and feet to be very swollen. It wasn’t all that comfortable. After a dim sum lunch on our last day, we walked around some of the shopping areas. The shopping in Hong Kong is crazy. There are so many high end stores. It’s hard to comprehend where all the money is coming from, but there is obviously no shortage of it. You can’t walk a mile without passing a Louis Vuitton or Gucci store. It’s pretty incredible. There are stores from everywhere in the world. They have it all. After dinner, we walked through the Temple Street Night Market, which sold more of the same crap we’d seen everywhere else. We weren’t impressed.

WIS: The Langham Place in Mongkok was really great. We were very lucky with the location, next to a big shopping mall and a metro stop, and also walking distance from a lot of restaurants and markets. The room was nice and the staff was extremely helpful in so many different ways. The price wasn’t cheap, but it was less expensive than many other hotels in Hong Kong. I would stay there again and would also definitely recommend it to others. They have a great pool on the roof, which we unfortunately didn’t take advantage of during the trip.

WAM: Every time I go to Hong Kong, I think more and more that it's a place I wouldn't mind living in at some point. There are a lot of people, which would present a problem for me, but I really like it as a city. It has people from everywhere, the food is good, it's easy to get around, and you're in a good location to travel in and around Asia. 

WTF: You can't walk anywhere in Hong Kong without getting dripped on from the balconies above the street. It's impossible to avoid as you walk through the city. It's really disgusting. I don't know what it is and I don't really want to know, but I do know that I do not like it. I may need to start walking around with an umbrella when I visit again.

See more pictures here.

Beijing

Besides “The Wall”, I wasn’t overly impressed with the city of Beijing. I had been there once for work, but saw nothing but the hotel and the office. We gave ourselves two days to experience the city. The city is very spread out and because of the language and the complete ineptitude of taxi drivers, it’s extremely difficult to get around. I could see this being a city that would be easier to do as part of an organized tour with a group.

WIA: Let me preface this section by saying I really dropped the ball on our eating in Beijing. I usually do an excellent job of planning meals out and making reservations when necessary, but I got very little help from our hotel staff and just didn’t do a good job with coordination. I mentioned the duck at QuanJude Roast Duck Restaurant in the previous post. There are a few famous duck restaurants in Beijing, so I’m not sure what really distinguishes one from the other. I ate at Da Dong on a previous visit and it was good, but I don’t know that I could tell you if one restaurant was better than the other. My intention was for Kalp, Ezequiel, Jenn, and I to eat at a Chinese restaurant next to Tiananmen Men Square when we finished our tour of the Forbidden City. Unfortunately, the restaurant had been closed for a year and since it was past 2:30, most other places were not still serving lunch. We ended up at Capital M, which served international food, and had a great view over the square. The food was overpriced, but it wasn’t terrible. I had the Danish Smorrebrod, which was a plate full of the little Danish open faced sandwiches. It was past 3pm. I would have eaten anything.
That evening, we went to HouHai, the lakes district, which is a nighttime bar and restaurant area around a few small lakes. We planned to go to a place I’d looked up that didn’t take reservations, but had received excellent write-ups. Unfortunately, it was extremely difficult to find and by the time we arrived, they were no longer serving food. We had an interesting few minutes when one guy who we weren’t sure whether or not he worked there told us to go upstairs and tried to convince the staff to serve us. A couple of waitresses then escorted us out. We ended up eating at a place near there, called Zone, which seemed to be the only place still serving food. We had a well balanced meal of microwaved popcorn (which is sweeter than what is served in the US), french fries, shrimp fried rice, some skewers of mystery meat, and a couple other things. It was disappointing. On the last day, it was just Jenn and me. We had a really nice lunch at the Aman Resort at their continental restaurant. I had the duck salad and Jenn had the burger. We were the only ones there, so the service was excellent. It was nice to be in such a quiet and serene atmosphere since it’s very difficult to avoid being around people when in China.

For our last evening, we stayed in the ChaoYang area, which is near where we were staying and had dinner at Karaiya Spice House. This was a Hunan restaurant, so the food was extremely spicy. We ordered the grilled steak and steamed prawns, but got them both prepared mild. I ordered the spicy shredded duck, which I thankfully asked for to be prepared medium. It was so delicious, but also so painful to eat. I couldn’t stop eating it even though it was so unpleasant. I was downing my beer and water constantly and trying to balance the spice by eating some of the non-spicy dishes. Nothing helped.

WID: In the morning, we went to the Temple of Heaven, which is a giant park full of temples that all look alike. Tourists are able to navigate the area using gigantic oversized maps that you can buy at the entrance.
We hit Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City next. There was a lot of walking, a lot of steps, and a lot of buildings that looked the exact same. I hope pictures can capture how many damn people were in Tiananmen Square. As someone who really values personal space and doesn’t feel all that comfortable around large groups of people, China really was a challenge. With some of my idiosyncrasies, it's amazing I can get through the day some times.
We took a break in the afternoon before heading to HouHai in the evening. On our last day, we visited the Summer Palace. It is an enormous park that offers a peaceful environment for walking around. It’s impossible to see everything there, which is fine, because it’s really not necessary. Again, like the Forbidden City, everything looks the same. It was foggy out, so the views weren’t as impressive as they could have been.
In the afternoon, we walked through the 798 Arts District, which was kind of faux alternative, but still sort of cool. It’s a bunch of art galleries, cafes, and boutique shops.
We hit the Silk Market on the way back to the hotel, which is best described as a giant garage sale. It’s floor after floor of crap. Vendors literally grab at you to pull you into their stalls. If you are interested in something, you then have to play the game where they offer a price and then you negotiate until you end up paying a third of what they originally offered. In the end, you still feel like you’re getting ripped off. And more than likely, you are.

WIS: Even after visiting Beijing, I can’t tell you what location of town would be best to stay. The city is so spread out, so I don’t think anywhere is ideal. We ended up taking taxis everywhere. There is a decent metro system, but the stop “near” our hotel was like a 20 minute walk. We stayed at the Hotel G, which is a W wannabe. Since in China, there are name brand knockoffs of everything, it seemed fitting to stay at a name brand hotel knockoff. Our room was huge, modern, and relatively nice. The breakfast wasn’t that impressive, which is partly their fault, but we had also just spent a week at the Ritz in Shanghai, which had an incredible breakfast buffet each morning. My main problem with the hotel was with the lack of assistance they were able to provide in navigating the city. With a few exceptions, there was no dedicated concierge and no one on the staff spoke or understood English extremely well. They were effective at responding to our inquiries, but were not proactive in offering up advice, like that there are four entries to the Temple of Heaven, which would have been helpful to know since we were meeting Kalp and Ezequiel at the entrance. Beijing is not an easy city to get around so if I were going back, I would splurge for a hotel with a well trained staff and a helpful concierge. There was a stark contrast between the help we received at the G and the Ritz the previous week. Obviously, we can’t always stay at the Ritz, but I think when going to a city that is more difficult to get around, it is important to choose a hotel with a helpful staff. Not providing proper guidance led to a lot of frustration and discomfort during the trip.

WAM: We drove by the Olympics site and saw the Birds Nest and the Water Cube. They were cool looking. If we had more time, we would have gone back to see it closer up. Also, foot massages are big in China. I abstained, but sat in the room and drank beer while providing commentary as Jenn, Ezequiel, and Kalp received theirs.

WTF: I get that the taxi drivers in Beijing are not the most educated bunch and that they come from other regions and may speak different dialects. Here’s what I don’t understand. At some point, if they’ve worked there long enough, one would think they’d know the major sites, know common things that tourists ask for, and not be total assholes. We had someone from the hotel explain to a driver that we wanted to pick up our friends at a different hotel and then go to HouHai, the Lakes District. Not only did he not know where that area was, but didn’t understand the picking up our friends part. This is after someone from the hotel explained the whole thing in Chinese. He then wanted us to pay him more money because he was frustrated. We had several drivers who refused to drive us anywhere and run the meter. They wanted us to agree to inflated set prices as if we were complete idiots. There are plenty of other examples from our time there. It’s amazing to me that this is after the city hosted the Olympics and supposedly much effort was put into training the taxi drivers.

See more pictures here.