Food in Santa Fe (and Around)

Santa Fe, known for its green chile (apparently).  We ate a lot, mostly tried to do TexMex since we were in that area.  :-)

The one fancy place we went to was Gironimo.  Literally EVERYONE we knew who had been to Santa Fe recommended this place.  It was not in downtown Santa Fe, but on Canyon Road where all the art galleries were.  I got crabcakes and foie gras and Lingon got I think a seabass ramen.  Not super TexMex, not even Texas or Mexican like, but it was good fancy dining!  Prices were pretty high, comparable to SF, but for the one nice dinner this was doable!  :-)

For more casual dining, a few people recommended Cafe Pasquals.  I was not very hungry, so Lingon and I shared a green chile burger and some juice/shake thing.  We were recommended some fruit cobbler so I thought why not.  Overall the food was just OK, and I was a bit disappointed.  The restaurant itself was quite busy, took maybe 20-30 mins to get us seated for lunch, cute interior.  They take dinner reservations.

One night we had troubles finding a place to eat at, we walked into (actually up to, since this was a rooftop place) this place called Coyote Cafe.  Now I'm a little confused, because I think there is a difference between the downstairs restaurant, upstairs restaurant and upstairs outdoor rooftop bar.  We went to the super casual rooftop bar.  I got a salad and Lingon got tacos, and they were both very good!

One place that was recommended to us was Palacio Cafe.  I thought it was a vegetarian restaurant so I initially had no intention of eating there, but in the end just felt like I wanted something healthy, so there we went.  Lingon got tacos which were amazing, and I got the special salad which had salmon, and was amazing too!

We tried going to The Shed, not knowing how flipping happening it would be.  Please make reservations!!  It was recommended by friends too, but since our wait was quoted at 3 hours, we said forget it and left.  Haha!

We also had all our breakfasts at Julia, the restaurant at our hotel, La Posada de Santa Fe.  Post here!

Super random, and not quite in Santa Fe, but we passed a Sonic in Los Alamos, and I had never been, so we went and I got a milkshake.  Nothing too much to report here but the shake was good and after that I felt so bloated haha!  This was the first time I had ever been to a drive-in and it was funny looking.

Also in Los Alamos, we went to Viola's Restaurant for some TexMex.  We really enjoyed our meal!

Love TexMex, but it is a bit heavy.  Santa Fe is a great place to eat at, and we really enjoyed our culinary adventures here!

Hiking and Other Activities around Santa Fe, NM

I'm so slow at posting.  Sorry.  But here are things we did in or around Santa Fe.

1)  Hiking at Tent Rocks.  Pretty cool hoodoos (huge, bizarre rock formations) and tent looking formations.  Not a bad walk, there is a steep part at the end of the trail and you can choose to go up, or not, but I was glad we did because we were rewarded with really pretty views.  Even if you do not, the formations are still super cool when seen from a lower level.  About an hour plus outside of Santa Fe.

2)  Bandelier National Monument.  Interesting mountains and we could see where the ancient folks used to live and their way of life.  We went during free national park week so there was no entry fee!  Woot!  Lingon insisted on donating $5 though.  About an hour plus outside of Santa Fe.

3)  Los Alamos Science Museum.  I don't really have any pictures, but we went here on the way back from Bandelier National Monument, and you can go here to learn about the creation/discover of nukes.  It was very interesting, considering I knew nothing about that.  To me, more interesting than the nukes themselves was the excitement of the unknown and seeing how people lived.  We had to show photo ID to get into the area, since it was (I think) still somewhat of a military zone.

4)  Taos.  Entrance fee was pretty expensive, I want to say like $20 or so per person.  An area inhabited by Native Americans.  They had really cool adobe houses, and with the mountains in the background, was really cool.  Also seemed an hour plus away or so, aside from seeing the buildings (which were very cool), nothing much to see there, but it was something to do and I'm glad we went.

5)  Downtown Santa Fe.  A bunch of good restaurants.  Old church.  Very small.  Cute.  But don't expect to do too much there.

Apparently, though, George RR Martin (author of the blown up Game of Thrones) has this weird museum/art gallery/theme park thing called House of Eternal Return.  Maybe if you have a spare day?

6)  Art galleries in Santa Fe on Canyon Road.  We took a walk down the road, lots of really cool outdoors art and probably very cool indoor stuff too, but I'm not super into art so we never really went in or tried to buy anything haha!  Enjoyed the walk though!

We spend 3 nights in Santa Fe and thoroughly enjoyed it!  Hope you do too!

La Posada de Santa Fe, NM

It's been a while, but hello.

We were looking for a place close ish by to take a semi short trip and had recently heard pretty cool things about Santa Fe from a few different people.  A short direct flight to Albuquerque (took me a while to master this spelling and I'm sure I will forget in time) from SF (after a 2-hour delay), an $80 4-day car rental from Hertz (half of this was taxes and fees, believe it or not), and we arrived at La Posada de Santa Fe.  We chose the hotel because of the Starwood affiliation, and it served us well.

During check in, we had requested for a suite upgrade, but unfortunately this was not available for the first evening.  The reception lady told us to stop by the next day and they would help us with this.  The regular room was nice, comfy bed, worked out just great for us.  Lingon learned to build a fire (even though there was a sign telling us not to build a fire) and that kept us nice and warm!  The one thing that was annoying is that there were no bedroom slippers, apparently they had been on back order for a while!

The grounds of the hotel were really pretty.  Some of the buildings were old adobe structures, and others were newly build but in the same style.  The lobby was inviting with a wonderful fireplace and they served complimentary coffee and hot chocolate in the morning.  The hotel was a few blocks from the main square, so we had a nice walk everyday when we went to town.

On our second day, we upgraded to a suite.  It had a living room and was very big, and we enjoyed the extra space though it was not really necessary.  The bathroom had double sinks though, which we appreciated!

What I really liked about the hotel (I must be turning into an old person!) is the activities they arrange.  While we were there, we attended an art talk, smores evening, and we would have done the Saturday morning yoga except we decided to go hiking early instead.  Yummmmmm smoressssss.

For our Starwood Platinum amenity, we chose the breakfast.  You can get a continental breakfast which is coffee, a pastry and fruit parfait, but coffee was free so we decided to go with the $30-off-your-bill option at Julia restaurant.  Over the days, we got to try the huevos rancheros, lox and bagels (it really was just one bagel), French toast and Skinny Minnie Beni (poached eggs with a bunch of vegetables).  All very good and we were very pleased.  Portions were large and we often had leftovers.  Service was wonderful too.

Also, there is free coffee, tea and Mayan hot chocolate available in the lobby in the morning, and we just got that every morning instead of buying coffee for Lingon at breakfast, saved a few bucks!

We had a most lovely stay here.  I would highly recommend the hotel.  Thumbs up!

Toronto, Canada

On the way from Montréal to Toronto, signs became less French and more English.  We stopped by A&W.  I think I had not been there for maybe 15 years, since it had closed down in Holland Village in Singapore.  To those who know not of A&W, you are probably super young (ugh).  A&W is a fast food chain that perhaps went bankrupt and closed what I think is about 99% of their restaurants.  Their website says they are known for their root beer and root beer float, but really, they also used to be known, in my opinion, for their curly fries and coney dog.  So I walk to the counter, but I don't see the curly fries on the menu anymore.  I am disappointed as heck, and I ask the lady, and apparently there have been no curly fries for like 10 years or something.  (BTW I just googled it, and I think they still have curly fries at A&W restaurants in Malaysia.  Whaaaaaa?)  Also there was no coney dog on the menu, though they had hot dogs with an addition of coney sauce, but it just did not feel the same.  I ordered some thick cut fries and a root beer float.  The float was not even served in the nice mug, but a crappy plastic cup, and the ice cream was not very nice.  Makes me wonder if the Asia A&W service is different, and I think the answer has to be yes.  Anyway, my curiosity has been satisfied, and I think I will have to look for an A&W in Asia after this disappointing experience.

Our friend had visited a while ago, and told us to visit Momofuku, the famous Japanese New York chain.  However, there is always so much to do in NYC, and Momofuku never quite attracted us that much, so we never quite made it there.  However, in Toronto, we did not know much, so I decided to go there.  The building is quite a beautiful one.  Looked brand new, shiny glass building with weird dragon-esque metallic sculpture on the exterior, attached to the Shangri-la hotel.  It was not meal time, and I was solo, so I decided to check out the Milk Bar which sold sweets of some kind.  The sweet shop is actually somewhat unmanned, and one can probably steal a bunch of stuff from there, which is not too cool.  I suppose they assume people who go in are honest.  Anyhow.  Some other folks were in there with me and they were chatting among themselves, and I deduced from their conversation that the Crack Pie was the thing to get.  It was just disgustingly sweet, I kind of liked it, and I saved some for Lingon but he did not like it.  Later on, we got some cookies.  My favourite was some blueberry one, and also the cornflake one.  We got the compost cookie (??), but it seemed a bit dry.

That evening, we decided to return to the noodle bar.  We ordered the Momofuku noodle, dan dan mian (one of Lingon's favourite type) and the okonomiyaki.  They were all pretty tasty, nothing too unique about them, but nice to have Asian food.

I drove out for lunch the next day since I wanted Chinese food and had no cash and was sick of paying ATM fees and found somewhere that took credit card.  I ordered a mixed BBQ meat platter to go for our car ride (best decision ever), and then had porridge and dou miao there.  Pretty good and I was very pleased.

I spent some time being a tourist and got to see some cool sights of Toronto.  Black Mass red carpet event for the Toronto Film Festival.  Interior of the Shangri-La.  Cute coffee cart on my morning run.  Old City Hall (I think).  View of Lake Ontario from our hotel room.  A cool looking bar.  Some kind of government building.  Yorkville Park in Yorkville (shopping district, actually really really nice, good to stay there if we had been there for tourism) with its "650-tonne hunk of billion-year-old granite, cut out of the Canadian Shield and transported to the park in pieces".  Modern Toronto City Hall.

I took a drive on Queen Street with cool hipstar shops and cafes and stuff.  Also drove to the Distillery District where there was an old distillery building converted into retail and restaurants with a cool park, but ran out of time so no picture of that.  I thought I was taking the scenic route back on Queens Quay Road which was next ish to the water, but just saw a bunch of quarry looking things and warehouses and storage stuff.

By the way, if anyone knows where there are large groups of people outside Royal Bank Plaza in Toronto, please let me know.  The people did not look particularly like tourists, more like business people, but congregated like a tour group.  Maybe they were looking at the building across the road with gold windows, since I eavesdropped on a tour group, but seemed kind of weird.

Toronto was happening and most enjoyable, especially with the heat that we were graced with.  Very modern, nice and comfortable facilities.  I would be happy if we found our way back again.

Montréal, Canada

It was pretty wet and gloomy as we arrived in Montréal.  We checked into the W Montréal, and of all the Starwood hotels I chose this because it was only marginally more expensive than the other hotels, and the location seemed to be OK.  We got upgraded to a suite, so that was fun.  As usual, for a W hotel room, the design was fairly edgy, we had our Bliss products, and were happy campers.

We needed to find some lunch, so we went to Schwartz's, a Jewish deli with supposedly the best smoked meat.  I think it was beef, since it is Jewish after all.  There was a fairly long line around 2pm or so, maybe 12 people or so in front of me, which moved quickly, about 15 mins till we got to the front of the line, following which a short line/no line at all, so I think at this hour the wait is sporadic and depends on your luck.  The inside of the place looked pretty much like a dump, reminded me of Ben's Chili in DC that Obama goes to, yet has a loyal following/attracts silly tourists like ourselves.  We shared one sandwich, which was tiny and $10 or so.  The meat was good but really for $10 the quantity could have been like... twice the size?!  The bread was pretty crap though.  Also, they took cash only, which posed a huge problem for us, and we had to visit the local ATM.  Fun times.  We went to take out next door, and bought a few more slices of meat, and enjoyed that in the back of the house.  I especially liked the fatty parts, so flavourful.  Would go back again, during off hours, and maybe just have the meat, honestly.

Parking was plentiful, BTW, and is metered until fairly late, just like in Quebec City.  The machines take credit card, which is great for us, since we had no cash.  You enter your license plate number and do not have to display the ticket on the dash.

After our small sandwich, we decided we would get more Jewish things - i.e. bagels!  Our friend told us we had to go to St-Viateur and have whatever came out hot from the oven.  Shucks after we left the place I thought we should have taken a photo of the operation that was going on inside the shop.  The dudes place the bagels on this long wooden plank and stick it into an oven glowing with embers, I think.  Lingon got the cinammon raisin, his favourite, which was cold.  I got the sesame, since it was the one that had just come out hot from the oven.  It was good, but I didn't see what so special about either, but I enjoyed a nice warm bagel on a wet miserable day.

We were trying to find our way to Mont Royal, which should have been quite easy to ascent by car, if not for the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal, a bicycle race, that was occurring that day.  Quelle malchance (not sure if this saying exists).  We had troubles accessing the road at the foot of the mountain, but finally asked a police dude and he told us where to go.  When we got to the foot of the mountain, we were then further blocked by either road works or the race.  I would have walked, except it was raining, and pretty yucky.  So it was mission: failed.

The one good thing that came out of this was that while fumbling around the roads, we found Kem Coba, an ice cream shop.  I saw this extraordinarily long line for what I was used to in the little we saw of Montréal, and I told Lingon we had to go there.  What was funny was that I read an article about it the day before, and showed it to Lingon, and forgot about it, but Lingon remembered!  So I went in to get a cup, and was greeted with a brightly coloured board with tons of flavours on it.  I ended up getting peanut and honey and salted butter, and tried a couple of other flavours, but almost instantly regretted not getting soursop or durian, since they were more unique.  Other more unique flavours included Vietnamese coffee, honey and orange blossom and passionfruit.  I read up a little on the folks who started this, and it was a couple, and I think the lady was from Asia.  No wonder such unique flavours.

We walked around a little bit in the rain, found the Chinatown gate, went to the old town which was less pretty than Quebec City's, and then called it quits since the dampness and misery was getting to us.

We tried to visit the Notre Dame Basilica, but they were unfortunately closed, so we had to go the next day.  This place is very special and I really wanted Lingon to see it.

Dinner was at La Chronique, a small fancy French restaurant.  Their menu was in French only.  I knew what I wanted - the foie gras, so I got that as my appetizer, and then a seafood risotto.  Lingon got a salmon tartare and sweetbreads (ris de veau, which he pretended to understand in French haha), and the food was all pretty good!  The restaurant has a 5 and 7 course prix-fixe menu, but we opted for a la carte, being on a diet and all (trying, anyway).  What annoyed me was when an older couple came in, the server explained the 5 and 7 course to them, but we were only told of the 5 course.  Did we look poor, or maybe he wanted us out of his restaurant in record time?  Who knows.  Anyhow, a friend recommended this to me, and a good recommendation at that!

We walked back to our car and found this restaurant, which I distinctly remember seeing and wanting to eat there (forgot if we did) because of its cool name, on my first trip to Montréal!  I just had to take a picture of it!

Well, the evening was over.  The next morning we went to visit the Basilica.  A picture paints a thousand words.  I assembled a jigsaw puzzle of this when I was little, I think it was like 5000 pieces or something substantial, and it was the most beautiful church I had ever seen.  When I came to Montréal for the first time, I was just so happy that I found it.  I wonder if the lighting makes it look amazing, and if I would be just as amazed without the lighting.  $5/person, cash only.

A la prochaine!

Québec City, Canada

I got down to thinking today about how initially I wanted to write my blog partly to chronicle my adventures, and partly to provide useful information on travels, like how I remember one of my early France posts about buying train tickets.  I don't recall the content of that specific blog, but I know that if I go to France and take the train again, I will consult it.  It seems that now I mainly just write about the things I do, which 90% of the time I think are rather unexciting anyway, which makes me sad.  I'll try to refocus too, but maybe the problem too is that few of my experiences would necessarily be "helpful".

Anyhow, we spent a beautiful day in Québec City.  The weather was great, the skies were blue.  When we arrived, it was lunch time, and we found ourselves at La Boîte à Pain, a bakery in what seemed a fairly run down neighbourhood (something light and well reviewed on Yelp).  We street parked, paid for the meter (meters there ran late, until 9pm!!), and went to the bakery.  Turns out there was a festival occurring on the street that the bakery was on, which was very happening.  Unfortunately we had no CAD$, so we passed on eating along the way (on the one short block).  The bakery sold mainly bread, but had some pastries, sandwiches, salads, etc.  I got myself a quiche and a small artichoke salad.  Absolutely loved the crust of the quiche, and the filling was good too - not too rich, not too dense or fluffy, and just the right amount o salt.  The artichoke salad was alright, mainly because I did not love peppers.  Lingon got a ham and cheese panini, and I must say, the quality of the bread was really great.  Note: the restaurant does not take credit cards.  It takes debit cards, but somehow both ours (USA debit cards) did not work.  We ended up giving them USD, which was sad, but thankfully it was not an extravagant meal.

We walked around the historical/old town.  I had been here years before for spring break with some friends in March, and how different it was.  The parks were luscious, I was not layered up in winter gear.  Simply splendid.  I described the town as being like Disneyland to Lingon, and he said Canadians would not like that since Disney had a US connotation to it, but I still maintain it does look like Disneyland.  And that's a great thing - it's the happiest place on earth!  A lot of European influence, with murals on the face of buildings, narrow cobbled stone streets, little squares/parks/plazas with musicians and street hawkers, old buildings with beautiful architecture, and a funicular (thinking Montmartre in Paris).  So lovely.

After that, we checked in at our hotel, the Four Points by Sheraton Québec Resort, which was a little bit outside of town, since neither of the two Starwood properties were in the vicinity of the town.  We had an upgrade to a suite of some kind, which included a ginormous bathroom that could probably have been made into its own room.  The room itself was not spectacular, but the beds were super comfortable.  ZZZzzz.  We used the gym, which was small and had one bike, one elliptical, one treadmill, and some weights stuff, for a little while, and then off to dinner.

Since we were in a French area, we decided we wanted to eat something French, and picked Le Billig, a crêpe restaurant that had good reviews on Yelp.  We have been eating pretty much non-stop, so we tried to be healthy-ish and shared a bacon salad (not so healthy!) and crêpe.  The crepe had this amazing onion marmalade, perfectly caramelized and super sweet.  Yum yum.  We learned that a billig was the name of the flat crêpe pans in old French.

The next morning, we went for our continental breakfast.  I must say, in the realm of free Starwood breakfasts, this must have been one of the worst.  They had a tiny little jar of yoghurt with granola on top, some rather mediocre fruit, and one of the worst croissants I have ever tasted - I'm not that fussy about pastry, but these tasted really weird, like perhaps full of preservatives or some other weird flavour.  Dislike.

Then, off to our next journey.  Bye bye Québec, so glad I had another chance to see you!

Vermont Road Trip

A (long ish) weekend in NYC called for a road trip.  I had originally planned on going to PEI and New Brunswick, but Lingon ended up having a conference in Toronto at the tail end of our road trip period, so off towards Canada we went.

We started off the drive by going through the Taconic State Parkway, which is a parkway that sort of starts in the Bronx, and took us up to Vermont.  It was a pretty road, mostly well maintained, lined with many trees and state parks.  Our trip was in early September, so while it was not prime fall colours time yet, some of the leaves had begun to change to yellow and red, though not the dark crimson colours I was hoping for.  One takes what one can get!

Our first destination was Woodstock, VT.  I had read this article on northeast roadtrips, and pretty much stole the itinerary there.  Our first stop was the Woodstock Farmer's Market, recommended by friends who went to school in New Hampshire, and boy were we hungry after being in the car for what seemed to be over 5 hours.  I got a piece of salmon, and Lingon got a turkey wrap, both were very good.  The market itself had a ton of fresh produce, flowers, etc., anything you would expect at a market.  It also had a huge cooked food deli section, salads and pastries/bakery section for to go, or eating at the lovely seating right by the river outside.  Great quality food, and overall charming and cute.

We drove past the White Cottage Snack Bar, where said article told us to eat ice cream and fried food, but unfortunately we had eaten too much the past few days in NYC, so I had to give a pass to both.  I was crushed.  But we did not say goodbye without taking a quick photo.

Such sadness as I see that photo again.  :-(

Next, we check out the Woodstock Inn, which is the premium lodging in town.  We took a walk inside, and it seemed cute and cozy, but for some reason did not seem like my kind of place to stay.  (Also, after seeing how small the town was, I'm glad we did not - I had thought about spending 2 nights here!  The town was super cute, but it was tiny!)

We walked a little and saw this funny sign for Suicide Six which for some reason does not seem very funny now, and a tad inappropriate, just by itself.

Other things the article told us to do included Gillingham's General Store, Yankee Bookshop (Vermont's oldest continuously operated independent bookshop) and The Prince and The Pauper (a restaurant institution - some guy saw us checking it out and told us it was really good and to check it out for dinner since it was closed for lunch).  So we visited!

Then, we went back to our car, and guess what, we got a parking ticket!!!  The meter was camouflaged into the railings where we were parked.  Sneaky.  It was the nicest, and one of, if not, the cheapest tickets we had ever received, and it said basically to pay $10 for the ticket or support a local store and purchase something and they will reverse the ticket.  So we went to the general store and Lingon got a $2 coffee.  Haha.  If only all parking tickets could be that nice.  We got a $85 ticket from SFPD, not quite so nice or forgiving.  Lol.

After that, we headed to Quechee.  No idea how to pronounce that name.  Our friends had told us of a good lunch spot, Simon Pearce, which ended up being a glassblowing place too.  Super cool, but all the products were $$$$.  There was a dam right there too with an old rickety looking bridge that we drove across, really pretty area.

Next off, we went to Waterbury.  Not sure if this is a big place, but there were actually 3 things we wanted to do there!  The first, which was the highlight of my trip, was the Ben and Jerry's factory tour.  Every ice cream lover's dream.  The tour cost $4 and included a giant sample.  Ours was the AmeriCone Dream, Vanilla Ice Cream with Fudge Covered Waffle Cone Pieces & a Caramel Swirl, which I devoured.  I had fun, and the factory had cool pictures that were nice and bright and cheery.

Then, off to the Cabot Annex Store for cheese samples.  Both this and our last stop closed at 6pm, and it was something like 5.42pm, and each place was 1 minute from the past, so I can't say much about it except I speed-ate a ton of cheese samples and they were yummy.  Lingon joked that this was our dinner, so I probably ate a bit more than I should have, but no regrets there!

Lastly, to the Cold Hollow Cider Mill, where I had a yummy super cold refreshing sample of cold pressed apple juice.  My old roomie said this was a must-visit, and I'm glad I did!

Sad I did not get to spend more time in both places.  But maybe some day we will come back!

We spend the night in at the Sheraton in Burlington, VT, which was uneventful, great beds for a good night's sleep.  Our Starwood Platinum breakfast was a free entree at G's Restaurant, but we did not even make it to breakfast to see what it was.  Yelp gave it pretty dismal reviews, so no regrets there.

We had dinner at Misery Loves Company in Winooski, VT, which really seemed like an extension to Burlington.  Got the beef tartare, scallops, and squid ink spaghetti.  The beef tartare tasted a bit weird (some weird herb-y thing) but otherwise dinner was enjoyable.

The next morning we drove off, to Canada, and our short visit to Vermont ended.