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!

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!

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!

Sam's Chowder House, Half Moon Bay

I've wanted to visit Sam's Chowder House for many years now.  But imagine, it's so hard to get me out of SOMA, let alone Half Moon Bay.  When our dear friends invited us on a hike to Half Moon Bay, the opportunity arose and we got a chance to eat there!

So first of all, I have the say, the weather in SF this summer has been killer.  It has been extremely hot, the sky has been extremely blue, none of that quintessential crappy fog and coldness we are subject to in the summer.  The day we picked to go down to Half Moon Bay for our hike was just as wonderful, weather in the 70's, at times felt like 80's in the sun.  We turned out at Kelly Road, found parking, and headed about 2.75 miles to the Ritz Carlton Half Moon Bay and back.  We had baby Cha-ching in tow, and I carried him for about 1 mile - free workout without having to go to the boring gym.  I think my shoulders are still aching 2 days later from that.  Lol.  The resort was spectacular as usual, with people hanging out on the lawn, eating, drinking, all that fun stuff.  Since it was Labor Day weekend, there were a few weddings and events going on too.  The hike was along the coastal trail, well groomed and maintained for the most part, but we chose not to go inland at one point and had to hike/scramble down to the beach for a bit.  Otherwise, seriously, we could not have picked a better day.  The view of the ocean and cliffs were just unbelievable.  I had so much fun with our friends and Lingon.

By the time we returned to the car, we were all pretty hungry, and drove to Sam's.  It was probably 2.30pm or something, crowded as hell in the restaurant.  We were told our wait would be 1:15, and we left our phone number for them to text us when our table was ready, but decided to eat at the Chowdermobile instead since we really did not want to wait that long.

One can walk down a little path from the restaurant parking lot to access the beach.  Very good and beautiful location.  Between all of us, we got almost everything on the menu.  Clam chowder, lobster roll, fish taco, oyster po'boy, fish and chips.  I loved EVERYTHING!  I wish I could have eaten more.  Even the French fries were delicious and very well seasoned!

Gosh, I'm so happy I finally made it here.  The food did not disappoint either.  I would love to try the restaurant itself, though, so maybe I will have to do it on a weekday some time, or face the terrible wait.  What a day, what a meal!

Ad Lib, Napa

It is rare that I like an American restaurant, much less one with a big name that requires me to drive 2 hours out of SF.  But Thomas Keller, aka French Laundry founding chef, had a pop up restaurant in Napa called Ad Lib (mind you that link might not work in time, since the restaurant is shutting down in mid October.), and Metroman had been there earlier and raved about it.  The background behind the story (I think) is that the French Laundry is adding an extension as a kitchen in its flagship restaurant in Yountville, and while it was (and still is) being built, the staff temporarily migrated to what used to be the Royal Oak at the Silverado Resort for this pop up late 2014 or early 2015.  It was scheduled to end in March, but somehow it got extended to October.  Good for us.

The country club itself seemed a bit stuffy and full of old people, as one would reasonably expect. There was a long circular driveway, and valet parking, but we opted to do self-park instead.  The restaurant was not large, seating a maximum of 80 at any one time.  We had an alright table, not by the large windows, but it is not like the view was spectacular or anything.  The restaurant overlooked the golf course, and we could see a wedding dinner in the distance with nice string lighting.  During dusk, it got really pretty, as are most of my favourite views of lights.

Our friends are big eaters.  Sometimes it works to our advantage, and sometimes not.  This time, I was hungry, and since I figure I'll probably not visit again before it shuts its doors for good, it was nice that we ate a lot.  We also went with an Asian-style family meal, sharing pretty much everything.  Totally my kind of thing.

We were started off with bread.  And I'm totally a sucker for bread.  It was a nice fluffy roll, kind of brioche-like, and came with lightly salted butter.  Not my favourite bread ever, but not bad.  There were 3 specials in the menu, and we got them all.  The first was the burrata with almond-buttered bread, figs, some greens, whatever that other stuff is you see on the photo.  The figs were really really good.  Sweet, fresh, yum.  The dish was overall stellar.  We got crab cakes, with nice large chunks of crab meat which I like.  For our mains, the ribeye, pork special (came with figs too!), salmon and filet mignon.  I loved everything save the salmon, which was of great quality but rather ordinary for its kind.  Since we each chose one, our friend who made his choice last thought it would have been unique to order the lamb for an all-meat dinner, but so be it.  For the sides, we got the fried green beans special (super yummy), mac and cheese (super yummy too), crispy potatoes with bacon (not bad but not exactly very crispy) and wilted spinach (Lingon asked if wilted spinach meant bad spinach which was quite cute and funny).

For dessert, despite being extremely full, we got 4 desserts.  Creme brulee, chocolate cake, banana split and coconut cake.  The banana split was unanimously the favourite, and for me it was because of the caramelized banana, though the ice cream was just OK.  The coconut cake seemed to be the least favourite, with around a third of it left on the plate.

I think it helped that the food was in a sense comfort food, just as is, not a lot of sauces, garnishes, very high quality and fresh.  The one disappointment I had was the anticipation of the beef wellington, which I have never had, and looked amazing in the photos and received rave reviews on Yelp, and when we got there it was no mas.  :-(

Otherwise, wow, great job Ad Lib.

AQ, SF

This is another one of the restaurants I probably would not choose, if it was just me.  But Lingon likes these kinds of restaurants - more upscale, small plates with foam, Californian fusion blahblah, you get the idea.  And honestly, this restaurant is unique enough that I didn't mind.  The kicker for me was that I had a 1 for 1 Sosh deal, and we got a 4-course menu for 2 at less than $85.

The restaurant was AQ.  A beautiful space in a not so beautiful part of SOMA.  4 times a year, they entirely revamp the decor of the interior to reflect the current season.  Not surprisingly, the menu changes seasonally too.  They recently (or maybe not so recently) changed the menu to a prix fixe menu instead of a la carte, which I did not love, because it means overeating.

It was not bad, but we were not in love.  For the price we got, and a fun dining experience, it was a good buy.  I would not be in a hurry to go back, but will definitely peek in to see the new decor if I pass by.

Hong Kong Eats

This is long overdue, but here are the places I ate when I was last in HK, March 2015.

W Hotel Kitchen as our Starwood Platinum amenity, with a breakfast buffet.  This just scratches the surface, and I may have written more previously elsewhere.  But there is a huge selection, Western and Eastern, and I like the Eastern selection better.  Great views of the harbour too, when the pollution is not too bad.

I always go to Tim Ho Wan, even if it is only for take out.  Their baked BBQ pork buns are the best in the world.  This time I also got the Malay cake (ma lai gao) because my mother mentioned it and I was thinking of her.

Another favourite is Tsim Chai Kee for their wonton noodles.  This is my preferred noodle place in SF.  I did a comparison post with Mak's Noodles (wow they have a Wiki page).  I much preferred TCK for their comparatively large portions, springy noodles, large wontons and chili.

We tried a new place this time, called Dim Dim Sum.  They have a Facebook page, wow.  I'm so amazed all these restaurants have websites.  HK is getting techy!  I went there mainly because of their cute piggy liu sha baos, which were not bad, super fun, but not the best I've had but still pretty good and different looking (haha).  We also got buo luo bao and the deep fried chang fen.  All pretty good!

Lastly, we went to Nahm, the Thai restaurant in the Elements Mall.  We ordered the soft shell crab which was way too thickly breaded, spring rolls and chicken noodle soup (it seems), which were all OK.  I would not go back, but it was convenient at the time.

Fun eats, HK!

Salt Lake City and Park City, UT

This is sort of a continuation of our great American summer adventure, but somehow is not quite as iconic as Yellowstone or so, so I decided to give it its own heading.  It seems Park City, very popular for winter sports, has now also become the place to go to in the summer.  Lots of families around.  We went for a conference that Lingon was to attend, which was nice because we got a good rate on the hotel.

We drove in from Yellowstone (exited the west gate, went through Montana, Idaho, and made it into Utah.  That makes it 4 states in 4 hours.  I feel kind of cool thinking of life that way.  ;-)

Our friend told us about this Mexican joint called Red Iguana that we had to go to.  So Red Iguana we went.  We are both trying to keep fit and lose some weight, especially during periods of travel, so we decided to share one of their specials, a seafood fajita platter.  On a Sunday afternoon at 1.30pm or so, our expected wait time as told to us by the greeter was 45 mins, but we probably got seated in 20.  We got free chips and salsa, so that helped fill us up a little.  The fajita plate itself was plenty, and had shrimp, mahi mahi and scallops, together with grilled peppers and onions, and 3 flour tortillas.  The food was cooked really well, plenty of flavour, not overcooked, simple flavours, not too unhealthy (or so I would like to think).  Given the popularity of the place, I would say the other dishes have to be really good.  SO YUM!

I decided I wanted to visit the Great Salt Lake, so off we went towards the marina.  After the GPS told us to get off the freeway, we saw a giant gift shop before the marina where a few cars were, and we decided in the interest of time we would go there.  I had asked a friend whether it was cool, and she said it was gross, but I wanted to see it anyway, thinking it could be like the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia which was also another great salt plain but actually beautiful (think reflecting crystals where one can take cool photos), but this was pretty much a dump.  Still, saw it, and happy to have seen it.  We took a walk out to the water, where some of the ground was made of sand, some soggier than others, and salt.  So there we have it, the Great Salt Lake, which wasn't so great after all.

Then we headed off to our hotel, where I knew we were going to get pampered.  The St Regis Deer Valley.  It was a welcome change after our not so great motel-esque places.  There is a valet at the base of the property with a private St Regis funicular to the top where the actual property was.  We did not know to drive to the top, so we went to the base valet, and lugged our luggage up the funicular to us, which was rather inconvenient - I really do wish the valet told us we could go straight up.  The views going up the funicular were stunning.  we got upgraded to a suite with a full kitchen - the fridge was the same as ours!  Our view was not very pretty overlooking the property valet area, but we rarely go on balconies anyway, so it was no big deal.  But it was very very nice.  Yay.

One of the days, I took the opportunity to order room service, a rare treat.  Fried chicken wings, which reminded me of the kind I would eat after a swim when at home in Singapore.  The bread was not very good, there was a wheat (edible), sundried tomato (inedible imo) and olive (decent for olive, I do not like olives).

We got our Starwood Platinum breakfast amenity, which was $40 off our bill at the J&G Grill.  The first day I ordered a short rib hash, which was really spectacular.  Sunny side up eggs over short ribs and perfectly seasoned potatoes.  I'm not a big eat-out breakfast person, because I often feel I can make most breakfast egg stuff well, but this really wow'd me.  Lingon got the eggs benedict which was OK.  The second day, I went solo, and ordered Belgian waffles and bacon which were so so, and ordered granola, yoghurt and fresh fruit to go.  Their granola was extremely delicious!

One of the nights, when Lingon was at an event, I had to dine by myself.  And since the event had booked out the J&G Grill, I had to eat at the bar, which wasn't such a bad thing.  I actually enjoy eating solo at bars better than at a table anyway.  I sat down and got served the most delicious bar nuts ever, and some herbed popcorn which was not bad.  I had to restrain myself from eating it all.  I treated myself to a bubbly, and got the almond crusted arctic char as my dinner, really well done, perfectly cooked, healthy, a girl was happy.  I decided to skip dessert for health reasons and also because the bar was getting really full.  As I walked back to the room, I was informed that there were smores every evening from 7-9pm, which pleased me to no end because I was frankly a bit bummed that I did not get dessert.  One even has a choice between Reese's peanut butter cups or regular Hershey's chocolate squares (which were really rectangle).  I got both.

I really enjoyed staying at the hotel.  It was really nice to be pampered.

We had dinner in Park City itself on one of the evenings.  Kind of a small cute downtown strip.  Our first evening there, we went to Handle, a fairly new restaurant that opened a little over a year ago.  Good quality food, people seemed to be drinking freely, and having a good time.  We got the yellowfin tuna ceviche, broccolini, burrata toast, diver scallops and clams, pork belly, and the caramel pudding dessert which seemed really popular on Yelp.  I think all the food was pretty good, except they seemed to really like using watercress - in great quantities - in a number of the dishes, and the taste of that overwhelmed.  I found myself eating the watercress first before attacking the rest of the dish.

Over the couple of days, I managed to spend quite a bit of time outdoors.  The first hike I did was long, and according to my GPS I ascended 3900ft which is quite a bit.  I left the hotel and tried to get on a trail that would take me to Canyons Village, where I took the Silver Lake trail up to the top of Bald Mountain.  I had some really beautiful views on the way up of the Jordanelle Reservoir, and decided I wanted to take the chair lift down.  The chair lift down was singularly the most scary experience ever, I literally felt like I was going to pee in my pants, and constantly grabbed on to the side rail.  Funny, since I never experience this going up the lift.

One of the most exciting experiences, though, was seeing a moose upclose and personal.  So we were having breakfast at the hotel, and the server, a very nice lady called Kim, told me of a moose on the hill right in front of the restaurant.  We did not see him on the first day as we had a later breakfast, but on the second day, I went for breakfast bright and early and lo and behold, there he was!  Let's play spot the moose.  Sorry for the crappy photo.  The sun was really not in my favour.  I myself can barely spot him in the first photo.

Following the disappointing bear-less episode, I decided I would look for him and take a photo up close.  I went up to look for him and spotted his antlers behind the bushes.  Taking care not to scare him, I made sure to create a little noise so he knew I was there.  But still, at some point, he jumped back very suddenly and I got spooked, took a quick photo, and went down, a bit bummed that I did not get a better photo.

As I was heading down, I met a dad and son pair and asked if they wanted to see the moose, and invited myself on their journey to find the moose.  Then, we saw him.  We must have been 20ft away from the beast.  I was happy.  I did some reading on the moose, since I swear his antlers were furry, and indeed my eyes were not playing tricks on me.  Story is, they shed their antlers every year, and in the initial growing stages the next year, they are furry with a ton of blood vessels bringing oxygen (I suppose) to the antlers to help them grow.  Strangely, the Wiki entry on moose included the fact that if the moose gets castrated, he immediately sheds his current pair of antlers, and then grows a pair of deformed antlers which he keeps for the rest of his life.  Survival of the fittest, I suppose.  No one wants a moose with ugly antlers.  So sad.

Small world - turns out the dad whose hike I joined was the roommate of Lingon's ex-colleague's brother.  I would say it is super random, but maybe a lot of finance people go to Park City and it's just a matter of time you find 3 degrees of separation.

I went back to the hotel and showed Kim and some kids my photo.  Upon check out, Kim gave me a stuffed St Regis moose!  One for the collection.  So sweet.  Thanks Kim!

Well, soon the time came to leave.  We had lunch at Uptown Fare in town.  We both got the turkey sandwich because of all the rave reviews.  I was going to get the tomato soup, but the butternut squash soup caught my eye and I got that instead.  We also got a side of the egg salad to go, since their eggs were supposed to be really good.  What a meal!  And for $30!

We walked down Main Street just to check it out.  They were filming a movie, but we did not know the cast members.  And then I took an obligatory photo of High West distillery.  Then we called it quits.  Bye bye, Park City.  What a lovely short journey.

The Great American Summer Adventure Part 3 - Yellowstone National Park

This is yogi bear reporting live from Jellystone Park!  Smarter than the average bear!

Well, here we were, Jellystone Park.  Just kidding, Yellowstone Park.  I guess I knew about Yellowstone Park even before I really knew about Yellowstone Park.

After leaving Grand Teton, we headed for Yellowstone.  I was determined to find a bear, and a college friend had seen some during his trip, so I felt confident.  We followed this map to the areas that were supposed to have bears, partly to find bears, partly because these areas were interesting.  Our first stop was at a marker in the map called Mud Volcano.  Not sure if we actually saw the mud volcano itself, but the area was full of muddy stuff that smelled like sulphuric gas emissions.  Bubbly bubbly.

Then onto the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (I thought that was just what people said, in reference to the Grand Canyon National Park, but this was really its name).  The pictures I saw online were great, but seeing it in real life was just spectacular.  We first headed to Artist Point, where we could view the Lower Falls.  Wedged between an extremely steep and narrow gorge area, the river resulting from the falls gushed down.  The rocks had varying pretty colours due to the geology and the gases emitted from... the water?  Lol.  Clearly not a geologist.  Then we headed to Uncle Tom's Point, where we could get an Upper Falls view.  The landscape there looked much different, way more lush, with coniferous trees lining the sides of the river and the falls.  Off to N Rim Drive via Grand Loop Road, where there were various lookouts.  Just stunning.

We stopped in Canyon Village for a coffee for Lingon, and guess what we saw?  Singapore laksa!!  Who would have thought.  Anyway they had this diner style restaurant too so I took a photo of that since I thought it looked cool.

After this, we headed to Lamar Valley to find bears.  No luck, but we saw some bison and elk.  The valley itself did not look all that pretty.

Following a disappointing bear-watching trip, we realized we were doing well on time and went to the Mammoth Hot Springs area, where they had these terraces of limestone.  I enjoyed looking at them and they were really cool, but they were not many educational signs that taught me how these were formed.  We even saw some elk in the village!

After this, we were tired, so we decided to head to the hotel.  I had gotten lucky and managed to book us at the Old Faithful Inn, which is a historic lodge.  I even managed to get us a room with a private bathroom, thank goodness.  The thought of having to share a bathroom just creeps me out, so I am very very thankful!  They had a very cute bear soap!  The lobby was gorgeous, made of wood, with 3 levels of balconies looking down on the main floor.  There was an outdoor patio where one could see Old Faithful geyser hissing and spouting away.

We had dinner at the Obsidian Dining Room in the Old Faithful Snow Lodge, because the menu looked a little more Jackson-y, with Montana trout and bison burger (I wish we had actually checked out the Old Faithful Inn Dining Room menu at the restaurant itself before dining, because we checked it out after and they had trout and a few other options that were slightly different from the online version.  Also so you know, one has to make reservations for the Old Faithful Inn Dining Room.  Another one for next time!).  The food was OK, both a bit overcooked, but I liked my trout better than the burger.

Following dinner, we went to see the last eruption for the evening on the balcony, where we froze to death while awaiting the geyser.  No pictures because it as almost pitch black by the time it erupted.

The next morning, I had every intention of watching the eruption.  There is a geyser predictor which for some reason did not work when I woke up, because there are actually long intervals in the night (based on my short research).  I called the front desk and they gave me a time, and we went about 20 minutes before it was due, and ended up waiting about an hour before the damned thing erupted.  Totally worth it to be the first people there, without the summer crowds, with that sunrise in the background.

One last tourism push before we exited the park.  We visited Grand Prismatic Spring and Fountain Paint Pots which, I suspect due to the freezing temperatures in the morning, were just kind of steamy and not as pretty as what I expected and I was pretty bummed.  I'm sure I'll be back, and I'll choose a less early time to visit and see the visit colours, but for now we were tired of being tourists, sleepy, and ready to relax (ish).

As for my bear-watching quest, how did that fare?  Not so well.  However, I did see bison and elk.  In learning about animals, I found out that a little animal called pika exists - a distant relative of the famous Pikachu?

There will be a next time, Yellowstone.  And Yogi Bear, I will find you.

See here for part 1 of this trip in Jackson, WY, and part 2 in Grand Teton National Park.