San Francisco, July 25-28, 2025
I hadn’t planned on coming back out to San Francisco so soon but after visiting in January but I once again had some RUCs to burn and the Mets were in town so I figured, why not!? Anytime I can get a lie-flat for the price of economy, I’m gonna go for it. And, of course, there’s also the opportunity to eat and drink myself into a food coma at the Delta One Lounge at JFK.
#SFMets
I hadn’t planned on coming back out to San Francisco so soon but after visiting in January but I once again had some RUCs to burn and the Mets were in town so I figured, why not!? Anytime I can get a lie-flat for the price of economy, I’m gonna go for it. And, of course, there’s also the opportunity to eat and drink myself into a food coma at the Delta One Lounge at JFK.
Toronado… for maybe the last time?
To quote myself from the last SF trip report earlier this year:
As always, no trip to San Francisco would be complete without a trip to the craft beer mecca that is Toronado. Little did I know at the time of my visit that it could very possibly be the last time I get to have a Pliny there as they announced later that month that the bar was on the market.
As it turns, its demise wasn’t as imminent as it appeared back in January. It’s not even as imminent as it appeared in the spring when it was reported that it had been sold to a crypto entrepreneur who had some ideas for the place. How real was this sale? Was it actually dashed by the guy being less a crypto entrepreneur and more or a crypto douche (some might say there’s no daylight between the two)? We may never know but, for now, the place is still kicking as it is. Will these visits be my last ones? Your guess is as good as mine at this point. Not wanting to leave it to chance, I ponied up some dough for a hoodie so I’d have something to remember them by besides the copious pints of Pliny I’ve imbibed over the last 17 years.
The Food and Drinks
I hit up a few favorites from past SF visits on this quick long weekend, including a ridiculous amount of pastries from Arsicault Bakery - I first went here after Oktane in 2022 and don’t think I’d ever have found them had it not been for a dear co-worker and friend going there in the morning, literally while I was on a bus coming back south from Santa Rosa. It was a grand discovery then and I leaned in even harder this time, nabbing a jamon beurre for post-race recovery, in addition to the required pastries.
On that same trip in 2022, we had dinner at the Michelin-starred Kin Khao - no pictures exist of that meal as it was dark and we were hungry. This time, I had lunch and went with a staple in the Khao Mun Gai. A different co-worker of ours once remarked about how the idea of poached chicken didn’t seem appealing until he had the southeast Asian version of it. That’s a very accurate way of describing how something as simple as poached chicken can differ by culture. And the one at Kin Khao? It’s exceptional. The meat is tender and that rice is so goddamn flavorful.
As for something new…. how about Four Kings in Chinatown? This may be my new favorite fancy pants Cantonese restaurant in SF proper, with prices commensurate with the fancy pants label. I paid a premium for some very classic dishes like the fried squab and the claypot rice but I imagine that comes down to the contemporary preparations of those dishes, in addition to sourcing of ingredients, and, frankly, bang-on execution. I dined alone at the counter but sat next to a fellow solo diner from London making his way up the west coast and he seemed as though he was deriving the same amount of pleasure from his meal.
The Mets!
I’d been to AT&T Oracle Park before back in 2008 during my first-ever time in San Francisco for a game and even went on a ballpark tour later that summer but this was my first time seeing the Mets here. And what a great time it was to see them! They won both games I attended, finishing off a three-game sweep. Both games ended with Edwin Díaz walking absolute tightropes to close them out but he got bailed out on Saturday night with an absolute defensive gem by Pete Alonso, jumping and grabbing a liner at his highest point; on Sunday, he bailed himself out with two strikeouts after walking/hit-by-pitch and leaving the bases loaded. The vibes were good after this weekend and they would be well on their way to righting the ship.*
* I wrote this line after they lost two of three to the Nationals on the penultimate weekend of the season, falling out of a postseason spot for the first time since April. The vibes, they are bad.
San Francisco Marathon Alexi Pappas 10K
Another factor that tipped in favor of doing this long weekend trip was that I had a 20-mile long run to do and, as it turns out, this was the weekend of the San Francisco Marathon. Perfect! I’ll sign up for this marathon that goes across the Golden Gate Bridge and that’ll be my long run!
Turns out, doing a hill workout at pace in a very hilly Porto a few weeks earlier was not the best idea. My back was all sorts of messed up afterwards and I couldn’t keep up with the 18-week block I usually do before a goal marathon. Thankfully, they had multiple race distances that weekend so I switched my registration to the Alexi Pappas 10K without penalty - the penalty was paying over $200 to now run a 10K instead of a marathon.
This was fun, though! The nice thing about the 10K was starting at 7 am whereas the full started at 5 am - I’ll gladly take an extra two hours of sleep, especially since the Mets game the previous night started just after 6 pm and didn’t end until after 9. The course was super flat and, this being San Francisco in July, the temperature was race-perfect. I even got to high-five Alexi Pappas, the namesake for this race, shortly after crossing the finish line! Best thing, though, was cracking open a fresh bottle of Pliny and drinking it in my hotel room, post-race, while eating that jamon buerre from Arsicault.
The List
Restaurants
Cable 55 | @parc55hotel
Saigon Sandwich | @saigon.sandwich
Dumpling Union | @dumpling_union_haight
Hon’s Wun-Tun House | @honswuntunhousesf
Kin Khao | @kinkhao
Four Kings | @fourkings__
Breweries
Black Hammer Brewing Company | @blackhammerbrewing
Otherwise Brewing | @otherwisebrewing
Bars
Toronado | @toronadosf
Vesuvio Cafe | @vesuviobarsf
Bakeries
Arsicault Bakery | @arsicaultbakery
Places
Oracle Park | @oraclepark
London, June 28-July 7, 2024
At some point in late 2023 or early 2024, I saw that Pearl Jam announced a stop at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Saturday, June 29. As it so happened, The National had also announced a date in London for around the same time, on Friday, July 5 at Crystal Palace Park. Also, in between would be the first few days of the 2024 Wimbledon Championships. So, I figured, why not go to London for a fourth time in less than four months time!?
#ID4intheUK
At some point in late 2023 or early 2024, I saw that Pearl Jam announced a stop at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Saturday, June 29. As it so happened, The National had also announced a date in London for around the same time, on Friday, July 5 at Crystal Palace Park. Also, in between would be the first few days of the 2024 Wimbledon Championships. So, I figured, why not go to London for a fourth time in less than four months time!?
For this one, I decided to go low cost here, cashing in 51K SkyMiles (that’s after the 15% discount for Delta Amex cardholders 😬) for a one-way from JFK to LHR on Delta metal in Main Cabin and then figure out another award flight home, maybe using a stash of Lifemiles or even my one remaining Aeroplan 50K certificate. Luckily, the load factor on Virgin Atlantic metal must not have been great because I was able to rebook that one-way into a round trip on Virgin Economy for 70K total (no discount but VS > DL). Score.
Even though I was flying out in Economy, I still had access to either a Delta SkyClub (thx to holding a qualifying Amex) or the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse (thx to holding SkyTeam Elite Plus status). Go figure - with Delta status, I had access to a club but not their club. Joke’s on them anyway as the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse at JFK during peak VS flight banks is light years better than a Delta SkyClub. At the Clubhouse, there’s a la carte dining and fancy cocktails with no upcharge while the SkyClub has (nice) buffets and upcharges for any cocktails or beers other than the basics. It was really a no-brainer to head to the A concourse and up a flight of stairs and have a nicely pan-fried sea bass and skip the dinner service on the flight.
Bonus - SkyTeam Elite Plus status also meant being able to stop in at the Revivals Lounge at LHR for a much-needed shower and quick bite, which meant I could also skip the breakfast service on the flight, truly maximizing my sleep (nap, really).
Pearl Jam Whitstable
After a stop at the Revivals Lounge, I made my way to my hotel in Whitechapel and was able to get a room at 11 am. So far, so good. As I got myself ready to take a quick nap ahead of being online for work at 3 pm, I saw a bit of news that pretty much ruined my morning.
The below statement that has been issued by Pearl Jam ahead of tomorrow night’s (29 June) planned show at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Pearl Jam London Show Cancellation
The Pearl Jam concert scheduled for Saturday, June 29th at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London has regrettably been cancelled due to illness in the band.
This decision was the last thing we wanted to have to make, especially as we know so many of you made travel plans based on the tour schedule. There was simply no other option based on our current health and also having to avoid further damage.
We couldn’t be more disappointed to not play one of our favorite cities this tour. Despite best efforts, rescheduling was not possible at this time due to existing schedule commitments. We are deeply grateful for your support and sincerely apologize to the incredible Pearl Jam community for the inconvenience and disappointment.
Tickets will be refunded at point of purchase.
Ugh. There went my plans for the next day. Undeterred, I napped, resolving to come up with an alternate plan for what was looking to be a very lovely Saturday, weather-wise.
Whilst enjoying some sake post-dinner, I landed on a plan for the next day to make my way out east to some coastal town on the island. I wanted to get all the way to the eastern edge and see the English Channel but settled for Whitstable as there were plenty of options for stuffing my gullet and there would be a beach I could walk on or along.
Sure enough, I had plenty to eat and drink and made a truly solid (unplanned) day trip out of it. The wonderful thing about a coastal town is that there’s usually some decent seafood to be found and, in that respect, Whitstable did not disappoint. Crushing a half dozen oysters paired with a local beer will never not be awesome; to follow that up at dinner with lobster is just a solid daily double.
The Wimbledon Championships
As someone who is a huge tennis fan and has been to the US Open in multiple years (as far back as being to watch matches simultaneously in Armstrong and Grandstand by standing at the connected stadiums’ highest point), it would be an understatement to say that going to Wimbledon was a bucket list item. I’d entered the ballot many times without ever winning a chance to purchase a ticket. But there was one other way to attend Wimbledon and in the most British way possible - a fucking queue. Basically, you can queue for same-day tickets, ranging from guaranteed seats in one of the show courts to grounds admission passes. Either way, do it successfully and you’re in.
So that’s how I found myself on a Wednesday morning, waking up at 4 am so I could catch the first of three buses that would take me from Clapton to Angel to Clapham Junction to, finally, Wimbledon Park at around 6:15 am. That first bus was around 4:45 am so we’re talking about 90 minutes of bussing around - thankfully, these buses weren’t exactly busy and it was easy enough to find a seat on each one to get some light napping in. Once that bus let us out, it was a sprint to a gigantic lawn where thousands were already queueing, some having done so since early in the evening prior.
The thing about The Queue (seriously, it’s quite proper) is that, yes, it’s a queue and one in which you’ll be on for hours as tickets don’t go on sale until 10 am. But it’s almost like a party or picnic where folks have blankets and camping chairs set up and you can while away the time as you see fit. Some will nap (I did for part of it) but many will make a proper event of it with drinks and food whilst soaking in the convivial atmosphere. And that’s how it went for the first few hours there until they started moving us along into the ticket purchasing queue a little before 10 am.
All in, I spent about five-six hours each in the two days I did The Queue. Why two days? Well, the first day was a rainy affair and play pretty much stopped in the late afternoon so I decided to come back the next day, this time with a friend (thx for keeping me company, Tovy). While the second day queueing was more enjoyable in the sun, I would not recommend doing this on consecutive days as you’ll be quite sleep-deprived that second day.
But once you make your way through The Queue and you’re in? YOU’RE IN. I had just the most incredible time basking in The Wimbledon-ness of it all. Yes, I had the strawberries and cream because can you say you’ve been to Wimbledon if you didn’t? And, yes, I had a Pimm’s Cup because to not do so would be just wrong. In between all the must-have staples of the experience that is The Wimbledon Championships, there was some tennis to be played and, boy, did I see some matches.
Day 3, Wednesday, 3 July
Frances Tiafoe Borna Coric
Otto Virtanen Tommy Paul
Day 4, Thursday, 4 July
Xinyu Wang Jessica Pegula
Taylor Fritz Arthur Rinderknech
Caroline Wozniacki Leylah Fernandez
Among those five matches, I’d say that seeing Frances Tiafoe up close on Court 18 (The John Isner Memorial Court) beat Borna Coric in straight sets was the (grand) slam dunk highlight of my two days there. A close second was seeing Xinyu Wang and Jessica Pegula split a tight first two sets before Wang ran away with the third as Pegula just fell apart. Between seeing the matches, it was just an immense pleasure to walk around the grounds, stopping at all the different gathering places, including spending some quality time sitting on Henman Hill (or is it Murray Mountain now?) watching matches taking place on the show courts on the large screens on the Centre Court exterior.
If you’re a fan of tennis? Or even if you’re not? I can’t recommend highly enough to come out to SW19 and spend a day at Wimbledon, starting with a lawn party as the sun rises and watching high-quality tennis as the sun sets. You won’t be disappointed. It’s the quintessential summer London experience, really.
The Food! The Drinks!
Over the course of ten days in London, I ate… a lot. Even still, I only managed to have two meals at a place where I’d eaten before which goes to show just how much there is I hadn’t had until this trip. Let’s start with the Michelin two-starred La Dame de Pic London, offering a four-course lunch menu for £100 which was just an absolute bang for the buck quid. The pollock cooked over embers was incredible with an unmistakable truth in advertising because the flavor was unapologetically smoked. Alas, the restaurant is no longer, having closed in February 2025.
Of the dozen other meals I had at new-to-me places, two for me stood out. First, an early supper my first night in London at Poulet where I just went to town on a very delicious half rotisserie chicken that was doused in jus that might as well have been crack. I’m certain the meat by itself was moist but having it swim in chicken jus was next level. Paired with a gin and tonic (when in England, amirite!?), this was a great meal to end my first full day in town.
Second up was a quick bite for lunch at Bánh Mì Hội-An where I had… bánh mì. This was easily the best one I’d had in London and I clearly wasn’t the only fan as there was a line out the door of this small shop. Oh, and it was lightly raining too so they must really have wanted it.
As for the two places I’d been to before, I’ve never written about them in a trip report so I figure it’s worth giving them their props in this one. Roti King is an absolutely phenomenal Malysian underground, hole-in-the-wall spot. The first time I went back in 2021, I waited in line for some time to enter but that may have been because I got there after they’d already opened and missed the first seating. This time, I got there shortly before they opened at noon and was among the first to be seated. I’d already done the roti canai last time so I went with the char keuy teow and the ayem goreng berempah (fried chicken) on this visit. I loved the wok hei flavor on the noodles in the char kuey teow and the fried chicken was solid though the meat was just on the right side of not being dry.
My brother and his family was actually in town during part of my time there so we met up on his first night there at one my favorite places - Blacklock, at their City location. There’s nothing fancy about them (except for maybe their big chops, especially on Monday nights) - they just do solid work with meats and you’re always gonna have a good time there. With four of us, we went with a big ol’ plate of chops and were handsomely rewarded with all of the meats. As usual, a pleasure.
Oh, that Sunday Roast at Hackney Church Brew Co. I mentioned in my London trip report for earlier in the month? Yeah, I did it. Lagom does a wonderful one. Go get it, especially if you’re looking for a brewery + roast combo.
After I finished my chicken at Poulet and in search of a nightcap, I stumbled upon the nearby Kanpai London Sake Brewery & Taproom. This was quite the find and their sakes were the perfect post-meating drink - I’d already had a beer nearby and that was not the way to go after demolishing that plate of chicken, potatoes, and salad. Sake, however, hit the spot and Kanpai’s variety on tap as well as their bottle pours meant lots to choose from. Which I did. And had. Nightcap accomplished.
I was in London during Euro 2024 and, with England in the knockout rounds, it meant the place was lit. As luck would have it, I would watch the Three Lions play their Round of 16 and quarterfinal matches in breweries. At Howling Hops, I watched the first half of their match against Slovakia before moving onto less crowded pastures but not before I had a few of their hoppy beers, none of which were hazy 🙏🏻. At The Pembury Tavern, run by Five Points Brewing Company, I watched the second half of their quarterfinal against Switzerland. Well, the second half, extra time, and penalties, to be exact. It was a joyous time seeing the patrons celebrate after England came out on top, made all the better with drinking hoppy beers minus the haze 🙏🏻.
Final note on food and drinks: somehow, I managed to not have a single bowl of ramen on this trip. Again, I was here for 10 days!!! I was in London for only four days earlier in June and still managed to have two! I’ll make up for it the next time I’m in London for a week or longer - count on it.
The (Inter)National
I actually posted a photo over three posts on social media for each song in their setlist - well, 26 songs but 25 photos since Humiliation bled into Murder Me Rachael but there actually is a 26th photo that covered them walking off after Fake Empire. I think the captions from those posts best sum up this experience.
I’ve seen The National | @thenational quite a few times but it was an absolute treat to see them in a large outdoor venue and, for the first time, outside of the States.
It’s a little crazy when I think about it - seeing The National | @thenational, a band that paid their dues playing tiny venues in NYC in the early-mid aughts, on another continent entirely. They, unlike any other band I’ve seen, is one that I’ve grown old with.
It was a pretty wet day but thankfully, the rain mostly held off during the show. After the show, however? Wet. Very very wet. I was absolutely soaked by the time I walked through the door of my lodging in Hackney.
Also? Hearing England in England? 🏴 🤌🏻
Oh, A Race!
One of my favourite things about visiting London is that it’s pretty much a given that I will a) find at least one race in or around town to run and b) likely run one of them. There’s a decent number of race organisers in the UK so there really is no shortage of races to choose from. London, with its many parks is conducive to holding races on a frequent basis, not having to close roads to traffic to pull it off.
That’s how I found myself in Regent’s Park on the last day of this trip, to run a 10K put together by OneRace - they have a number of races throughout London’s parks. I was fortunate this one was the perfect distance away to get in part of a long run as a warm-up ahead of racing the remaining distance. I even ran into a fellow New Yorker on holiday and, as it turns out, was also flying home that evening. He even had the same Virgin Atlantic flight I originally had to JFK that got cancelled. Whereas I was fortunate to be able to rebook onto a direct flight home on Delta metal for slightly later in the afternoon, his rebooked itinerary had an early afternoon flight to CDG before his final destination of JFK. Oof. The race was at 10 am so I hope he made it!
This race was… not my best showing. I’m not even talking about the time I finished in. No, I’m talking about making a literal mess of myself where I thought I was squeezing Honey Stinger gel into my mouth but instead it went all over my hand and water bottle and arm. It was a disgusting, sticky last few miles and I didn’t get the full nutrition I needed. Ugh.
The List - London
Restaurants
Fen Noodles | @fen_noodles
Poulet | @pouletvoulez
E Pellicci | @pelliccicafe
Kipferl | @kipferl_london
My Neighbours The Dumplings | @myneighboursthedumplings
LA CUMBIA | @lacumbialondon at Howling Hops Brewery & Tank Bar | @howlinghops
Roti King | @rotikinguk
Bánh Mì Hội-An | @banhmihoian.london
Blacklock | @blacklockchops
La Dame De Pic London | @ladamedepiclondon
Blue Taj Indian & Nepalese Restaurant | @bluetajrestaurant at Brockley Brewery | @brockleybrewery
Cloud Land 遇见云南 | @cloudland__yujianyunnan
Ace Pizza | @thisisacepizza at The Pembury Tavern | @pemburytavern
Lagom | @eatlagom at Hackney Church Brew Co. | @hackneychurchbrewco
Breweries
Southwark Brewing Company | @southwarkbrewing
Kanpai London Sake Brewery & Taproom | @kanpailondon
Howling Hops Brewery & Tank Bar | @howlinghops
CRATE Brewery & Pizzeria | @cratebrewery
Brockley Brewery | @brockleybrewery
Hackney Church Brew Co. | @hackneychurchbrewco
Bars
107 Wine Shop & Bar | @107_e5
Mother Kelly’s Bethnal Green | @motherkellys_e2
The Pembury Tavern | @pemburytavern
Coffee
Climpson & Sons | @climpsonandsons
Redemption Roasters | @redemptionroasters
Attendant Coffee Roasters | @attendantcoffeeroasters
Lodestar Coffee | @lodestarcoffee
Workshop Coffee | @workshopcoffee
Bakeries
Casey’s | @caseysclapton
Dessert
La Gelatiera | @lagelatiera
Places
The British Library | @britishlibrary
Wimbledon | @wimbledon
Crystal Palace Park | @crystalpalaceparktrust
The List - Whistable
Restaurants
Wheelers Oyster Bar | @wheelersoysterbar + Shepherd Neame | @shepherdneame
The Lobster Shack | @thelobstershackwhitstable + Whitstable Brewery | @whitstablebrewery
Bars
Wantsum Brewery | @wantsumbrewery at The Tankerton Arms | @thetankertonarms
The Twelve Taps | @thetwelvetaps
Coffee
Blueprint Coffee & Books | @coffeeblueprint
Tampa, June 7-8, 2025
This is actually my second trip to Tampa this year so that puts in in the same category as London, right?
Okay, not really. It’s nowhere close to London and the only similarity on a personal level is visiting a city more than once in a year but there is one thing Tampa has over London… a Major League Baseball team.
#tampabayraysoftampa
This is actually my second trip to Tampa this year so that puts in in the same category as London, right?
Okay, not really. It’s nowhere close to London and the only similarity on a personal level is visiting a city more than once in a year but there is one thing Tampa has over London… a Major League Baseball team.
Okay, in years past, that was only partially true. The Tampa region had an MLB team but they actually played their games in St. Pete. Enter Milton in October 2024, a Category 5 hurricane which did some major damage to the region, including quite literally blowing the roof off the joint the Tampa Bay Rays called home. Without that roof and due to other storm-related damage to the Trop, that meant the Rays were temporarily homeless.
With their primary residence unavailable for the time being, the Rays started a residency at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa proper for the 2025 season. I’d been there before for a Spring Training game but, now that there would be host to honest-to-goodness games that counted, I knew I had to revisit the place.
The Tampa Bay Rays of Tampa
There’s no sugar coating this - seeing a baseball game outdoors in the afternoon in Tampa in June is waaaaay hotter than seeing one in March. Be sure to get seats on the third base side of the stadium as the sun will move toward that side and the shade will envelop from the upper stand to the field level over time. Sunday was a noon start so it took a bit but the top most rows got shade pretty early on in the game
On Saturday, however, I was fortunate enough to score seats six rows behind home plate just slightly on the first base side. With a 4 pm start, that meant being in the sun for quite some time. I asked someone who worked there how long it took for our seats to get cover from the sun and they said sometime around 5 pm. So, for the first few innings, I alternated between seeing the action from my seat and taking refuge in the walkways out to the concourse until, sure enough, my seat was in the shade at about 5:15 pm.
I did, however, manage to tough it out in my seats to watch Evan Longoria soak in the cheers as he retired a (Devil) Ray on that day. Dude had a solid career in Tampa and it was nice to see him get the well-earned accolades from the fans ahead of him throwing out the ceremonial first pitch.
There was plenty of action on the field with the Miami Marlins ultimately winning 11-10 over the Tampa Bay Rays. The real action though was the mascot race as DJ Kitty shoved Raymond aside to take the victory. I love DJ Kitty - they might be my favorite non-Mets mascot in baseball and I don’t really know why as there’s really no rationale for their existence. The Rays already had a mascot in Raymond but they thought “a cat with a turntable - that’s a mascot!” Whatever their thought process, I’m thankful for it.
The Food and Drinks
30 hours in a place isn’t really a lot of time to explore the restaurant and bar/brewery scene to its fullest. I actually only had time for one meal in a restaurant but I made it count by hitting up a spot on Tampa’s Michelin Bib Gourmand list - Rooster & the Till.
Side note: before planning our Spring Training trip in March, I had no idea that Tampa had a Michelin guide. That’s not a city I would have imagined getting one before the likes of Boston or Philadelphia.
Anyway, back to the restaurant - I was torn between the set menu and going a la carte but while the former had wagyu on it, the freedom to choose from some interesting dishes on the menu and not be forced into a dessert won out.
I was well-rewarded for that decision immediately when the cobia collar came out. Deep-fried crunch with some decent fleshy bits with a delicious nuoc chin sauce to dip into. When a dish has been on a menu since the beginning, you know it’s gonna be a good one and, this? This was a good one.
Also, not being forced into dessert meant that I could go for a third savoury dish but the seared foie gras might as well have been a dessert and I don’t say that in a bad way. I mean, there was Nutella on the plate so, yeah, basically dessert.
30 hours may not seem like a lot of time, especially with 25% of that spent asleep, but I did manage to make it to seven breweries on this trip. As far as highlights go, I’d have to go with Woven Water on Saturday and Sky Puppy on Sunday. Both had the best variety of beers on offer when I visited - props to Woven Water for sour smoothie beers that didn’t (all) use lactose to round them out and to Sky Puppy for being all over the place in a good way (they had a saison!). If I had to pick between the two, I’d go with Sky Puppy because they’ve truly got a great atmosphere and vibe going.
The List
Restaurants
SuperNatural Food & Wine | @supernaturalfoodandwine
Rooster & the Till | @roosterandthetill
Retro House Coffee Bar & Asian Bistro | @retrohousetampa at BarrieHaus Beer Co | @barriehausbeerco_tampa
Breweries
Magnanimous Brewing | @magnanimousbrewing
Hidden Springs Ale Works | @hiddenspringsaleworks
Woven Water Brewing Company | @wovenwaterbrewing
Ology Brewing Co | @ology_brewing_co
BarrieHaus Beer Co | @barriehausbeerco_tampa
Tampa Bay Brewing Company | @tbbco
Sky Puppy Brewing | @skypuppybrewing
Places
George M. Steinbrenner Field | @gmsfield
London, June 7-10, 2024
We’d known for some time that the New York Mets would face the Philadelphia Phillies in the London Series. We just didn’t know when (for sure). When the 2024 MLB schedule dropped and we saw where on the calendar when it would fall, plans were set in motion to make sure we got there.
#LondonMets
We’d known for some time that the New York Mets would face the Philadelphia Phillies in the London Series. We just didn’t know when (for sure). When the 2024 MLB schedule dropped and we saw where on the calendar when it would fall, plans were set in motion to make sure we got there.
Around Thanksgiving 2023, Virgin Atlantic had a sale on award flights so for the measly sum of 43,500 Virgin Points (transferred from a few credit card points stashes), $976.60, and £393.79 (basically $1500 total in cash) , I booked a round trip with the outbound red-eye flight in Upper Class and the return daytime flight in Premium. That’s not a bad deal, especially in light of how they’d eventually move from a fixed award chart to a dynamic one where these kinds redemption amounts are less likely for a June flight.
I realize I haven’t actually discussed a Virgin Atlantic flight in a trip report and I won’t do it here as this was my second time ever flying in Upper Class with the first time a few months before this trip in April when I ran the London Marathon. I’ll save my thoughts on Upper Class for that trip report - that’s gonna be a… fun one.
My return flight in Premium was the first time I flew in that class but, more importantly, the first time I flew westbound from LHR in a class that qualified for entry in the Virgin Clubhouse there and it is everything people hype it up to be. This is is despite the fact that the post-COVID experience is devoid of some of the amenities that really made it stand out (RIP haircuts and Pelotons). The space is incredible (apologies for lack of photos of said space) and the food options on offer were quality with plenty of variety (shout out to the cold station with made to order charcuterie plates and salads). If you go up the stairs to the second deck and then another set of stairs tucked away in a corner, there’s even an outdoor deck where you can do some solid plane-spotting. It was a really nice way to cap off a wonderful long weekend in London.
The Food and Drinks
No Michelin stars on this trip as I was actually working remotely one of the days and the other was built around the Mets game and I didn’t want to be locked into anything meal-wise. That said, a group of us Mets fans had a solid large-format Indian meal at Gunpowder in Shoreditch where we just absolutely feasted. Other food highlights included my old standbys in Kanada-Ya for ramen and Koya for breakfast udon, as well as new-for-me Taco Padre in Borough Market for, well, tacos.
One of my favorite places to hit up in London was P. Franco in Hackney and it devastated me when it closed in early 2023 before I had a chance to revisit post-COVID. Thankfully, the former manager was able to raise the funding necessary to reopen months later as 107 Wine Shop & Bar and, on this trip, I was finally able to revisit and old-new favorite. Some great wines from Vino Di Anna and solid bites by Ed Wilson later, I walked out tipsy, full, and happy.
I made it out to five breweries over three days, four of which I hadn’t been to until this trip. Of those new ones, I’d gladly revisit all of them but I definitely dug one more than the rest - that would be Hackney Church Brew Co. I really liked all of their beers I had on that visit and, spoiler alert, all of their beers I would have in future visits. As I visited on a Sunday, they were doing a Sunday roast which, if I hadn’t already had lunch at 107, I would’ve gone for. Something I’d file away for a future trip to London, one which was not all too far off.
I’d had Fortitude Bakehouse on my list of bakeries in London to hit for some time. I figured I’d stop in on late Monday morning, thinking maybe the queue wouldn’t be so bad on a weekday morning. LOL, was I wrong. Some 15-20 minutes of queuing later, I was in possession of some precious pastries for the flight home later that evening. Both pastries, however, had dairy which meant I had to finish them before I landed in the US as I couldn’t bring them off the plane. That’s rough, having to house two pastries in a seven-hour span but I was willing to do so… for research, of course.
Let’s Go Mets
As someone who comes to London often to watch Tottenham Hotspur football matches, it was wild to come out here to see baseball in stadium not purpose-built for the sport. Thankfully, even though it’s now the home for West Ham United, London Stadium started as an Olympic Stadium so its pitch had more surface area than one purpose-built for football. Seeing it configured for baseball was interesting - the depth felt off counter-clockwise from third to first with it feeling really weird closer to and behind home plate. All told, though, it was a solid construction even if our seats were facing outwards towards the outfield rather than inwards toward home plate like you would normally encounter.
As for the game itself, it was a thrill to see the Mets’ hype video ahead of the teams taking the field, befitting their status as the home team for this game. Also a thrill was seeing the Mets score the first run of the game. The rest of the game? Eh, the less said the better as it quickly got away from them, ending with the Phillies winning 7-2. Still, this was a new, different, and ultimately fun experience - seeing the Mets abroad is one that I can check off on my list. This loss would end their modest three-game winning streak after they hit rock bottom (24-35) up to that point in the 2024 season, leaving them with a 27-36 record. Another experience I’d like to experience some day is seeing the Mets in enemy territory during a Postseason series but it was seeming like 2024 would not be the year where it happened. At least, not on June 8…
The List
Restaurants
Tacos Padre | @tacospadre
Gunpowder | @gunpowder_london
Koya London | @koyalondon
Ma Petite Jamaica | @mapetitejamaica
Tonkotsu | @tonkotsu.ramenbar
Dishoom | @dishoom
The Breakfast Club | @thebrekkyclub
Kanada-Ya | @kanada_ya_ldn
Breweries
40FT Brewery & Taproom | @40ftbrewery
Great Beyond Brewing Company | @greatbeyondbeer
Hackney Church Brew Co. | @hackneychurchbrewco
Forest Road Brewery | @forestroadbrew
Mikkeller Bar London | @mikkellerbarlondon
Bars
The Rake | @rake_bar
Kill The Cat | @killthecatbeer
107 Wine Shop & Bar | @107_e5
Marksman | @marksman_pub
Coffee
Monmouth Coffee Company | @monmouthcoffee
Bakeries
Aux Pains De Papy | @auxpainsdepapy_since_1948
Fortitude Bakehouse | @fortitudebakehouse
Places
London Stadium | @londonstadium
Bangkok, Seoul, Taipei, May 23-June 2, 2024
This trip was a year in the making. Quite literally.
It all started with my wanting to take EVA Air Premium Laurel Class from TPE to anywhere in the States so I could experience business class on the Taiwanese carrier with catering coming from Taiwan. Understandably, business class, especially on an Asian carrier, can be quite expensive in cash so I scoped out ways to book it using one of my points currency. After some research, I settled on using Air Canada’s Aeroplan as I already had 50K certificates on hand and I could do a redemption using one of those and top it off with however many points it would cost to get me anywhere in North America. Further research showed it would be difficult to get a flight to JFK so narrowed my focus to either ORD or IAH and just deal with booking a flight onward to NYC from Chicago or Houston afterwards. On June 13, 2023, 355 days out from my return flight from Asia, I managed to snag TPE-ORD for one 50K cert + 25K additional points. I’d book a flight home on Delta for the next morning as the flight wouldn’t get into O’Hare until past 9 pm, well past the last flight out, after clearing customs and immigration.
#AZNMDW24
This trip was a year in the making. Quite literally.
It all started with my wanting to take EVA Air Premium Laurel Class from TPE to anywhere in the States so I could experience business class on the Taiwanese carrier with catering coming from Taiwan. Understandably, business class, especially on an Asian carrier, can be quite expensive in cash so I scoped out ways to book it using one of my points currency. After some research, I settled on using Air Canada’s Aeroplan as I already had 50K certificates on hand and I could do a redemption using one of those and top it off with however many points it would cost to get me anywhere in North America. Further research showed it would be difficult to get a flight to JFK so narrowed my focus to either ORD or IAH and just deal with booking a flight onward to NYC from Chicago or Houston afterwards. On June 13, 2023, 355 days out from my return flight from Asia, I managed to snag TPE-ORD for one 50K cert + 25K additional points. I’d book a flight home on Delta for the next morning as the flight wouldn’t get into O’Hare until past 9 pm, well past the last flight out, after clearing customs and immigration.
Okay, flight home booked. Now, how about that flight from home to Asia? Or, maybe not Asia - why not start in Europe and work my way east over the course of two weeks? I began this booking in summer 2023 with no idea I’d end up in London four times before the end of July followed by an Olympian visit to Paris in August and then Spain for a marathon near the end of the year. I actually had zero trips to London planned for 2024 at this time (I hadn’t even gotten my acceptance into the London Marathon yet!) if that gives you an idea at how quickly plans can change.
But there’d been one flight that’d been on my bucket list for some time - JFK-SIN, the (current) longest commercial flight in the world (by just a few miles over EWR-SIN). But I’d already been to Singapore, you may say (that trip report from November-December 2022 is coming, I swear). That is true and, while I enjoyed my four-plus days there, it was pretty recent and, also, it was four-plus days there, which was plenty of time to see and do just about everything I wanted to do.
So, where to go from Singapore? Booking an award flight to Singapore and connecting onward to another destination wasn’t all that more costly and there was Saver availability to BKK so, Bangkok it was!
I’m just gonna cut to the chase - this was A flight, and I mean that in a lot of ways.
For one thing, this was a long flight which, sure, longest flight in the world but, maaaaaaaaaan, did it feel long, even in business class. It’s a luxurious and comfortable experience but you’re still essentially “trapped” in a metal tube for 19+ hours. If you think about it, how often do you find yourself in basically the same place for 19 hours? With the exception of deep in the pandemic, it was incredibly rare for me to be in any one place for more than half a day. Besides staring at the same things for over three-quarters of a day, your body will absolutely feel it.
But enough about how long the flight was - you wanna hear about the actual experience and…. this was an incredibly bougie experience By the time of this flight, I had two ANA business class products, two from JAL, Delta, Air France, and Virgin Atlantic to compare this one to and I gotta say that Singapore Airlines towers over the American and European carriers, with only the Asian ones on the same… plane (sorry, not sorry for that).
How about the seat? It was solid though the placement of the footwell relative to the seat itself made for a very weird angle when lounging in it but it was incredibly comfortable otherwise. Bed mode more than made up for that which, in retrospect, was where it really mattered on such a long flight as I think I spent over 14 hours of it in bed. Unlike other business class seats, this one didn’t recline to a bed - instead, the back of the seat flipped down to form a very uniform, fully-flat bed. Coupled with the mattress topper, it made for an incredibly wonderful sleep experience.
Let’s talk about food next. I had so much food. With two meal services and plenty of snacks anytime throughout the journey, I did not leave the plane hungry in the slightest. The only thing stopping me from absolutely stuffing my face over and over again was the need to get as much sleep as I possibly could to get myself onto East Asia time by the time I landed early in the morning in Singapore. That said, I still managed to eat both meals and fit in a few snacks throughout the night and day and night… all of which were pretty good to impressive, though maybe not the best food I’ve had in business class.
Where Singapore Airlines really shines though is in the service. Their flight attendants were just the best I’ve ever encountered on a flight, combining the accomplished professionalism of a Japanese carrier with the warmth of the Southeast Asian people. Granted, I was in business class where the ratio of FAs to passengers is greater than in other classes, but I don’t think I ever waited longer than 30 seconds for someone to come by whenever I hit the call button. Just top-notch service onboard.
Bangkok
Having previously spent parts of six days in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, I thought I would be ready for the tropical heat of Bangkok. LOL, I was not. Not even close. As a native of Northeast America used to sweltering summers, the unrelenting heat and humidity of Thailand in May proved to be no match. Needless to say, I savoured the moments in the air-conditioned cars of the MRT or Skytrain but the majority of my time was spent outside, whether in transit or catching the interesting sites and tasty eats. Pro tip: carry a sweat towel with you (I grabbed a towel from my hotel for this purpose) and be prepared to shower more than once a day (I may have taken three on a particularly humid/wet day).
Heat and humidity aside, I had an absolutely wonderful time in Bangkok. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten as well, relative to what I paid - we’re talking $5-10 USD for most of my roadside meals and even the bougie Michelin-starred ones going for less than $150. I’ll get to the fancy meals in a bit but, man, the roadside stalls and hole-in-the-walls are where it’s at when it comes to getting the best of what Bangkok has to offer. There’s really no better way to get a real look at a city’s food scene than in those kinds of places. I had three variations of a braised/roast pork over rice plate and I swear I could’ve done more if it wasn’t such a pain in the ass getting around the city to all the different spots on my map. Side note: while there is transit, it doesn’t get you everywhere you want to go and, even if it does, you may still end up walking a mile or two after alighting the MRT/Skytrain. Another pro tip? The Grab app for ride hailing - car hires are pretty inexpensive (through a Western lens) though you’ll face some prodigious traffic and some white-knuckle driving.
Alright, let’s get to the tire star restaurants - I hit up three one-stars in Bangkok, each with their own merits that demonstrate their deserving the distinction but also displaying the variance within that distinction. Saneh Jaan was solid and the least expensive of the three (I think it came in at under $100 even with the drinks) but it felt like I was inside a large, brightly lit, banquet hall - just not the atmosphere I was expecting and looking for in a nice meal. Thankfully, the tables were spaced apart well but I could absolutely hear the large party (10-12 people, I think) in the center of the room from my table in the corner.
A meal at Samrub Samrub Thai was the kind of experience you get from a small, neighborhood-y joint that somehow got recognized by Michelin for just killing it. Sitting at the counter, I could peer into the small kitchen that somehow crammed a full staff with a stagiaire or two. The food was spectacular and the service was more friendly than super-polished but, combined with the general vibes, absolutely worthy of that star. If I had to compare the fine-dining but not FINE-dining experience to that of a NYC resto, I’d go with Momofoku Ko in the early 2010s.
The standout meal in Bangkok? That honour goes to Nawa Thai Cuisine. This one hit all of the notes for what I expect from a Michelin-starred establishment with incredible food, impeccable service, and a space that ties the whole vibe together. This was fine-dining that was FINE-dining. It had the quality and polish that gave me the impression that their intention is to get to that two-star level someday and it would not surprise me if it got there with some tweaks.
While it may seem like I only came to Bangkok for the food, I also did some culture, visiting several palaces/temples. Yes, you should totally visit The Grand Palace (remember to practice modesty in your sartorial choices) but try to do it in the morning so it’s not as roasty out - at 10 am, it was pretty toasty, even with it being overcast. I’d like to say that going in the morning means beating the crowds but it was absolutely slammed so be sure to pack plenty of patience as you crawl through some of the complex. Honestly, I preferred going to Wat Pho which had less people when I visited, making it lot easier to walk around the place.
Oh, A Race?
As per usual, when I had the broad strokes of the trip outlined, it was time to see if there was a race amongst my stops and, lo and behold, I found the Supersports 10 Mile Run. Sure, there was a five-mile option, but that’d only be half the fun. Starting at 3:30 am surely meant that it’d be a nice, crisp, cool(ish) night run.
Yeah, it’s Bangkok - it was just slightly less hot. Honestly, that wasn’t that big a deal - I didn’t go too hard so it didn’t really bother me too much. What was bothersome, though, was the cross streets not being closed during the race. That’s right, we had to DODGE traffic as we crossed streets, most narrow but quite a few that were wide and a lot of the drivers on the road DID. NOT. GIVE. A. FUCK. It was great, just great.
Ultimately, I survived (as I always do) and managed to enjoy a few minutes of the post-race festivities - this wasn’t a small race and there were a lot of runners reveling in their middle-of-the-night accomplishment. Walking back to the hotel at 5 am was weird as my route was in the opposite direction of the runners heading to the finish which meant I could cheer them on but there were also plenty of late-night revelers making their way back to a bed somewhere. After I got back to my hotel room, I realized the course ran right by my room so I watched a little bit of the last runners passing by as I waited for the hotel’s restaurant to open for breakfast.
Seoul
When putting this trip together, I knew I’d start in Bangkok and end in Taipei but the question was if I’d spend more time in one of the two cities or if I’d try to fit in a third stop in between. I’d already been to Taipei and parts of three days there seemed enough for this and more than five days in Bangkok would be way too much. That left me with four days/nights to fill in and I found the perfect sets of flights via the Air France Flying Blue program - an overnight flight on Korean Air (KL) to Seoul (ICN) that got me there in the morning, reducing one night’s stay in Seoul and an early afternoon flight on China Airlines (CI) to Taipei (TPE) a few days later, all in Business.
The flight to ICN left Bangkok just shortly before midnight and, once we were able to, I got my seat into a (mostly) lie-flat mode. KI’s business class on their regional 773 is in a 2-3-2 layout which normally would mean my window seat wouldn’t have direct aisle access but, thankfully, I had no seatmate on this flight so no impediment going to the loo and plenty of storage space for my personal item. As alluded to, the bed never got fully flat though it wasn’t quite angle-flat - definitely not the best business class product out there but it was sufficient to get three hours of sleep but I could’ve had more had I skipped breakfast which I would really regret not having done so throughout the rest of my first day in Seoul.
Thankfully, I’d made absolutely zero reservations or pre-purchased any ticketed admissions for that first day - I’d like to think that I had the foresight to do that but it was mostly laziness around trying to navigate Korean-language purchase flows. There was ONE thing I knew I HAD to do that day and, after finally checking into my room a little after 3 pm, I made my way out to Jamsil Baseball Stadium to knock that one off my list.
You guessed it - I took in a KBO League baseball game! Man, what an experience that was. You can bring your own food and drinks (alcohol too!) into the stadium and, if you didn’t bring any with you, there are plenty of restaurants and shops outside the stadium where you can purchase some! When I say they were outside the stadium, I don’t even mean that they were amidst the grounds of the stadium - they were built into the outer wall of it. Just an absolute convenience.
The game itself was a laugher with KT Wiz beating the Doosan Bears 12-3 but it was so much fun. Outside of the United States and Canada, it seems like professional baseball games are all about festive joy. This one had cheerleaders for both teams and fans of both participating in songs and chants. I’ve been to two games in Japan but those were in domes - being outdoors here really added to the atmosphere. If you’re ever in Korea and are a fan of baseball - even if you’re not - go to a KBO game.
There were two Michelin-star restaurants on this leg of the journey. I want to give Jungsik its props - those two stars are well-deserved and their lunch is a solid “deal” and I enjoyed every moment of it. That said, there is a NYC outpost of this resto so it’s not like I couldn’t get this experience closer to home but it certainly is nice to get it from the source and at the original spot. I’m inclined to think that the Seoul version is probably the better one but I guess I’d have to visit them in Tribeca to be sure. 😉
But that wasn’t the best of the bougie restaurants in Seoul.
No, that honour would go to 7th Door, a restaurant that is focused very much on fermentation and aging, which, maaaaaan. This meal had so much going on - in addition to their focus on fermentation and aging, there was also the five other basic tastes so, all in, that’s “the seven tastes of food”. Side note: the restaurant gets it name from being behind a door at the end of entry hallway - the seventh door.
The proteins, from the raw fish to the lobster to the beef? They were all sooooo good. But the real highlight of the meal? THE BREAD. Man, was that good bread. I could’ve housed a half dozen of those moist, soft, chewy rolls. I would go back there for those alone.
Some other notes about the general food and drink scene in Seoul - it’s pretty fucking good. I housed an entire (tiny) chicken stuffed with rice and ginseng at Hannam Oriental Roast Chicken and I had zero regrets. I wolfed down 370 grams worth of various cuts of Korean BBQ-grilled pig at Geumdwaeji Sikdang - also no regrets there. I had a wonderful cocktail at Pussyfoot Saloon - my only regret is that I only had time for one because I had the appointed return time for that aforementioned stuffed chicken.
Taipei
I’d been to Taipei before in December 2019 - that leg of the trip was for parts of five days so I got to do and see a lot of stuff then. It may have also been the first time I saw or heard mention of some mysterious illness spreading through China but, surely, that wasn’t anything to worry about, right? Right.
Anyway. Having been here before, it was nice this time to just take it easy as it was the end of a very busy two-week trip so I was running out of steam. Still, I managed to pack a decent amount into those three days in town - there was, of course, a requisite visit to a Michelin-starred joint. On this leg, it was at Longtail which was less a fancy restaurant and more of an elevated East-West gastropub - it did not disappoint. Sure, there’s the pricier set menu option but if you’re like me and just sit at the bar, the move is to go a la carte and see where the evening takes you. With two starters, a main, a dessert, and three cocktails, the total came out to less than $140 USD - just an absolute deal.
What about the cocktail scene in Taipei? I’m glad you asked, dear reader. The cocktail scene, like in a lot of cosmopolitan cities in Asia, is phenomenal. This time in Taipei, I hit up two wonderful cocktail bars in Bar Mood and Ounce. Bar Mood is on the Asia 50 Best list and was the fancier of the two, both in the aesthetic of the interior and in their drinks. I was there late (post-dinner) on a Friday night so it was very lively and fairly loud but it definitely gave fancy cocktail bar vibes. Ounce is a speakeasy behind a coffee shop exterior where a guy playing a game on what I think was a Super Nintendo manned the front, calling the bar in the back to grant access to me. Once I entered, I was maybe one of a handful of patrons and it it was a general super chill atmosphere.
If I had to choose between the two bars, I would split the difference. Go with Bar Mood if you want fancy cocktails that have a Taiwanese influence. Go with Ounce if you’re an American tourist or expat as the owner is from New York and it definitely has a Western influence.
EVA Air Premium Laurel Class
Finally, we get to the reason for this entire trip - the flight home. Well, the flight to the United States, anyway, in EVA Air’s business class. Side note: I’m well aware of how bougie it is to say a two-week trip through Asia was all for a business class flight home but I’ve accepted I’m a bougie bitch.
The work I put in to ensure I secured this flight? Totally worth it. This experience was as-advertised by so many flight reviewers. The seat may not be cutting edge but it was very comfortable, both as a seat and as a fully lie-flat bed and the footwell wasn’t narrow like some other products of this vintage. They gave out some very nice designer pajamas and slippers from Jason Wu - I wouldn’t know the man if you put him in a lineup but… designer amenities! Also, an amenity kit in a Giorgio Armani bag! Just some incredible stuff we get to walk away from this flight with.
Like with other Asian carriers though, it’s the service that really makes the experience. The flight attendants were on their game on this flight with a pre-departure beverage and the start of dinner service not long after takeoff. TPE-ORD is not a short flight and there were plenty of calls for service throughout, between dinner and breakfast, but they were very attentive to passengers’ requests. While I wouldn’t say the food on EVA Air was the best amongst the Asian carriers I’ve flown on, it was pretty close to it and it certainly outclasses meals on Western carriers.
Having scratched this itch, would I ever fly long haul business on EVA Air again? Probably not - their hard product on average is the oldest amongst the Taiwanese carriers and is probably in the bottom half of the three major alliance’s Asian carriers. But would I recommend it to anyone with a way to do this via a Star Alliance award redemption? Oh, fuck yes.
The List - Bangkok
Restaurants
Sanguan Sri
Nai Mong Hoi Thod | @naimonghoithod
Nawa Thai Cuisine | @nawa.thaicuisine
Boat Noodles - Toy Kuay Teow Ruea | @toy_boatnoodles
Seasoned Pork Knuckle - เล่อขาหมูทรงเครื่อง
Tang sui heng, Duck noodles ตั้งซุ่ยเฮง ก๋วยเตี๋ยวเป็ด สาขาบางแค
Samrub Samrub Thai | @samrubsamrubthai
ศรีวัชเชิญชิม
Hia Tee Crispy Pork Rice
ลูกชิ้นปลานายเงี๊ยบ สาขาบางขุนนนท์
Yuen Puen
Saneh Jaan | @sanehjaan
Breweries
Brewave | @brewave.beer
Tai Soon Bar | @taisoonbar
Bars
TEP BAR | @tep_bar
Sugarray Apartment | @sugarrayapartment.bkk
Bar Us | @bar.us.bkk
Conrad Bangkok | @conradbangkokhotel
Places
Jodd Fairs | @jodd_fairs
Jim Thompson House | @jimthompsonhouse
ChangChui Creative Park | @changchuibkk
The List - Seoul
Restaurants
Seowonjuk | @seowonjuk
7th Door | @7thdoor_official
Hannam Oriental Roast Chicken | @hannamdonghanbangchicken
님대문 떡갈비
애니 떡볶이
Jungsik | @jungsik_inc
Geumdwaeji Sikdang | @gold_pig1982
Breweries
LG Homebrew Haus |@lg_homebrew
Euljiro Brewing | @euljirobrewing
Bars
Pussyfoot Saloon | @pf.saloon
찰스 H Charles H. | @charleshseoul
Tong’5 | @tong5_official
Coffee
Kalas Coffee | @kalascoffee
Leesar Coffee | @leesarcoffee
Cafe DAMSO | @damsocoffee
Namsan Coffee
Places
Gwangjang Market
Jamsil Baseball Stadium
Gyeongbokgung Palace | @gyeongbokgung_palace_official
Namdaemun Market
The List - Taipei
Restaurants
Longtail | @longtail.taipei
Miss Qin’s Soy Milk 秦小姐豆漿店
Halal Chinese Beef Noodles 清真中國牛肉麵食館
Wang’s Broth | @wangs_broth
Yuan Fang Guabao 源芳刈包
Breweries
臺虎 信義 Taihu Brewing Xinyi | @cyslandmark
Taihu Gyoza Bar | @taihu.gyozabar.dongmen
Distilleries
Kavalan Distillery | @kavalanwhisky at Taipei 101 | @taipei101mall_official
Bars
Bar Mood Taipei | @barmood_taipei
Ounce Taipei | @ouncetaipei
W Taipei | @wtaipei
Coffee
九日咖啡（老店）9 Days Coffee
Places
Taipei Dome
Linjiang Night Market
Lungshan Temple
San Juan, May 1-5, 2025
You’ll never guess why I ended up in San Juan, Puerto Rico for a long weekend. If you think it has to do with, yet again, airline credit/perks, you would be absolutely right. I had a Delta Companion Certificate, good up to Domestic First Class (basically anywhere Delta flies where First Class is the highest available so not quite domestic) and I had never been to Puerto Rico before so, why not?
#prtrip25
You’ll never guess why I ended up in San Juan, Puerto Rico for a long weekend. If you think it has to do with, yet again, airline credit/perks, you would be absolutely right. I had a Delta Companion Certificate, good up to Domestic First Class (basically anywhere Delta flies where First Class is the highest available so not quite domestic) and I had never been to Puerto Rico before so, why not? All in, for the two of us, was just a shade over $900 for a round trip in FC. It was absolutely worth it, even if it meant sitting in their suuuuuper firm seats on an A321neo. I’ve shared my thoughts on that hard product before so I won’t go into it here but I will say that even the soft product suffered here with the meal service missing elements like bread or salad - thankfully, these were short flights so we weren’t exactly going hungry for long.
The Food and Drinks
My time in San Juan was short so I don’t think I can really offer up a take on the food scene there. Outside of dinner each night, food mostly happened at bars and bakeries. As per usual, I had ramen because, for science, and while Kaiju Noodle Bar was decent enough, I don’t feel as though I ever need to go there again. The highlight outside of dinner would be La Taberna Lúpulo which was just an incredible craft beer bar in Old San Juan with plenty of taps and sausage for snacks - basically, my happy place. Another honourable mention goes to La Parroquia for their really tasty cocktails with freshly prepared ingredients and mixers.
Dinner each of the three nights was a nice sit-down affair. Of the three, there’s an obvious winner among them but Cocina al Fondo was a solid second place - their octopus dish might have been the most tender serving of cephalopod I’ve ever had. Interesting space too as the primary indoor space had a bunch of tables and the bar but the majority of the seating looked to be in their incredibly spacious (partially covered) backyard, along with their kitchen.
The aforementioned winner amongst the three restaurants was Marmalade. It’s a five-course menu for $145 and their second course is an incredible white bean with black truffle soup that has apparently been on the menu forever - deservedly so. The menu is a little over the place but in a good way as there’s pretty much something to satisfy anyone’s taste. Bonus, the chef is seemingly a fan of The National as they played two tracks of theirs during my two hours there and I don’t think there were any other repeat artists.
I Nature’d
Like in San Francisco in January, there was a National Park Service site in San Juan - several, in fact! However, while Castillo San Felipe del Morro and Castillo San Cristóbal are listed as such, those aren’t sites you’d consider to be nature-y. What actually was that was El Yunque National Forest, a part of the Forest Service and the only federal forest that’s a tropical rainforest. That last bit kinda surprised me as I figured Hawaii or even Guam might have one but, nope, Puerto Rico is it!
As it was with Yosemite, this nature-ing was via guided tour so it limited us to what we could see and do. While we saw a decent amount of the park, it was either mostly in the vehicle or around the visitor center. That’s fine but without being able to roam around and hike along the trail, it really felt like a very curated (which it was) experience.
The List
Restaurants
Cocina al Fondo | @cocinaalfondo
Panadería España | @panaderiaespana
Celeste | @celeste.pdt
Kaiju Noodle Bar | @kaijunoodlebar
Marmalade | @marmaladerestpr
Pinky's Calle Loíza | @pinkyspr
Breweries
Cervecería del Callejón | @cerveceria.del.callejon
Bars
Deshistoria: Birra & Empanadas
La Taberna Lúpulo | @latabernalupulo
Scryer Rum Barrelhouse & Rooftop | @scryer.rum
JungleBird | @junglebirdbar
La Parroquia | @laparroquia.pdt
La Vaca Enfurecida | @lavacaenfurecidapr
Coffee
Café Regina | @caferegina_pr
Places
Northern California, January 1-4, 2025
I’m gonna make it three for three when it comes to trip reports that come about due to an absurd airline credit/perks reason. Remember how I ended up in Seattle (then Vancouver) because of expiring Regional Upgrade Certificates (RUC) that had to be used. Yeah, so I had four of them to use or lose and this round trip that began on New Year’s Day from JFK to SFO in Delta One was how I used the first two.
I live a hard life, I know.
#NorCalNewYears
I’m gonna make it three for three when it comes to 2025 trip reports that come about due to an absurd airline credit/perks reason. Remember how I ended up in Seattle (then Vancouver) because of expiring Regional Upgrade Certificates (RUC) that had to be used. Yeah, so I had four of them to use or lose and this round trip that began on New Year’s Day from JFK to SFO in Delta One was how I used the first two.
I live a hard life, I know.
This one made the most sense though! I booked with a fairly decent SkyMiles redemption in Main Cabin and was able to confirm a day or so later (after calling their support line) my RUCs cleared into Delta One. So, in short, I paid for cattle class and leveraged a status benefit to get into bougie - a solid use of an upgrade cert, for sure.
With a booking in Delta One, that meant I could start my trip bright and early at the Delta One Lounge at JFK. I’ll refer you to my eventual trip report for my trip to Spain in November/December for a more in-depth recollection of my first visit to that lounge. I’ll note that, even at 5 am, this lounge was eerily empty - perhaps that has as much to do with traveling on New Year’s Day at such an ungodly hour but I basically had my run of the place. I was able to squeeze in breakfast with a made-to-order omelette, a 15-minute sit in a massage chair, and then a mimosa after the bar opened at 6 am, all without any wait. Love it.
Not as loved? The seat in Delta One on the 767-300 - they’re worn and, in the case on my return flight, falling apart. The one thing I’ll say in its favor is that it’s softer than their newer seats. As for the rest of the hard product, the IFE screen is a relic of the 2000s and that’s if they’re even operational (not a problem on this trip, thankfully).
As per usual, the soft product made up for the deficiencies of the seat. The service on the outbound flight was incredible and leant into it being New Year’s Day and the meals on both flights were solid, though dinner on the return flight easily beat out breakfast on the first one. Honestly, it’s incredibly rare to get a good in-flight breakfast, no matter the class of travel and I’d say it’s even more disappointing in business class as you’re (normally) paying for that mediocre meal.
The Food and Drinks
I’ve been to San Francisco quite a few times since the pandemic - this was my fifth time there in the past three years - so I didn’t feel the need to go anywhere too fancy while in town. Good thing as I barely spent parts of two days in town. I did manage to have one “nice” meal at Michelin-starred Hilda and Jesse but it was an incredibly not fancy spot that was actually open on New Year’s Day for brunch. Everything there was solid but that half-order of pancakes, served last, were basically a dessert - it was a perfect sweet-sour end to a savory meal.
As always, no trip to San Francisco would be complete without a trip to the craft beer mecca that is Toronado. Little did I know at the time of my visit that it could very possibly be the last time I get to have a Pliny there as they announced later that month that the bar was on the market. I hope the next owner a) keeps the place open and b) leaves it the same as it ever was (except maybe try accepting credit cards?). If the former isn’t in the cards, I may just have to find a reason to go back out there for one last sit at that bar, nursing a few West Coast IPAs. Or, maybe that is the reason? We’ll see!
I Nature’d
Okay, so I’ve previously established I’ve been to San Francisco and the greater Bay Area quite a bit over the years. Somewhere I haven’t been? Yosemite National Park! That’s something I corrected on this trip, taking a tour bus out there and spending a night at the Yosemite Valley Lodge (I nature’d a bit on this trip but I didn’t rough it by camping). Two days worth of mild winter hiking with a more winter-ish trail run in the morning was absolutely invigorating and the visuals were just magnificent. Few places are more stunning than the magnificent vista laid out in front of you when look out upon the valley and park from above.
It wasn’t all just about getting out in nature while in Yosemite - of course, there was food and drinks to be had and the sit-down restaurant and bar I visited did not disappoint. Nothing quite like throwing back a few cocktails at The Ahwahnee Bar, followed by hustling over to The Mountain Room a mile or so away in the dark to make a 6:30 pm reservation.
My time at Yosemite was brief - all in, it was maybe 28 hours - but I can’t wait to come back for a longer stay. Perhaps, maybe, this time when it’s warmer out?
The List
Restaurants
Yummy Bakery & Cafe
Hilda and Jesse | @hildaandjessesf
Good Mong Kok Bakery
Delicious Dim Sum
Taquería El Farolito | @taquerias_elfarolito
Breweries
Magnolia | @magnoliahaight
Barebottle Beer Garden | @barebottle at Salesforce Park | @salesforceparksf
Enterprise Brewing Co. | @enterprisebrewingco
Hop Oast Pub & Brewery | @hopoastpubbrewery
Standard Deviant Brewing | @standarddeviantbrewing
Bars
Toronado | @toronadosf
Coffee
Réveille Coffee | @reveillecoffee
Places
Yosemite National Park | @yosemitenps
Salesforce Park | @salesforceparksf
Paris, August 8-12, 2024
Date: March 7, 2024
Subject Line: Ton dossard pour le 42,195 km du Marathon Pour Tous Paris 2024
Subject Line, Translated: Your bib for the 42.195 km of the Marathon Pour Tous Paris 2024
Me: OMG OMG I think I think… is this real!?
#MPTParis24
Date: March 7, 2024
Subject Line: Ton dossard pour le 42,195 km du Marathon Pour Tous Paris 2024
Subject Line, Translated: Your bib for the 42.195 km of the Marathon Pour Tous Paris 2024
Me: OMG OMG I think I think… is this real!?
Body:
Félicitations Gary !
Tu as gagné ton dossard pour l’épreuve du 42,195km du Marathon Pour Tous Paris 2024
Body, Translated:
Congratulations, Gary!
You've won your race number for the 42.195km race of the Paris 2024 Marathon for All.
Me: Holy shit, it’s real. I’m in!
And that’s how I found myself taking an absolutely unplanned trip to Paris. In August. During the 2024 Olympic Games. To run the same fucking marathon course as the Olympic athletes.
Before we get to the fun on Parisian soil, let’s talk about how I got there. I booked a fairly solid 66K round trip redemption in Economy with Air France using Flying Blue Miles which also included a transfer bonus at the time from one of my points currencies (I lose track of which one after a while). Of course, weeks later, I would see a 55K fare on the outbound segment in Business (the important one to have a lie-flat in) but missed out because I didn’t figure out the least painful way to cancel/rebook without stranding miles in Flying Blue. Which was silly because I hardly need an excuse to fly with Air France to somewhere in Europe. Not to mention this was a flight departing at 1 am so it would have been really nice to have a bed to sleep in. Oh well.
Cut to the afternoon of Wednesday, August 7, when I receive messages starting that this flight would be leaving closer to 3 am. Which, yikes, now I REALLY wish I had rebooked into Business Class. I tried everything I could to rebook to an earlier flight but the one that had seats available was leaving in an hour and I was still home at the time so that was a non-starter. I even tried to get to the airport to change to one of the flights that left between 10 and midnight. No dice.
In the end, I resigned myself to killing nearly four hours in the Air France Lounge - yes, I have enough self awareness to know this is beyond a first world problem - waiting for my increasingly very delayed flight to depart. Whilst continuously gorging myself on some decent lounge food and alcoholic beverages, I checked to see what the price of an upgrade to Business Class. First few times I checked, it was well over $900 (I won’t even mention how much in miles) but over the course of the evening, it eventually dropped just once to just over $800 which, for a flight that wouldn’t end up taking off until nearly 3 am, was totally worth paying for the bed alone. With less than a handful of open seats left in the cabin, I didn’t think it’d drop any further and bit on the upgrade. Good thing cuz that bird went out without a single empty seat in Business.
I haven’t done a trip report that included flying in Business with Air France so let’s dig a little deeper into the experience. This was actually my first (as of now, still only) time flying on their A350, let alone doing so in Business Class. Even better? I got their latest product which includes a privacy door and the whole thing just looks so sleek with the clean white and dark contrast throughout.
With takeoff not until nearly 3 am, I was fairly impressed at how quick the meal service was on this flight (not always the case with them) with champagne coming out at 3:15 am, my tray with starters at 3:39 am, and the main at 4:04 am. By 4:24 am, I’d made my bed for the night with a glass of cognac bedside. Night night.
I managed to get nearly four hours of sleep which isn’t too bad when the bird spends barely six hours in flight. By the time I woke up, we were already over France and, less than 30 minutes later, we were on the ground at everyone’s favorite airport, Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG). I’d transited through it many times in the past but this would be my first time actually leaving the airport on the ground. It was really nice just looking for the airport exit transit signage instead of which terminal 2 and which gates to transfer to next.
The Games of the XXXIII Olympiad
Despite leaving over 90 minutes after scheduled departure, we managed to arrive only 38 minutes late, which says as much about how much time gets blocked for JFK flights as it does about how much time we actually made up in the air. Of course, one can assume that had we left one time, we’d have arrived maybe an hour or so early. The timing would be key because I had somewhere to be not too long after I arrived in Paris. By the time I got to my Airbnb and got myself in a presentable state, it was already time to hustle to the first stop on my trip - the Stade de France for Athletics, Session 14. Just check out the list of events for the night:
W 1500 Metres Semi-Final
W Shot Put Heptathlon
W Long Jump Final
M Javelin Throw Final
M 200 Metres Final
W 200 Metres Heptathlon
W 400 Metres Hurdles Final
M 110 Metres Hurdles FinalI may have been sleep-deprived but the excitement in the place that started with the medals being awarded for the morning session that rolled into the beginning of the evening session’s events and built with each successive event brought me back to life. It probably helped that this was an alcohol-free event, as was the case for all the events of the Games (at least for the general public from what I saw - may have been a different story for the high rollers).
Highlights of the night included seeing Arshad Nadeem of Pakistan set an Olympic Record in the Men’s Javelin Throw, American Tara Davis-Woodhall take Gold in the Women’s Long Jump and run to her Paralympian husband in the stands to celebrate, and seeing Americans Grant Holloway and Daniel Roberts nab Gold and Silver in the Men’s 110 Metres Hurdles. But the absolute standout moment of the night was seeing American Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone set a new World Record on her way to capturing Gold in the Women’s 400 Metres Hurdles. Just an incredible night watching the world’s best track and field athletes compete.
That was Night One of the trip - what was in store for Night Two? How about Beach Volleyball, Session 39 which featured the Bronze Medal and Gold Medal matches in Women’s Beach Volleyball… in a stadium with the an absurdly beautiful, most stunning backdrop!? That’s what we got Stade de la Tour Eiffel, a beach volleyball court and stadium set in front of the fuckin’ Eiffel Tower. Just amazing.
The Food and Drinks
It’d been nearly a decade since the last time I was in Paris and the restaurant where I had the best meal of my last visit was no longer (RIP Spring) so, really, this trip was a blank canvas for me to work with, dining-wise.
I hit up two Michelin ⭐️ restaurants and both were absolutely wonderful and I’d totally recommend both, especially for lunch as that’s where you get the best bang for your buck. With that said, the best meal I had on this trip was at Maison where a seat at the counter for their €85 multi-course lunch was just a treat. Food was wonderful (the most important thing) but it was the service, both behind and in front of the counter, that elevated the visit. Also, it’s just always a joy watching a busy kitchen where everyone working in it knows what their roles are and executing at a high level.
It’s Paris so you damn well better be sure I got me some pastries. Alas, this trip was too short and too crammed with activity for me to do a true bakery crawl but the standout bakery on this trip was Boulangerie Utopie, with croissants so good, I stopped in there twice. Also, they had a solid baguette that I may or may not have accompanied with supermarket charcuterie at 3 am on the couch in my Airbnb. Nope, sure didn’t. (I did)
No trip of mine would be complete without some tipples and I am here to report that Paris continues to be a wonderful place for a drink. There’s obviously all of the wine wherever you dine - Septime La Cave was an especially good place to pair the wine bar experience with bar food - but it was a better craft beer city than I recall it being in 2016. I enjoyed both breweries I visited with Paname Brewing Company offering canalside seating whislt watching Team USA take Gold in Women’s Basketball and Gallia Paris having a wonderful outdoor space with pillow-cushioned seats - a wonderful Sunday afternoon unwinding and relaxing after a taxing Saturday (over)night.
Closing out my last night in Paris was a trip to the aforementioned Septime La Cave, followed by a quick cocktail at The Honey Moon which was fine but there’s not much cocktail artistry when they’re all being served from taps. The final stop of the night at Moonshiner though was a treat - you start by walking through a pizza joint to the back and then you’re led into a speakeasy. Maaaany cocktails were had here - all of them delicious - and the service was top-notch. Service so good that it extended past my visit as one of the bartenders actually chased me down a few blocks away to return the charging brick I had left on my seat. Like I said, incredible service.
A Marathon For All
Taking it back to the beginning and why I ended up unexpectedly in Paris during the 2024 Olympic Games - Marathon Pour Tous (Marathon For All). The organisers of the Paris Olympics announced that they would be holding a marathon for non-Olympians to run, on the same course that the Olympians would run. At the time, I don’t think anyone knew what that meant - would we be actually running it during the Olympics or would it be sometime before or after the actual Games? It seemed crazy to do the former but that’s just exactly what they ended up announcing would happen and it didn’t stop at that - they announced they’d hold it between the two Olympic races which meant this was gonna be a night marathon.
As you can imagine, with only 20 thousand-ish spots available to the general public, this was gonna be a tough entry to score. They created a system where aspiring entrants could sync their miles, garnering them points, with 100K being enough to get into the lottery. They created an app with challenges that earned you chances for specific draws for a number of spots. Over the next few years, I did both, hoping for my chance to win. No dice. By the time they did the lottery in January 2024 and didn’t hear anything, I figured that was it and put it out of my mind.
Now you can understand my absolute shock and giddiness when I got that email in March that said I had won a spot. My guess is that they did a second drawing after folks from the first drawing declined their spot which was understandable considering the logistics of planning a trip to a major world city during the insanity that is a citywide, world-class event. Me? I had zero second thoughts about taking this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to run the same Olympic marathon course that Eliud Kipchoge would run, trip logistics be damned.
Fun fact, this would be the fourth time Kipchoge and I would run the same marathon. He set a world record each of the first three times we ran the same race.
This was my first ever night marathon but not my first every night race thanks to a 10-mile one I ran in the middle of the night in Bangkok earlier in the year (that trip report is coming soon!). This one started at 9 pm so it was both easier and more difficult to prepare for. I didn’t have to get up around 2 am like I did in Bangkok but I also didn’t want to just go about my day and roll into the race so I had to force myself to nap, even through the start of USWNT playing the Gold Medal match in Women’s Football. When they sealed their victory around 7 pm, that was my signal to head out to the start of the race.
Getting to the start line was… a struggle. Just absolute chaos in that part of Paris with a lot of pedestrian traffic and people getting pushed into barricades. Eventually, we got some help from local police as they waved runners through the crowd so they could cross the streets necessary to get to the start area. Once we got there, we were treated to yet another gorgeous Parisian sunset along the Seine.
Waiting for the race to start, it was a party-like atmosphere with loud music and light shows but if you thought that kind of atmosphere would just be at the start and finish lines, you’d be dead wrong. The whole damn race was one giant party, with DJs, smoke machines, and lights all along the course. Marathon Pour Tous was a night marathon and Paris 2024 was gonna deliver with nightclub, but make it running.
This was still a race after all and at this point in time, I was still holding out hope I could run a BQ at some point in the fall so I wanted to use this marathon to see where my fitness was at. This was, after all, an insanely difficult course with a 1 km-long climb going into the 29 km mark that was borderline torture though it was a nice touch to run though glowing rings that made it feel like Rainbow Road in Mario Kart but way less fun. It was not for the feint of heart.
Fun fact, this would not be the fourth time Kipchoge and I would finish the same marathon. That climb destroyed him. Me? I survived it. Ignore the fact that I wasn’t going nearly as hard as he had and it was much lower stakes for me. But, I guess you could say… I beat Kipchoge? No, no, you can’t. I won’t. He’s the GOAT and an absolute killer.
But this medal? I’ve got one and he doesn’t so maybe I did beat him, in a way.
This marathon was not the easiest one I’ve ever run - if I had to rank this in terms of degree of difficulty, I’d probably put this one behind only the one at Mt. Fuji. But was this the most fun I’ve had running a marathon? You bet.
And that baguette with supermarket charcuterie at 3 am? Yeah, that came after I got back to my Airbnb and it was accompanied with the best chilled supermarket rosé I’ve ever had in the middle of the night. A successful night in many ways, in my estimation.
Final Thoughts
I’m gonna level with you - I’d never actually been a big fan of Paris. I liked it enough but I never loved it like I do some other cities in Europe like London or Berlin. I don’t know why that was the case, it just was for me.
That is, until this trip. Say what you will about the hokiness of this next sentiment but there’s something about The Olympic Spirit infusing an entire city with an energy that changes it while it’s there. Maybe it was just what few locals remained being on their best behaviour but it just felt, well, nice being in Paris this time. I’m not sure I’d vault it over the aforementioned cities but I’m willing to put it alongside them but I’d like to do another visit soon to affirm that thought. Heck, even wanting to go back there is testament enough to my 180 on this city.
The List
Restaurants
Kodawari Ramen Tsukiji | @kodawariramen
Maison | @maison_sota
Kodawari Ramen (Yokochō) | @kodawariramen
BÀNỘI | @banoirestaurant
Villa9Trois | @villa9trois
Restaurant Pantagruel | @restaurant.pantagruel
Bakeries
Boulangerie Utopie | @boulangerieutopie
Ten Belles Bread | @tenbelles
Breweries
Paname Brewing Company | @panamebrewingcompany
Gallia Paris | @galliaparis
Bars
La Robe & La Mousse | @larobeetlamousse
Prescription Cocktail Club | @prescriptioncocktailclubparis
Septime La Cave | @septimeparis La Cave
The Honey Moon | @thehoneymoonparis
Moonshiner | @moonshiner_cocktail_bar
Places
Stade de France | @stadefrance Paris 2024 |@paris2024
Stade de la Tour Eiffel, Paris 2024 | @paris2024
London, February 14-18, 2025
What’s this? Another trip report so soon!?
What can I say - I’m on a roll!
This is yet another trip that came about for an absolutely absurd reason - I had originally booked a round trip on JetBlue (B6) Mint to Seattle (outbound in cash, return on points) in August 2024 to see the Mets when they were in town. Except! I booked it for the wrong fucking weekend. By the time I realized my mistake, the fares went up by a ridiculous amount so I cancelled the trip knowing I had until mid-October to use the cash credit. In a fortuitous coincidence, I would end up needing that weekend freed up so I could run some race in Paris (that trip report is coming - it’s in my backlog, I swear).
#COYSTrip25
What’s this? Another trip report so soon!?
What can I say - I’m on a roll!
This is yet another trip that came about for an absolutely absurd reason - I had originally booked a round trip on JetBlue (B6) Mint to Seattle (outbound in cash, return on points) in August 2024 to see the Mets when they were in town. Except! I booked it for the wrong fucking weekend. By the time I realized my mistake, the fares went up by a ridiculous amount so I cancelled the trip knowing I had until mid-October to use the cash credit. In a fortuitous coincidence, I would end up needing that weekend freed up so I could run some race in Paris (that trip report is coming - it’s in my backlog, I swear).
Anyway, let’s move forward to early October and I’ve still got that travel credit in the bank and the clock is ticking to use it or lose it. As it so happens, Tottenham Hotspur would be hosting Manchester United during Presidents Day weekend and JetBlue flies to London. Not only that, I could book Mint going out and Core coming back and the amount not covered by the credit wouldn’t break the bank too much. And, really, if you’re gonna book a lie-flat seat, might as well do so for a transatlantic red-eye and take full advantage of being able to get a more decent sleep. It’s the best way to make it worth the cost.
Friends, it was totally worth the cost. Keeping in mind, the only other domestic business class experience I’ve had is with Delta (DL) and the only other transatlantic to London was on Virgin Atlantic, this may top both of those, at least when it comes to the onboard experience.
Let’s talk hard product first - for a seat/suite comparison, putting it up against the ones in Delta One on their 767-300 (763) or 767-400 (764), this wins hands-down. The JetBlue Mint suite seat is more intact than the Delta 763 and way more plush than on the 764. Having a door isn’t a big deal to me but, as a point of comparison, there is one in this JetBlue product and none of Delta’s 767s do. The IFE screen in Mint is much better than the one in Delta One on the 764 and is comically, astronomically better than the one on Delta One on the 763. The only point in Delta’s favor is the IFE selection as they have a lot more movies and television shows to select from. With respect to the only other transatlantic to London business class product I’ve flown, the JetBlue Mint suite compares favorably to Virgin Atlantic (VS) Upper Class on their A350-1000 and A330-900neo.
When it comes to the soft product, both DL and B6 give out slippers but VS doesn’t though they do give out pajamas so I kinda wanna give the edge to VS here. The content of the amenity kits are equal amongst all three but the bag that they come in on VS comes in last. As for food, DL is in third while B6 comes out on top for quality though VS shines when it comes to the variety of options.
Where JetBlue disappoints is in the on-the-ground experience with very little in the way of a business class check-in and no lounge whatsoever. Whereas Virgin Atlantic has their Clubhouse at JFK and Delta has not just two Sky Clubs but a Delta One Lounge just for D1 passengers. If the flight is departing on time, getting to the airport and clearing security with minutes to spare before boarding is all you need for flying B6 but, man, if you get there early or if your flight is delayed, that lack of a lounge to escape to while you wait for your flight to board becomes a very acute problem though I’ll note it’s a very first world problem.
As for the flight itself? Wonderful. Service was spectacular and super-attentive. As already mentioned, the food was incredible for a US carrier and having cocktails (mocktails too) made-to-order is always a nice touch. Most importantly, I got over four hours of sleep on a seven-hour flight which I think is the best I’ve done flying to London, and that’s without skipping either meal.
One last grumble on the on-the-ground experience… there was also obviously no arrivals lounge at Heathrow so I wasn’t able to shower until I checked into my room in the afternoon. Again, totally a first world problem (apologies to anyone downwind of me if I was smelly).
The Food and Drinks
I’ve been to London a number of times in my life (four times alone in 2024) so it’s nice to not have to chase after anything in particular. But it’s also London, so there’s always some place I want to try on my list that I’ve yet to hit up and this trip was no exception. I dined at two Michelin ⭐️ restaurants and when picking which of the two I preferred, I’m gonna split the baby and say both, each for different reasons.
Lunch at Chishuru was an absolute bargain for the quality on offer in their Modern West African fare. Every dish on the three-course menu was stellar but the Akara, a bean fritter with chicken & duck liver parfait, was my first bite on the ground in town and it really hit the spot -perfectly fried, light and airy balanced with the richness of the liver parfait, yet not overwhelmingly so.
Dinner at BRAT Restaurant is meant to be a shared experience and, dining solo, was not an inexpensive affair, clocking in at £150 for two starters, two mains, bread, a cocktail, and a glass of wine. To be fair, you’re paying for quality food product, prepared well and cooked over open fire. The portions were decent and could easily have fed two (maybe with another starter or two thrown in). Every dish was. a. banger. I could drink up all the juices left from the scallop and the langoustines - fear not, I let the bread do the work of sopping that up. I’d definitely go back but preferably not alone unless sitting at the bar - the tables are really close together (something they are very upfront about on their website which was very much appreciated) so it’s not ideal if you’re self-conscious about solo dining.
I spent nearly the entirety of my Saturday afternoon at The Kernel Spa Road, the new location in Bermondsey for… well, The Kernel Brewery. I’ll miss the charm of the old location in the railway arch but there’s no denying this new spot is better positioned and better laid out for more folks to gather and drink copious amounts of beers. The long bar alone allows for more bartenders behind the bar to serve several customers at a time.
As is tradition now (two years in a row is tradition!), I met up with a friend from NYC (hi Blankman!) because we now only hang out when we’re both on holiday in London. I don’t make the rules - it’s tradition, after all. All kidding aside, great to catch up and chat baseball for a few hours, accompanied by friendly service from our buddy Mauritz. Also? Have some of the excellent Japanese Izakaya-style food from the Yagi Izakaya residency before it’s gone!
Over the many trips I’ve made to London, I’ve found quite a few cocktail bars worth visiting and I’m pleased to say that all three I got to over this long weekend were worth the visit and worthy of a revisit on a future trip. Side Hustle was the fanciest with prices to match but also the quality to justify - it was also the most poppin’ of the three (also, it was a Friday night). Happiness Forgets was fancy - they had big cubes of ice - but not overly so and the prices were commensurate. It wasn’t too busy but I also got there close to when it opened at 5 pm on a Monday night and was gone a little after 6 pm. Home Bar was just that… a place that felt like home - a cozy place to chat with the bartenders and other patrons. Again, all three bars I’d recommend without hesitation - it just depends on the vibe you’re looking for.
Hey, A Race!
Since I was already gonna be doing a long run on Sunday, I figured I might as well run a race. Classic runner brain there, I know. I signed up for a 10-mile race in Victoria Park which was perfect since it was a mile or so from my hotel so I could run out there to warm up and get maybe 11-12 miles in for the day.
Too bad it got cancelled the week of the race.
Needing to find another race to run (again, classic runner brain behaviour here, searching for another race when I could just take the L and sleep in), I had several options - a 5K here, a 10K there, but all were about an hour or so by public transport.
So, of course, I chose a half marathon that required traveling over 90 minutes by bus and train.
I ended up running the Hampton Court Half Marathon, a race I actually signed up for last year but ended up bailing on because the rail service had bustitution along the route and I couldn’t be bothered to do bus to train to bus. No such problem this time so, after the long commute by public transport, followed by a frigid walk to the start area and then some waiting, I was off and running through Thames Ditton and surrounding villages.
Well, running, sure, but hardly running hard as the goal was to stay in HR Zone 3 for the first 10 miles and see how I felt, ideally at an 8:45 pace or better which I barely managed, going 8:44/mile. I felt good though so I decided to just send it at that point for the final 5K and ran each mile progressively faster. Still only got it down to a 7:36 pace those last 3.1 miles but I didn’t feel awful afterwards so that’s a win, I guess.
Glory, Glory, Tottenham Hotspur 🎶
Finally, the reason for this trip which, duh, the #COYSTrip25 hashtag. For the second consecutive year, I caught a Spurs match at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, a stadium I just absolutely love going to. It’s a large multi-purpose stadium but still really feels like a football stadium first. The food options (at least on the 100 level) are great and the beer selection is solid - It’s even got a Beavertown Brewery taproom in the concourse!
I eschewed food and drinks whilst at this match, still full from the Sunday Roast at lunch and wanting to keep the stomach primed for BRAT, leaving me all the time in the world to really soak it all in. My seat was in the 400 level in the North Stand, easily the best I’ve sat in of the four times I’ve been to the stadium. I had a great view of James Maddison scoring in the 13th minute and then a wonderful view of Guglielmo Vicario holding onto dear life, maintaining that one-goal advantage for 49 minutes in the second half, for the clean sheet and a 1-0 Spurs victory. An absolute white-knuckle affair for club and supporters both.
The List
Restaurants
Chishuru | @chishuru
Bone Daddies | @bonedaddies
The NoMad Restaurant | @thenomadhotel
Yagi Izakaya at The Kernel Spa Road | @yagi_izakaya
On The Bab | @onthebab
From The Ashes BBQ at The Five Points Brewery & Courtyard | @fromtheashesbbq
BRAT Restaurant | @bratrestaurant
Breweries
The Kernel Spa Road | @thekernelbrewery
The Five Points Brewery & Courtyard | @fivepointsbrew
Saint Monday | @saintmondaybrewery
Mikkeller Brewpub London | @mikkellerbrewpublondon
Blacklock | @blacklockchops
Bars
The Craft Beer Co. | @craftbeerco
Side Hustle | @sidehustlelondon
Happiness Forgets | @happiness_hoxton
Home Bar | @home_on_ravey
Coffee
Monmouth Coffee Company | @monmouthcoffee
Places
Sky Garden | @sg_skygarden
Pacific Northwest, January 16-20, 2025
Hey, a trip report! It’s been a hot minute, I know.
This trip came about for an absolutely absurd reason - I had Regional Upgrade Certificates (RUC) from Delta that were use it or lose it by January 31 and I sure as hell wasn’t gonna lose them after spending an equally absurd money with Delta in 2023. But to actually use them had proven harder than I had anticipated, with several waitlist attempts in 2024 going by the boards. Finally, I settled on finding Delta One or First Class experiences I wanted to try in January, reasoning that the Main Cabin MQDs would get me going on the next status quest for 2025.
#PNWDoubleDip
Hey, a trip report! It’s been a hot minute, I know.
This trip came about for an absolutely absurd reason - I had Regional Upgrade Certificates (RUC) from Delta that were use it or lose it by January 31 and I sure as hell wasn’t gonna lose them after spending an equally absurd money with Delta in 2023. But to actually use them had proven harder than I had anticipated, with several waitlist attempts in 2024 going by the boards. Finally, I settled on finding Delta One or First Class experiences I wanted to try in January, reasoning that the Main Cabin MQDs would get me going on the next status quest for 2025.
In the end, I settled on a round-trip to Seattle so I could fly on an A321neo in First Class on their newest hard product with, if you believe the decidedly mixed reviews, an emphasis on hard.
The reviews were not wrong. These seats are haaaaard. On a two-three hour flight, they’re perfectly fine though woe be unto you if you are in the window seat in a non-bulkhead row and one or both seats in the row in front of you have reclined - you’re gonna have one hell of a time trying to get into the aisle. The problem is that this is the seat they’re putting on planes intended for narrowbody transcontinental flights and these seats just do not have enough padding on them for a transcontinental flight. You will absolutely feel it on your butt and tailbone on a longer flight. My advice? Sit on the provided pillow if you don’t need it for sleeping.
It wasn’t all bad for the hard product - the large IFE and the Bluetooth connectivity for headphones were absolute highlights. Leg room too but, again, if the seat in front of you reclines, they’re kinda on top of you. As for the soft product, the preorder-only Beef And Lamb Kofta was a welcome change of pace from the usual beef short rib dish. As with most times, the service in First Class was pleasant and attentive.
After landing in Seattle a little before 11 pm, it was off to a hotel by the airport. Why? So I could catch an early flight to my actual destination for this trip - Vancouver. Excepting a three-hour detour in Windsor while in Detroit back in 2023, this would be my first extended stay in Canada since the pandemic.
Man, did I miss this country. Man, did I enjoy my time in British Columbia. Sure, if I were into snow stuff like skiing or snowboarding, coming here in winter would make more sense. Even still, it turned out to be a great deal warmer in Vancouver than it was in New York City while I was out there so this was practically a winter escape 😂.
Vancouver is a lovely city though it is most certainly not a big city - you can pretty much walk and see all of its downtown in a day, maybe two. Its beauty, really, is in its immediate surroundings with majestic mountains and bodies of water. I’m certain I lucked out with respect to weather in January as it was incredible bright sunshine all three days I was there.
On most trips, I try to hit a museum or some other cultural institution but since the temperatures while I was there were positively balmy, I took full advantage of it, spending the majority of my time outdoors. There were the nine miles (14ish kilometers since this is Canada) of walking on Friday in Downtown and East Vancouver as I pinged between restaurants and breweries, the four hours spent on Saturday wandering around Granville Island, and then a late Sunday afternoon into early evening at Capilano Suspension Bridge Park. Oh, and a couple of 7ish mile runs, to boot.
The Food and Drinks
Obviously, all that time spent outdoors in the winter, even if it was somewhat mild, worked up an appetite for some food. Vancouver certainly didn’t disappoint in that respect and with the exchange rate being what it was, it was practically free. Alright, not quite, but not having to calculate sales tax on top of the bill meant less of a sticker shock at the end though the increasingly ubiquitous service charge made its appearance at more than a few stops.
The standout meal in Vancouver would have to be the one at PiDGiN, an Asian-European restaurant in Gastown. I enjoyed every bite I had there but the foie gras rice bowl was just outstanding and deserving of being singled out. The szechuan pepper beignet was a lot of volume at end of the meal but the tingling numbness from the peppercorns made for a really nice savory-sweet finish.
Of course, no trip is complete without hitting a few local breweries and bars; I managed to get to seven breweries in Vancouver, six of them alone on the first afternoon in town, all of which were no more than a 10-minute walk apart from the other. If craft beer is your thing, East Vancouver is the neighbourhood to hit while in town.
But Wait, There’s More
I actually booked JFK-SEA and SEA-YVR as two separate round trips - again, had to use those RUCs - which meant booking my return flights from Vancouver to Seattle and Seattle to New York with as much of a time gap between them in case of any delays coming back to the States. This meant I ended up getting into Seattle a little before 11 am with a flight leaving Seattle around 11 pm. Oh no, what would I do with a twelve-hour layover…
Yep, you guessed it - I ate and drank my way through the Emerald City and even caught up with a friend (hi, James!) I hadn’t seen in nearly a decade since he moved out there. A great and relaxing way to end a long weekend out of town.
The List
Restaurants
The Ramen Butcher | @theramenbutcher
PiDGiN | @pidginyvr
The Lobster Man | @thelobstermanvan
Kaisereck | @kaisereckdelicatessen
Lee’s Donuts | @leesdonuts.ca
Top of Vancouver Revolving Restaurant | @topofvancouver
Bar Haifa | @barhaifa
Kam Wai Dim Sum | @kamwaidimsum
Oriental Mart | @omart1973
Le Coin | @lecoinseattle
Breweries
Strathcona Beer Company | @strathconabeer
Luppolo Brewing Company | @luppolo_brewing
Strange Fellows Brewing | @strangefellowsbrewing
Off the Rails Brewing Company | @offtherailbeer
Bomber Brewing | @bomberbrewing
East Van Brewing Company | @eastvanbrewing
Granville Island Brewing | @granvillebeer
Urban Family Brewing Co. | @urbanfamilybrewing
Fair Isle Brewing | @fairislebrewing
Great Notion Brewing | @greatnotion @greatnotionwashington
Distilleries
The Liberty Distillery | @tldistillery
Bars
Parker Rooftop | @parkerrooftop
Stampede Cocktail Club | @stampedecocktailclub
Coffee
Monorail Espresso | @monorailespresso
Places
Vancouver Lookout | @vancouverlookout
Capilano Suspension Bridge Park | @capilanosuspensionbridge
Nashville, November 19-22, 2021
I’m writing this as I fly out to Rome if you want an indication of how far behind I am on these recap posts and how busy these last few weeks have been. Anyway, Nashville - this trip was actually a backup trip for a trip to New Orleans that never happened the weekend previous to this.
Beers 🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺
Cocktails 🥃🥂🥃🥃
Hot Chicken 🐔🐔🐔
Ramen 🍜🍜
Breweries 🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻
Flights ✈️✈️
#hotchickenrun
I’m writing this as I fly out to Rome if you want an indication of how far behind I am on these recap posts and how busy these last few weeks have been. Anyway, Nashville - this trip was actually a backup trip for a trip to New Orleans that never happened the weekend previous to this. Why Nashville? Why not Nashville? Plenty of history, breweries, and, most importantly, hot chicken. Coincidentally, this weekend was Rock 'n' Roll Nashville and the half marathon would be the perfect tune-up for my marathon in Pisa on December 19.
Let’s talk about the hot chicken… I had three different versions but I’m going to focus on the two Nashville heavyweights. Between Prince's Hot Chicken and Hattie B's Hot Chicken, it’s hard to choose a winner. I felt Prince’s had better flavor but that Hattie B’s was better executed. Gun to my head, I’d probably go with Prince’s but I’m not all too committed to that choice. Sorry if you were hoping for a definitive verdict here but if you want one, just do a hot chicken bang-bang!
Of course, there would be ramen - after all, I did have a race to carbo-load for, though that only explains the first bowl. But the other one at Black Dynasty, a “secret” ramen joint inside a Bearded Iris taproom? Their Turkey Miso Paitan was the best and most interesting bowl of ramen I’d had in some time.
The standout meal was a branch of a place I’d been to before in Charleston but to say that that Butcher & Bee and the one I dined at in Nashville were the same would be nuts. Some similarities, sure, but totally different restaurants owing to the use of local ingredients and different chefs at the helm. Whatever the reason, while I liked my meal in Charleston, I absolutely loved the one in Nashville.
Okay, food’s done - let’s talk about the beer. Boy, is there a beer scene in Nashville. I made it to nine breweries but I think there were still a few more I could have hit with some more time and stomach capacity - there’s only so much room for everything, even with flights or half pours! Of the nine(!), if I had to pick a favorite, it’d be a toss-up between Southern Grist and Bearded Iris. Only one of those has a pop-up ramen shop in it so that may nudge Bearded Iris ahead… at least until Southern Grist adds their own dynamite ramen pop-up.
The Race
Unlike a marathon, I don’t really think too hard about what goals I want to hit for a half marathon but I definitely wanted to beat my PR of 1:49:58 from 2014(!). The conditions were pretty good for that to happen with a starting temperature in the mid-30s and clear skies. Also, the course was pretty flat though there were definitely some hills and, as I would be told several times by pacers, a big one around mile six.
I started a few seconds behind one of the 1:45 pacers but quickly caught up to him which had me feeling pretty good... until I fell off the pace after a hill. The funny thing is that I was still going under 8:00/mile which meant the pacer was going faster than his prescribed pace. Sure enough, I eventually caught him after four miles and then passed him for good in the sixth mile. I knew I had 1:45 locked after a u-turn where I didn’t see the pacer on the other side until 30 seconds after I’d made the turn. At that point, I went for it, wanting to see just how much I could get under 1:45.
I finished the race in 1:42:52, a new PR by over seven minutes! As far as tune-ups go, this was as good as it gets, four weeks out from the Maratona di Pisa.
The List
Restaurants
Prince's Hot Chicken
Shokku Ramen
Liberty Common
Butcher & Bee
Another Broken Egg Cafe
DeSano Pizzeria
Hattie B's Hot Chicken
Breweries
Bearded Iris Brewing
Southern Grist Brewing Co
Living Waters Brewing
Crazy Gnome Brewery
Smith & Lentz
Yee-Haw Brewing Co.
Czanns
Fat Bottom Brewing
TailGate Brewery
Coffee
Crema Coffee Roasters
Places
Belmont Mansion
Cheekwood
Houston, October 28-November 1, 2021
I made a visit to Houston late last month to visit my brother and his family; more importantly, I got to see my nephew for the first time in nearly two years!
Beers 🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺
Cocktails 🍸🍸
Meats 🐄🐖🐓🦆
Seafood 🦞🦀
Breweries 🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻
Flights ✈️✈️
#AstroworldButNot
I made a visit to Houston late last month to visit my brother and his family; more importantly, I got to see my nephew for the first time in nearly two years! What a difference from the last time I saw him in 2019 - where he was quiet and reluctant to play with his Uncle Gary, this time around there were no issues getting him to do stuff with me. In all honesty, the kid absolutely wrecked me (but in the best way possible), wanting to play with his toys all the time. When my original flight home on Sunday was cancelled and I was rebooked for Monday, I’m sure the kid just thought that he’d get one more day to destroy me… which he did, but in the best way possible! Love the kid.
Thankfully, there were a bunch of breweries for me to find some quiet solitude when I needed a break. If I had to pick a favorite among the six I visited, I’d go with Urban South - HTX. They had an absurd number of beers available to pour and it wasn’t all IPAs either as they had a variety of sours to choose from. I’ll also give Brash Brewing a shout as they had decent beers on tap but probably the best physical space, indoors and outdoors, of the breweries I visited this time. I mean, how often do you get to have a beer with a skeleton as your drinking buddy?
No trip to Texas would be complete without barbecue and with Truth BBQ, I had some damned good barbecue. As I did in Dallas, I made sure to try the turkey if it was on the menu, reasoning if you’re gonna make turkey at a barbecue joint, it’s gotta be good - and it was! Another standout meal was at Rosie Cannonball - great food, stellar cocktails, and excellent service.
I’d really gotten into Japanese Breakfast (Michelle Zauner) after she’d released her memoir, Crying in H Mart, earlier in the year. Then they released their next album, Jubilee, and I really got into them - one of my favorite albums of the year. When I saw that they’d be in Houston when I was, I made sure to block out Saturday night so I could see them at White Oak Music Hall.
And what a show it was. Zauner’s voice was ethereal, light, and airy, yet still strongly soaring above a phalanx of instrumentation. Zauner also has a command of the stage and, consequently, the audience as she energetically bounded about throughout their performance. This was my first show in a GA pit since the pandemic and it felt cathartic to just be on the floor of a medium-sized venue, just soaking it all in.
Japanese Breakfast at White Oak Music Hall
The List
Restaurants
Southern Yankee Crafthouse
Truth BBQ
Hai Cang Harbor
Pho Ben
Rosie Cannonball
Golden Dim Sum
Breweries
Southern Yankee Crafthouse
Urban South - HTX
Buffalo Bayou Brewing Co
Eureka Heights Brew Co
New Magnolia Brewing Co
Brash Brewing
Coffee
Agnes
Bars
The Raven Tower
Concert Venues
White Oak Music Hall
Chicago, October 8-11, 2021
Ah, Chicago Marathon, we meet again.
Beers 🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺
Michelin ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Ramen 🍜🍜🍜
Cocktails 🍹🍹🍹🍹🍹
Breweries 🍻🍻🍻🍻
Flights ✈️✈️
Transit 🚇🚌🚕
#WindyCity262x2
Ah, Chicago Marathon, we meet again. But before we did, I actually had to, ya know, get to Chicago and that alone was quite the adventure. Scheduled to depart at 6:45 am, DL556 was delayed to a 7:45 am departure at 5:45 am, only to then be delayed to an 11:30 am departure at 6:15 am. Hilarious. At this point, everyone was scrambling to change their flight to an earlier one and by the time I got onto the app while everyone rushed to the gate agent, the next available flight was for 10:15 am. Fine, whatever, better that than the11:30 but still not great.
With my flight rebooked, I debated going home for a few hours and then coming back - it was 6:30 am now and I wouldn’t need to be back to LGA until 9:30 or so. As I walked back to security, I detoured to the Sky Club to see if I could get any help getting onto an earlier flight but I wasn’t a member so they couldn’t/wouldn’t do anything for me. Again, fine, moving on; next up was to maybe find a Delta rep at a counter but it was too early for it to be manned so I picked up a black phone to wait to speak to an agent.
So now I’m on the phone, listening to some lovely hold music when a Delta rep makes her way to the counter. It was barely 7:00 am and it normally would be unmanned for a little while longer but a similarly delayed customer got her to look into options for rebooking her flight. As she’s being helped, I position myself to be next in line while staying on the phone, cord extended as far as it can go, just in case someone on the phone would beat out the IRL agent. No surprise here, I ended up hanging up the phone so I could speak to the agent at the counter.
The first thing the agent did was to ask me for my boarding pass. As I handed it to her, I made it a point to address her by name which I had to strain to make it out from her badge as it was off to her side. After scanning my boarding pass, she saw that my original flight had been delayed and that I had already rebooked myself for 10:30 am so she asked, maybe wondering, what more she could do for me. I asked if I could be put on standby for the 8:05 am flight, figuring it was worth a shot. She thought so too so she put me on it and now I figured I might as well ask how far down I was on the standby list. She told me there were 18 people ahead of me and I laughed ruefully, knowing there was zero chance I would get off the list.
This was when something awesome happened for me. The agent told me should would “do something nice” for me and changed my 8:05 am standby to a confirmed seat. Daaaaaaamn. I thanked her, told her I loved her, and booked it back to the departure gate as it was now 7:15 am and the flight was going to start boarding in 10 minutes.
End of story, right? Nope. This flight was oversold so while my confirmed seat may have jumped me ahead of standby, I’d still need some luck in the form of a no-show or someone taking an offer to be voluntarily bumped. The latter seemed like a non-starter as this flight was full of fellow Chicago Marathoners who had zero intention of missing this flight. Now I’m standing by the gate agent as they call boarding group after boarding group as they keep upping the offer all the way up to $1000 and still no takers. This entire time I’m schmoozing the guy and he keeps checking the flight for me, finally landing on a likely no-show. He kindly offers me the $1000 if I’m willing to wait for the next flight but I politely decline and then he gives me the seat for the no-show. Thanking him and my lucky stars, I gather my bags, grab the seat confirmation, and get onto the plane.
The Race
The training for Chicago started off rough with back pain and PT for it in June but by mid-July, I was back on track. By the time I finished my third and last 20-mile long run, I felt like this had been the best marathon training season I’d ever had. This was reinforced with a PR by over four minutes at the Bronx 10 Mile, two weeks out from the marathon.
After that PR, I came up with my three goals for the Chicago Marathon. Here were the goals:
PR: Sub-3:50:52
Sub-3:50:00
Sub-3:45:00
With two weeks to go, I felt really good about hitting all three of those goals. Then I saw the forecast for race day the Monday before and it was lows in the mid-60s with highs in the mid-70s. That forecast would only get worse throughout the week, peaking with lows in the low-70s and highs in the low-80s. As tempted as I was to re-adjust the goals, I figured I’d trust the training and bank on having trained in a traditional NYC summer.
I started the race with every intention of following the 3:45 pacers but I actually started a few feet behind them so that meant a quicker than expected first two miles to catch up with them. After that, it was just running a consistent 8:35ish mile, doing as much as I could to stay below the pace through the first half so as to bank some seconds for a decent cushion as it got warmer. When I hit the halfway mark at 1:51:21, I’d built a solid 69 second cushion. That’d come in handy because it definitely got warmer and the sun started to peak out from behind the clouds a little more than it had the first two hours of the race.
Honestly, there was very little drama in this race. Mile after mile, I kept churning out miles close to 8:35 though most were above the mark but that’s what the first half cushion was for. The only potential problem was the ol’ IT band barking after 23 miles but it stopped bothering me less than a mile later. I just kept telling myself “trust in the training, trust in the training” like it was my fucking mantra and shut everything else out. By the time I hit Michigan Avenue for the last few miles, I knew I was in good shape to hit some goals. But just how many goals?
I finished the marathon in 3:44:21. I crushed all three of my goals. This was my second time running Chicago and this was now my second time setting a marathon PR running it. I love this race.
Everything Else
The standout meal on this trip was at Mako, a Michelin-starred Japanese sushi omakase restaurant. This was some of the best sushi I’ve had in some time, certainly since I was last in Japan in 2019.
Another great meal was at Moody Tongue, a two Michelin-starred restaurant/brewery. While the food was spectacular, their beers were aggressively okay - fine to go with a meal but nothing worth bringing home.
The two days in town leading up to the race, I carbo-loaded the best way I know how - with ramen. Of the three bowls I had, my favorite was at High Five Ramen. The bowls I had at Kizuki Ramen & Izakaya and RAMEN-SAN were also excellent.
The List
Restaurants
RAMEN-SAN
Moody Tongue
Kizuki Ramen & Izakaya
High Five Ramen
Mako
Breweries
Moody Tongue Brewing Company
Haymarket Pub & Brewery
Cruz Blanca Brewery
Pilot Project Brewing
Bars
Clark Street Ale House
The Aviary
Beermiscuous
Coffee
Caffe Umbria
Marathon Splits
Half Splits
| Split | Time |
|---|---|
| Half | 1:51:21 |
| Finish | 3:44:21 |
5k Splits
| Split | Time |
|---|---|
| 5K | 25:55 |
| 10K | 26:40 |
| 15K | 26:35 |
| 20K | 26:27 |
| 25K | 26:28 |
| 30K | 26:49 |
| 35K | 26:56 |
| 40K | 26:35 |
Mile Splits
| Split | Time |
|---|---|
| 1M | 8:08.8 |
| 2M | 8:18.7 |
| 3M | 8:31.7 |
| 4M | 8:32.5 |
| 5M | 8:32.3 |
| 6M | 8:35.7 |
| 7M | 8:28.8 |
| 8M | 8:33.0 |
| 9M | 8:41.9 |
| 10M | 8:38.1 |
| 11M | 8:32.2 |
| 12M | 8:30.5 |
| 13M | 8:22.1 |
| 14M | 8:24.7 |
| 15M | 8:35.5 |
| 16M | 8:36.1 |
| 17M | 8:37.0 |
| 18M | 8:40.2 |
| 19M | 8:36.0 |
| 20M | 8:47.8 |
| 21M | 8:37.4 |
| 22M | 8:37.8 |
| 23M | 8:38.1 |
| 24M | 8:47.3 |
| 25M | 8:32.9 |
| 26M | 8:38.6 |
Reykjavík, August 19-23, 2021
For the first time in 563 days, I got on a plane and left the United States of America.
Beers 🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺
Breweries 🍻🍻🍻
Cocktails 🍹🍹🍹🍹🍹🍹
Ramen 🍜🍜
Hot Dogs 🌭🌭
Foodstuff 🐓🐑🐄🐖🦐🦞
Baked Goods 🥖🥯🥐
Museums 🏛🏛🏛
Runs 🏃🏻♂️🏃🏻♂️🏃🏻♂️
Flights ✈️✈️
#reykinat41
For the first time in 563 days, I got on a plane and left the United States of America. That was the longest I’d gone without traveling to another country since going nine-plus years from 2004-2013. For my inaugural international trip (with a new passport, to boot!), I settled on Reykjavík even though I’d been there before. That familiarity wasn’t an inconsequential factor in my choice of destination; it didn’t hurt that Iceland had done a very good job with vaccinating their residents. All in all, i felt incredibly comfortable going back there.
The weekend I visited was supposed to when they held a marathon but it was cancelled a few weeks before the trip. I had planned on running that one as my second 20-mile training run for Chicago. August in Iceland is ideal running weather as the temperature never leaves the 50s with the only complicating factor being precipitation. I ended up doing my long run following most of the marathon route with a 70% chance of run only to never encounter a single drop. Glorious. The only real impediment to my runs was the fowl traffic.
Last time I went, I did the a bus tour of the Golden Circle. This time around, I opted to see South Iceland. There were waterfalls, glaciers, and a black sand beach - all of it was breathtakingly beautiful. Seeing it all in one day was a lot with a few 30-60 minute stops sprinkled throughout a 10-hour out-and-back bus ride. It’s just enough time to take in the beauty of it all but it could feel rushed at times.
Speaking of beauty, let’s talk about the food in Reykjavík. There are a lot great restaurants in the city, some of which are Michelin-quality. The standout meal on this trip was dinner the first night at Sumac Grill + Drinks, a place that served Middle Eastern cuisine made with fresh Icelandic ingredients. Everything about this meal was excellent between the cocktails, the food, and sitting at the bar, talking to the chef throughout the night. Reservations go quickly here but if you’re rolling solo or just a pair, a spot at the bar across from the open kitchen is the pro move.
Standout meal 1a would go to dinner at Matur og Drykkur, which was originally intended to be a post-marathon celebratory tasting menu tour de force. This one was a more traditionally Icelandic though gussied up and modernized, of course. I had lamb multiple times during this trip (it’s easily the most plentiful of the land-based animal meats) and the lamb served here was the best I had the entire trip.
One last note about the food in Reykjavík - there’s actually decent ramen to be found! I had two bowls of ramen and while one was merely decent (wouldn’t go out of my way to go there again), the other was a great bowl that I would have gone back to if they had been open on Sunday. The TANTAMEN Nº11 at Ramen Momo, the combination of a great broth and house-made noodles, was delicious.
Ramen Momo TANTAMEN Nº11
No discussion about eating (and drinking) in Iceland is complete without talking about the cost. You’re gonna pay a lot for just about everything. At least with the drinking part, there’s plenty of happy hours to be found, starting as early as noon each day with most going from 4 pm to 7 pm. If you’re gonna go for some alcohol, happy hour is the time to do it. The price of food is more or less gonna be what you get so it actually makes more sense to work meals around where you want to go for drinks.
The List
Restaurants
Ramen Momo
Sumac Grill + Drinks
Skal!
Messinn
Matur og Drykkur
Hi Noodle
Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur
Grandi Mathöll
Lava Restaurant
Coffee & Baked Goods
Sandholt
Reykjavik Roasters
Brauð & Co.
DEIG workshop
Bars
Skúli Craft bar
Session Craft Bar
Frederiksen Ale House
Jungle Cocktail Bar
Breweries
Barion Bryggjan Brugghús
Bastard Brew & Food
RVK Brewing Company
Museums
The National Gallery of Iceland
Reykjavík Art Museum Hafnarhús
The Culture House - Museum
Denver, July 2-5, 2021
For the long holiday weekend, I took my longest flight during the COVID-19 pandemic, flying from LGA to DEN.
Denver City Farmer’s Market
Beers 🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺
Breweries 🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻
Games ⚾️⚾️
Flights ✈️✈️
Ramen 🍜🍜🍜
Doughnuts 🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩
Museums 🏛🏛
#milehighbeersandbaseball
For the long holiday weekend, I took my longest flight during the COVID-19 pandemic, flying from LGA to DEN. I’d only been to Denver one other time and that was well over a decade ago for GABF, so it was long overdue. Denver is only two time zones west but flying out early in the morning to get a full day in took more out of me than I expected. It’s either rust from not having traveled much in the last year or it’s just another sign that This is 40. Don’t even ask me how my runs at altitude went (spoiler alert: they didn’t).
Anyway, to the point of this trip - crossing another MLB ballpark off the list. Coors Field makes for 26 ballparks visited, leaving me with four to go. With luck and an ever-improving pandemic outlook, I’m hoping to get this done in 2022. There’s increasing uncertainty of just how rooted in Oakland the A’s are, so there’s certainly the possibility of having to visit a new home ballpark of theirs before I get the current set of 30 done if I don’t pull this off next season.
What did I think of the Rockies’ ballpark? I liked it a lot but it’s been around a while and there have been enough new stadiums built since they opened in the mid-90s that it’s feeling a little dated. Among the 26 I’ve been to, it’s solidly mid-tier. The sight lines from the locations I sat in at the two games I went to were spectacular, even from the last section in the upper deck along the 3B line. My only real gripe was the lack of an open concourse above the field level but it’s a minor one on balance. I’d visit it again, for sure.
St. Louis Cardinals vs. Colorado Rockies, July 2
Coors Field, July 4
If going to a new-to-me ballpark was reason 1 to travel to Denver, reason 1-A was to check out the craft beer scene. When I’d last been out here, most of the breweries we visited were a drive out of Denver to the surrounding areas; this time around, almost all of the breweries I visited were a walk or a quick bus trip or rideshare away. There’s so many breweries where craft beer can be had fresh that it’s pretty much made old-school craft beer bars like Falling Rock Tap House obsolete which is a shame, really.
Most of the breweries I visited had fine, if not spectacular, beers on offer. Even in a beer mecca like Denver, the explosion in the number of breweries per capita hasn’t led to much of an increase in quantity of incredible beers being produced. While I’d revisit just about every brewery from this trip, I’m struggling to think of anything I had that was truly memorable.
Finally, let’s get to the last, best part of most of my trips - the food! There wasn’t anything particularly Denver that I felt I had to eat so I just went nuts with random cuisines. Of course, there was ramen (when do I not have ramen) and two of the three bowls I had there were great with the other one being adequate but would not make a point of eating there again. The best bang for the buck was Bourbon Grill which is a place that serves the kind of grilled chicken that wouldn’t be out of place in a mall food court. You know, the kind that always gave out the free samples you go back to for seconds and thirds when you’re in high school and college; except this place was actually good.
The standout meal was at The Wolf’s Tailor, a Japanese-influenced Euro/American restaurant. Tons of flavor combined with farm-fresh ingredients results in a spectacular five-course meal. As far as blowout meals go, $95 for a pre-fixe menu is a pretty solid price to pay.
The List
Breweries
Denver Beer Co
Cervecería Colorado
Jagged Mountain Craft Brewery
Banded Oak Brewing Company
Baere Brewing Company
TRVE Brewing Company
Diebolt Brewing Company
Cerebral Brewing
Ratio Beerworks
Great Divide Brewing Co.
Woods Boss Brewing Company
Spangalang Brewery
Restaurants
Walter’s303
Uncle
Bourbon Grill
The Wolf’s Tailor
Oishii Ramen
Osaka Ramen
Bars
Star Bar
First Draft
Coffee & Baked Goods
Jubilee Roasting Co
Rebel Bread
Little Owl Coffee
Voodoo Doughnut
Museums
Molly Brown House Museum
Denver Art Museum
Buffalo, June 5-6, 2021
If you’ll recall from my last trip to Tampa- St. Pete, I was able to catch a Toronto Blue Jays home game in Dunedin because of COVID-19 restrictions keeping them south of the border.
Beers 🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺
Breweries 🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻
Games ⚾️ ⚾️
Flights ✈️✈️
#ballpark32
If you’ll recall from my last trip to Tampa- St. Pete, I was able to catch a Toronto Blue Jays home game in Dunedin because of COVID-19 restrictions keeping them south of the border. Well, those restrictions are still in place but with summer approaching, the club had to find a new home or fall victim to the warmer, more humid weather to come.
Enter Buffalo - Sahlen Field, the home of their Triple-A affiliate Buffalo Bisons would become the new temporary home for the Jays.
Sahlen Field, June 5
Sahlen Field was built with the intention of possibly being a home for an MLB team. Well, a little over 20 years later, it happened with the Blue Jays playing their home games there in 2020 due to the pandemic. With US-Canada border still closed, it was pressed back into service for 2021 as their home after they finally “broke camp”, leaving Florida after their final homestand in May.
You can tell that there were higher ambitions for the ballpark as it’s a fairly large one by MiLB standards. That said, it’s still too small a footprint and would need considerable upgrades, even more than the ones made the last two years to have it be serviceable as a temporary home for an MLB team. That’s no knock on the stadium itself - it’s an awesome minor league venue and a fantastic place to take in a game of any caliber. It’s just not a major league stadium. It was, however, the 32nd ballpark I’ve seen an MLB game.
Also? I caught my very first foul ball here!
Sahlen Field, June 6
The start time for the Saturday afternoon game was a very Toronto home game time - 3:07 pm. That left me with just enough time to take a tour of a Frank Lloyd Wright home - Martin House. Alas, photography was not allowed inside the house on this tour so you’ll just have to take my word for it that the interior is phenomenal. Several rooms were incredible but the kitchen may have been the standout of the spaces we had access to.
Frank Lloyd Wright's Martin House
The List
Breweries
Resurgence Brewing Company
Thin Man Brewery
Big Ditch Brewing Company
Lafayette Brewing Co.
Pressure Drop Brewing
Bars
Anchor Bar
Coffee & Baked Goods
Public Espresso + Coffee
Tampa-St. Petersburg, May 15-16, 2021
Looking at the 2021 MLB schedule when it was released last summer, I knew I’d be coming down this weekend to see the Mets play the Rays and notch Tropicana Field off my ballpark list.
Beers 🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺
Breweries 🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻
Games ⚾️ ⚾️
Ballparks 🏟🏟
Flights ✈️✈️
#ballparkdoubledip
Looking at the 2021 MLB schedule when it was released last summer, I knew I’d be coming down this weekend to see the Mets play the Rays and notch Tropicana Field off my ballpark list. This trip, of course, depended on the state of the pandemic and whether Florida would be in the clear by mid-May. I shouldn’t have had any doubts - it’s Florida, after all (interpret that however you want) and so I was off to Tampa-St. Petersburg.
Tropicana Field
What can I say about Tropicana Field that hasn’t already been said? It’s definitely a bottom-tier MLB ballpark and only the Oakland Coliseum rivals it for worst stadium in MLB. Having a roof prevents the rainouts in the summer months that the Marlins used to fall prey to when they were in Joe Robbie Stadium but not having it be retractable or at least transparent makes it feel like they’re playing baseball in a tent. It was a beautiful, sunny Saturday afternoon and you couldn’t tell from inside the stadium. I’m just bummed I didn’t get to see the wacky ground rules regarding the ceiling rings go into effect. If I’m being charitable, I can say that the sightlines from just about every part of the stadium are clear and unobstructed. Also, the local food and craft beer options are spectacular.
TD Ballpark
When I planned this trip, I planned to just make it to one game; after all, this was Tropicana Field and the way the flight schedules worked out, it was just easiest to come in Saturday morning and leave Sunday afternoon. What I hadn’t anticipated was the Canadian reticence to let the Toronto Blue Jays host games at home, owing to the cross-border traffic that would be required for them and their opponents to come to Toronto. This meant that the Blue Jays would not be able to break camp and head north after spring training, choosing instead to stay in Florida to open the season. As luck would have it, they were home the same weekend I would be in Tampa-St. Pete and, even luckier, their game would be at night. So, after leaving Tropicana Field (with a pit stop at a nearby brewery), I made my way up to Dunedin and to TD Ballpark.
I’d actually been here before for spring training but to see an actual MLB game at a spring training stadium was quite the experience. Sure, the tickets were way more expensive than you’d normally pay for a game here but look how close fans are to the action!
TD Ballpark
As always, there were breweries to visit and while I made it a point to revisit Green Bench and Webb’s City Cellar, their offshoot next door, everything else was new to me. It’d only been maybe three years or so since the last time I was down here and there were still plenty of places to try for the first time. If you’re ever in the area, I’d make it a point to go up to Dunedin and walk/bike along the Pinellas Trail - there’s at least a handful of breweries you can stop in at to whet your whistle.
The List
Breweries
Bayboro Brewing Co.
Avid Brew Company
Green Bench Brewing Company
Woodwright Brewing Company
Cueni Brewing Co.
HOB Brewing Co.
3 Daughters Brewing
Grand Central Brewhouse
Webb's City Cellar by Green Bench Brewery
Dallas, May 1-2, 2021
For the first time in 453 days, I flew on a plane!
Globe Life Field
Beers 🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺
Breweries 🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻
Games ⚾️ ⚾️
Meats 🐄 🐖 🦃
Sweets 🍩🍩🍦
Flights ✈️✈️
#beersbbqbaseball
For the first time in 453 days, I flew on a plane! With my first flight since the pandemic, life felt like it was finally returning to normal if, ya know, “normal” includes wearing a mask the entire time I was on the plane. But once I got to my final destination of Dallas, TX, it was a mask-free weekend. Freedom from the tyranny of masks! 🙄
I’ll admit to being incredibly nervous at times when it came to mask wearing. Now, there’s no mask mandate in Texas so it’s not like there’s any mask compliance to meet. But after spending the entire last 14 months in the northeast, to actually see how the other half is living, like the pandemic had ended (or worse, never happened) was jarring. Still, this is their turf so just gotta mask up and stay as safe as is possible and pray that J&J is effective. 🤞🏻
So why was I in Dallas? Well, they’ve got a brand spanking new ballpark that I haven’t been to yet and I had tons of Southwest Airlines voucher credit to burn through so Dallas it was! The last time I was in Dallas four years ago, I visited the Texas Rangers’ previous ballpark, Globe Life Park and after attending that early July game, I was convinced as to why a 20-something year-old ballpark already had to be replaced. Without a roof and climate control, it was unbearably hot in the stands until the sun set behind the stadium. I swore there were more fans in the concourse common seating areas than there were in the stands for the first three innings that night.
Globe Life Field, May 1
This new stadium, Globe Life Field? Heat is not a problem though the sun can still be since the roof is constructed with plenty of glass panels. Under direct sun light in the upper concourse, it can still get hot but that’s the cost of having an abundance of natural light, even for a roofed stadium. Of all the post-Camden ballparks I’ve been to, this is the first one that feels big, like it’s not trying to go after that hit of nostalgia every ballpark of the past 25 years seems to have chased.
Globe Life Field, May 2
But what about the barbecue!? The first time I was in Dallas, I made a point to try Pecan Lodge and I was not disappointed. Beyond that, though, I had been forewarned that Dallas proper didn’t have the great barbecue. Would I be disappointed!?
Dear reader, I was not. My first stop after dropping my bag at the hotel was to The Slow Bone, arriving there just as they were about to open and that was some damn good meats. We’re talking prime brisket, hickory sausage, and pork ribs, all of which I could have finished in one go if I didn’t have any shame. If that weren’t enough, they tossed in a free slice of turkey breast so I could have a try; I would have gladly gotten a portion of that if I hadn’t already gotten more than I could possibly eat.
The other standout barbecue was Hurtado Barbecue in Arlington which i am sad to say I have no photos of as I actually had to put in a large order to pick up on my way to the airport Sunday afternoon to ensure I got to try it as I had been shut out the previous day.
The List
Breweries
Peticolas Brewing Company
Texas Ale Project
Legal Draft
Division Brewing
Pegasus City Brewery
Manhattan Project Beer Co.
Restaurants
The Slow Bone
Lockhart Smokehouse
Hurtado Barbecue
Coffee & Baked Goods
Urban Donut
State Street Coffee