Travel – Page 25 – thekua.com@rest

Phoenix, Arizona

April 21, 2007 Patrick Travel

After my conference, I took the weekend off to stay in downtown Scottsdale before heading back home. Scottsdale is one of the other cities that is sort of part of Phoenix and is the cultural centre of Phoenix with plenty of arts galleries and performances around. I didn’t have many options but to stay in Scottsdale because I didn’t have a car and Phoenix is really one of those places where you need one, even to get to tourist attractions because of a dire lack of a public transport system.

Walking around Scottsdale is easy enough with a tourist centre providing big maps plotting out all the interesting sights. It’s easy enough to walk around the entire city within a day but it did give me an opportunity to unwind and enjoy the warmth of the desert. There’s plenty of cultural entertainment and I was lucky enough to catch a Native Trails performance produced by the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation, sharing many of the indigenous American traditions including music and dance.

I don’t think the city is sustainable at the rate of growth and development they’re pushing for though. In the midst of the desert, they are trying to bring back the canal into huge use and continue the development of “water-front” apartments. I’m lead to believe there is already a water issue coming and yet many people insist on having grass on their front lawns, and the water-hungry plants that they might be used to in other parts of the country, not realising the demands it requires from their current environment.

Viva Las Vegas

April 8, 2007 Patrick Travel

Las Vegas is a very strange city with so many aspects adult oriented yet heavily advertised as a grand place for families. It seems like almost everything is available in Las Vegas, and is extremely surreal given that its sits in the middle of the desert. Most of the visible action can be found on the main strip, fondly called The Strip with many of the hotels constantly reinventing themselves and building bigger, and better attractions and amusements to lure people to spend more time and money inside. Read more “Viva Las Vegas”

Worst Long Haul Flight Ever

April 8, 2007 Patrick Annoyances, Travel

Although a trip to the West Coast of the States isn’t as bad as it can be flying home to Australia from the UK, it’s amazing how little things can make the trip a lot more painful. How’s this sound for a not-very-ideal trip:

An hour by train
Two hours at the Gatwick airport
A ten and a half hour flight into Dallas
Two hours standing in queue to get through immigration
You miss your connecting flight to Vegas by ten minutes
Another two hour wait in the airport for the next flight
Another three hour flight to Las Vegas
A half hour waiting for luggage only to discover it never made it on your flight

My only consolation was that my hotel had only one room left by the time I got there and it just so happened it was a Jacuzzi suite (click more to see the picture) Read more “Worst Long Haul Flight Ever”

A Weekend in Edinburgh

March 24, 2007 Patrick Travel

This week has gone by so fast that I haven’t had a chance to write about my last weekend that was spent in Edinburgh. Although I had been briefly there before on my last trip to Scotland, we didn’t do any sight seeing, so this trip was going to resolve that. I flew via BMI and ended up with a very early flight out of Heathrow on Saturday with a very late return on Sunday. Although it meant catching one of the earliest tubes along with all the people heading home from places like Turnmills and Fabric, it also meant a full day of walking around by the time I got there.

Edinburgh’s airport is not very far from the centre of the city, and many buses constantly move between the two places for a very reasonable £5. It took no time for me to get into the city and start to orient myself as I made way to the famous Edinburgh Castle. Along the way I found out that on Saturday’s they hold a farmer’s market well worth visiting. Fresh local produce, lots of meat and seafood and surprisingly, a stall that only sold porridge in a dozen or more flavours. It was a nice change for breakfast and made much more appropriate since it Edinburgh was cold and had very windy conditions.

My touring around Edinburgh started off around the famous Royal Mile that runs through the heart of the old city in Edinburgh. At one end is Edinburgh Castle that sits a top a formidable lookout, offering a great view of the surrounding area as well as playing host to the Scottish Crown Jewels and Sceptre. Lots of other attractions line the Royal Mile and are admittedly a little bit too touristy for me. At the other end of the Royal Mile is the Queen’s Gallery, Holyrood Palace and the Scottish House of Parliament. I didn’t go inside the gallery but people who enjoy David Attenborough should go see his exhibition there that looked quite interesting.

Overlooking all of these attractions at the other end of the mile is Arthur’s Seat – a mountainous lookout that looks back up towards the castle and is worth the walk. I followed a bunch of people who decided to go straight up, and had quite the struggle at times to make progress due to the violent winds. Between the lush grass that covers this mountain, you can see the trails worn from both the hikers and bikers who make it up and down the mountain.

Eating well in Edinburgh is not hard to do given the fresh produce available to them. I ate at two places I can highly recommend. One of them, The Grain Store serves quality Scottish fare and do a two or three course menu at reasonable prices. My meal started with a thick Jerusalem Artichoke soup drizzled with a little thyme-infused oil and served with fresh crusty bread and butter. It continued with pan seared pork belly, curly kale and wholegrain mustard that smelled deliciously sweet and had a good balance of saltiness with it. The decadent meal finished off with a very thin slice of an espresso and chocolate tart with espresso sabayon rich enough to finish off the meal but not heavy enough to send you to sleep.

The other great restaruant sits in the middle of the pedestrain-friendly Rose Street – The Mussel Inn who also have an outlet in Glasgow. Other than having a fully booked out restaurant at night, the friendly place run by an Australian maitre de, offers a wide variety of seafood. My guide book recommended the 1kg of mussels and with the five or six different flavours how could I resist.

Edinburgh’s a great place to visit and offers enough to do for the weekend for a relaxing weekend visit. Weather turns very quickly and with plenty of rain, it doesn’t hurt for the visitor to bring their umbrella. The rest of the pictures from my weekend are available here.

TheKua.com Rating: 8 out of 10

Andorran Skiing

March 20, 2007 Patrick Sport, Travel, UK Life

My latest skiing adventure was only the third time I’ve gone skiing and it just seems to get better and better. I’m a little bit worried though that this time we were so spoilt that it might make skiing back home less enjoyable. Overall the trip was fantastic and made even more fun since we went in a nicely sized group of eight. You can check out Stickfly’s review and Gerrod’s discussion to find out some different views.

There are many reasons I think we were spoilt on this particular holiday. The hotel we stayed in, the Sports Village Hotel was extremely nice – the rooms were big, the bathrooms very nice and the whole place was in a perfect location with the ski lift gondola two floors directly below our hotel. As a result it was extremely easy getting up the mountain in the morning. Better yet, at the end of the day you can ski right down the mountain (as fast as you want) and ski directly underneath the Gondola a few more floors down, keeping your commute time down even more. Attached to the hotel was a three storied sports wellness centre full of saunas, pools, spas, heat beds all of different heats. It was a must for every single member of our party at some time during the week and well worth the €30 for the three hours to drain the aches and pains of the week.

On top of that, despite the “worst season Andorra has ever seen” we managed to get two days of fresh snow, giving us a few days skiing on some lovely powder snow. Admittedly a number of the other days were painfully windy and slightly icy, but I think we were lucky with the snow that we did get.

I was happy that on my first day I managed to survive a red run since on my second time skiing, it took a couple of days to get my ski legs back on. By the end of the week, other than the fact I was extremely physically exhausted, we even had a small go at a few jumps and tried learning how to spin around skiing backwards and failing dismally at turning around facing forward again.
Amazingly despite the adventurous nature of some of our party members, no one came away with any major injuries with the most a bruised inflamed rib, and maybe a few sore shoulders, arms or legs.

Andorra is a great blast for people skiing though I can’t recommend it for a cultural trip since it seems to cater mainly for English tourists given the number of pubs and perfect resemblance of a high street, and for the Spanish and French locals with all menus pretty much in their native languages.

Thanks to Ben for organising it all and everyone else (Michelle, Gerrod, Kristy, John, Kirsten and Matt) for the fabulous company and great skiing/boarding.

It’s Only Been Just One Week On Holidays

March 11, 2007 Patrick Annoyances, General, Travel

I’ve been away for a week of skiing in Andorra and I’ve just spent the last hour or two fishing through the 120 built up emails in my gmail box, deleted the 150 or so spam emails in my work one, and then filtered another 200 or so work ones to determine which ones are worth catching up on. I haven’t even had a chance to hit my regular must read blogs, let alone catching up on my own entries. More to come though…

Whisky Adventures in Scotland

February 27, 2007 Patrick Travel, UK Life

Last week I took a couple of days off to trip up to Scotland with some friends to go on a Whiskey Tour of Scotland. We flew into Aberdeen to drive down to a postcard perfect farmhouse in Dufftown – a place surrounded by whiskey distilleries. Glenfiddich’s distillery lies not far from where we were staying though we hit a few other ones from Speyside (the greater area). Unlike the Islay whiskeys, Speyside ones tend to be less smokey and cleaner on the palette though newcomers to whiskey drinking will tell you they all taste the same.

Like most good tours through any brewery or distillery, at the end you get a sample of wares to try. The most impressive range was at the Abelour distillery that gives you six drams to test out at the end – including one small one of the still (the end result of the distillation process that has a stunning 70% alcohol content).

I really enjoyed the trip to Scotland. It has amazing scenery with rolling hills filled with trees, sheep, cows and horses. We ate some black pudding and haggis with breakfast, and even got to try the infamous (heart attack inducing) deep fried mars bar. Scottish people are extremely friendly and warm, making visiting all the places we visited all the more enjoyable. I even bought a bottle of whiskey that I found by the Dufftown Distillery distilled in the year and month of my birth. Scotland also has some fantastic produce with fresh fish, and hearty steaks and meat which means it’s really hard to not eat well.

A great trip with fantastic company – thanks Jason, Ali, Gavin, JK, Dave, Jake, Kate, Tom and Claire! You can check out a set of photos here.