noplasticshowers

Rochester, NY, yes indeedy. I haven’t been here since 4th grade when I lived here for six months. Rochester is in many ways like a big city without the traffic.

The Inn on Broadway was built in 1929. It is an interesting place. On my first visit, they gave me an equally interesting room (number 301). Awesome shower.

The non-plastic shower has its own bench and way too much room.

View from the shower.

The room is nicely appointed as well (but as usual in these ancient places could use some more outlets).

Comfortable bed with a fireplace.

The sitting area exists between the bed and the big giant hot tub.

Sitting area with extra mirror.

The piece de resistance: giant hot tub.

Big giant hot tub.

A foray into mixology in Rochester met with limited success. The Solera Wine bar has an associated speakeasy upstairs called Cheshire. They have no web presence, phone number, or publicity. Sadly, they are only open Thursday, Friday, and Saturday which you can only find out when you go to Solera and ask. But their menu looks great. Gotta get back there. I also heard that Lento has a very good bar too. Found out they are closed on Monday just like Cheshire.

The good news is there is a bottle of Eagle Rare 17 in stock at the hotel bar at Inn on Broadway and they are willing to turn off the TV.

Some flies in the Inn on Broadway ointment are worth ranting about. The breakfast spread desperately needs help. Sure, I like Frosted Mini Wheats, but I also like using a real bowl instead of a plastic container. And espresso? Not in this hotel. Maybe Sanka or Taster’s Choice. Finally, the interweb tubes are clogged at the Inn, sporadic at best and no throughput when you can bind. I had to leave the hotel this morning to get some work done. That sucks.

Because of the flies, we will award the Inn on Broadway only three shower heads. Lets see if any of these things improve before I return in November.

On the plus side, the particularly bad breakfast at the Inn forced me to discover the delightfully quirky Java’s Cafe with well-crafted espresso, real net, and the most sawdust-flavored bran muffin ever created in the universe.

Other noteworthy stuff in Rochester: the Abilene where I enjoyed some supremely bad live music (turns out John Lennon is hard) and a fun but sporadic bartender who throughout the night made 2 good drinks (Moscow Mule), 1 disaster (a lame attempt at an unmeasured Nevada), and 1 watered down mess of a copy of the two good drinks. Last note of the good: the BBQ at Dinosaur Barbque sure beats the terrible Hyatt food.