No Fly July 2016
July 4, 2016
No fly July means no airplanes, no hotels, and a bunch of actual thinking. Maybe a dip or two in the river for good measure.
See you in August.
Richmond Rogues
June 11, 2016
OK OK, once again staying at a friend’s house, so no hotel to talk about, but after a day being trapped in a conference room in Tysons Corner, the swing over to The Rogue Gentlemen was a most welcome respite. We invaded by uber.
The Rogue Gentlemen
It being Negroni week, there was a Negroni round.
Ice program
And then there was a Paul Blumer special, which he calls a Sazarac # Infinity, and we call a High Octane Gasoline Sazarac.
1 oz Rittenhouse Rye
1 oz Calvados
Dash of honey syrup
4 dashes Peycahud’s
1 dash Angustora
Rinse the iced serving cup with Absinthe and Ardbeg 10. Serve up.
Anyway, swing on by ya’ll.
Hotel Marlowe and the Ungrateful Bast@%d
June 1, 2016
Spring Rose: Virginia
We left the Spring rose in Virginia for a short visit to Boston on Jet Blue and a quick overnight at our home away from home the Hotel Marlowe. All day meetings and dinner was interrupted by a quick cocktail with GM Joe Capalbo who runs a very tight ship. Joe was rewarded with slightly defrosted pork.
After a fantastic meal at the always great Cragie on Main we finally made it upstairs to 820, our very most favorite room on the property. Maybe we just like the word presidential??
Amenity in the presidential suite
But wait, what is this cocktail? The
Really?? LOL. Nobody suffers at the Marlowe. We can be ungrateful though!
This cocktail needs some adjustment into what we’ll call the Ungrateful Bast@%rd as follows:
1 oz cask strenth bourbon
1 oz Dolin’s dry vermouth
1 oz lemon
stir down. in an ice filled high ball, add Fever Tree ginger beer to the top.
Serve with a cheese plate.
No really, we’re actually very grateful!
820 has some new gear and some old gear. It is a gorgeous room.
Sleeping quarters
Sitting quarters
Bathing quarters
One of my favorite parts of visiting the Hotel Marlowe is the valet guys who I have come to know over the years. It is always nice to see them.
Marlowe circle art.
Is it green? Is it blue? who knows?
Fiver showerheads in perpetuity for the Hotel Marlowe (and some pork ribs xrayed by the TSA).
Bread Ovens, Hard Labor and Liquor in Ann Arbor
May 17, 2016
Perhaps this is a trend. Hopefully not! Anyway, NPS finds itself in another city not staying in a hotel. What?! The reason this time has to do with the rather appalling state of hotels in Ann Arbor. For example, these hotels.
There is still plenty of information that NPS readers can benefit from WRT Ann Arbor. So here it is.
First of all, there seems to be some kind of underground bread oven thing going on.
Bread oven
And, not following the Mason-derived construction rules can lead to hard labor.
Hard labor at the DPRK fu compound @DrKevinFu pic.twitter.com/77zUaAoF1r
— Gary McGraw (@cigitalgem) May 15, 2016
For a supremely good brunch (especially on a Sunday) try either location of Cafe Zola.
Now @cafe_zola pic.twitter.com/eZbkRTdZ5s
— noplasticshower (@noplasticshower) May 15, 2016
Excellent Cuban food can be found at Frita Batidos.
Finally, there are some reasonable cocktails to be had at Mash.
Sazarac @MashAnnArbor made by ellie pic.twitter.com/Hpt5600x5J
— noplasticshower (@noplasticshower) May 16, 2016
The Ravens Club has an outstanding bourbon and rye collection, including George T Stagg, Hirsch 74, and Thomas Handy.
Hirsch 74. @theravensclub pic.twitter.com/f9THIUM9uo
— noplasticshower (@noplasticshower) May 17, 2016
Thomas Handy rye @theravensclub pic.twitter.com/nLIY911Nq3
— noplasticshower (@noplasticshower) May 17, 2016
Ravens Club bar
Though dinner at Logan was truly outstanding in all respects (fantastic food, super bar, very good wine list, top notch service), we were left with a sour taste in our mouth when one of the owners (there are three) stopped the bar from providing us a recipe for a cocktail before heading out the door. Fuck that. In our view here at NPS, keeping recipes and techniques secret is the domain of children and assholes. Don’t be one.
Logan’s cute little bar
The attempt failed.
Here’s how to make a None More Black
1.5 oz black sesame infused blackstrap Cruzan rum
.75 oz cocchi americano apertivo
.5 oz root
Stir down, strain into coupe, express orange peel and balance.
The Last Word on a Tuesday
At the quasi-underground Last Word, we had a Last word (it was almost chartreuse day) (of course) and proceeded with a Rye and Bourbon lesson using the antique collection 2015 offerings. The Last Word is a great place to drink.
A Last Word at the Last Word
When visiting Ann Arbor, make sure not to be sentenced to three or more years of hard labor building a bread oven.
NPS was coming to the Cowper Inn in Palo Alto, CA well before there was even an NPS. Over twenty years and two owners! An lo and behold, repairs are underway this trip with all newly refinished floors, a completely reworked kitchen, and lots of ongoing repair work to the outside shingles. Things are looking good!
We did (apparently) have some trouble securing room 31, but in the end it all worked out. 31 has a new lighter feel with the refinished floor.
And it also has the best shower in the place in a spacious bathroom.
The facelift looks great so far!
But it is not done yet.
In any case, after 20+ years of staying here, it really feels like home. Five showerheads for the Cowper and its new look.
Umami burger on University serves up a mean truffle burger and truffled fries. Just do it!
Tamarine remains an outstanding restaurant. Great wine list and fabulous food. They have been so good for so long, that they’re likely to remain good indefinitely.
Lure+Till has a pretty good bar (but not as good as they think they are) which can conjur up a CR2 if necessary. Their drinks run on the sweet side. Sadly, the whole shebang seems to be owned by Larry Ellison.
Joanie’s Cafe is a great breakfast place in Palo Alto. Surprisingly, NPS has only just discovered it.
If you’re stuck in Mt View, Doppio Zero is a very good pizza place. The only amusing aspect is the Spanish speaking staff who pretend they speak Italian. For a nightcap, the Eureka! bar has a great bourbon selection (Gearge T Stagg and William Larue Weller 2015 for example), but you have to ignore the TVs and the noise.
The @Eureka_MV bar has great bourbon if you can overlook the noise and the TVs pic.twitter.com/Ar0pLhfayD
— noplasticshower (@noplasticshower) May 12, 2016
Virgin America was packed to the gills and felt way too much like United. Hmm.
Let’s Bitch About Annapolis and the Loews Annapolis Hotel
April 30, 2016
Are we spoiled at NPS? Why yes we are. We just got back from 20 days staying in one fantastic hotel after the other in London, Prague, Oslo, Paris, and back in London again. And we flew upper class on Virgin Atlantic. So yes, we are way f-ing spoiled.
And you know what? Annapolis sucks for hotels. You can choose old lady or you can choose chain (as witnessed below), but you can’t choose a B&B because they have an absurd two night limit. This town needs to scrap all existing hotels and start over. Kimpton, where are you?
So we find ourselves suffering from Prague-itis (just got some antibiotics for that) in the worst possible disaster of a situation for NPS.
Let the fun begin! As I am typing this at 9:34pm a wedding reception is going on downstairs. You can see it out of the window in the only superior suite on the property. In the atrium. In kind of a hyatt meets omni design disaster from the late ’70s.
Noise making room
The guys helping make the noise even have real things to bang on! The only saving grace is at least they are playing all classic rock. It’s like listening to FM radio.
They’re nice now, but we will hate them later
Room 241 is a “superior suite” in a “luxury” hotel. Neither term applies. Sorry guys, maybe in the ’70s.
Bedroom behind a divider
Living area separated by the divider
Um, design of some sort?
Desk thing
Then there is the NPS coup de grace, the worst kind of shower over tub plastic shower with an obesity bar to boot. Just the worst. We hate these showers.
This is a classic plastic shower. It sucks.
Obesity bar for Trump supporters
Plasticized curtain
Bathroom console
But there are things even worse than the plastic shower in the baby blue bathroom.
What the hell? Empty mini bars sitting by the wall.
Listen “luxury” hotel. People in “superior suites” should not pay $4 for water.
A hole in the divider. Nice.
This mirror on the closet thing. Brady bunch set?
So we will boogey on down to some bass and drums while the wedding people are still down there chirping or screaming or whatever it is they are doing. Yes, it is loud.
The thoughtful staff did send up a bottle of wine for us to drink ourselves to sleep with. LOL. That was nice. Thanks you guys.
Kind Wine
But no, we have to stick with a very low two showerhead rating anyway and a fervent hope that there is a power failure in about 3 minutes that knocks out the wedding reception in the atrium. Hmmm.
Sunday brunch at Harry Browne’s was very good and involved mimosas.
Annapolis, you’re such a cute town. Get a real hotel. No really, just do it!
As an appendix, we should state for the NPS record that management did what it could to remedy the situation we experienced in Annapolis. Good management makes a big difference.
As one small example, we needed some shirts pressed for a wedding and of course every single dry cleaner in the state capital of Maryland is closed on Sunday (including the one that the hotel outsources to). So management asked housekeeping to please press our shirts for us while we were talking to them about the other issues in this post. That was a far more creative solution than the front desk had come up with (which was more like, gee that’s a bummer). Adult supervision is a good thing.
Flying To and Around Europe
April 30, 2016
NPS flies all the time, and our current airline of choice is Virgin America. We’re sad about the upcoming merger with Alaska which will make yet another crap job of a platypus of an airline. Remember what happened to both United and Continental when they merged? Disaster. But that’s all domestic. We’re talking Europe in this post.
We aimed the points firehose at Virgin America this year and accumulated vast piles of points which we have cashed in to fly West for college looking and East to Europe. Getting a Virgin Atlantic ticket in upper class with Virgin America points was non-trivial but not that onerous.
NPS has flown Virgin Atlantic across the pond and back twice. Upper class does not suck.
Virgin Atlantic
Seat 4A on @VirginAtlantic A330-300. Nice pod. pic.twitter.com/OBGRZGS52c
— noplasticshower (@noplasticshower) April 9, 2016
The @VirginAtlantic upper class pod sector. pic.twitter.com/eB28ry1xv8
— noplasticshower (@noplasticshower) April 9, 2016
https://twitter.com/noplasticshower/status/718932118009733125
Our special ops NPS spy also flew upper class but 10 days later.
Loving my pre-boarding "snack" of chicken curry and Hefeweizen @VirginAtlantic @noplasticshower pic.twitter.com/4bjioiljIv
— notyou (@AmyBarley) April 20, 2016
Lufthansa
Internally, after some nice train rides (including the Disney Eurostar to Lille), it was back in the air for Frankfurt to Prague. Being a Star Alliance Gold member does not do diddly for seating on Lufthansa.
Seat 12A on @lufthansa A320-200 hop. No biz upgrade for so-called @staralliance gold. Thanks! pic.twitter.com/MDuugcpczp
— noplasticshower (@noplasticshower) April 19, 2016
When in Frankfurt there is always a large chance of bus.
Oh great @lufthansa bus time. pic.twitter.com/PTSskh6zUy
— noplasticshower (@noplasticshower) April 20, 2016
KLM
To get from Prague to AMS, we flew KLM which was very Dutch about the whole thing. Most uncomfortable flight of the entire trip.
This is the most uncomfortable flight I have been on temperature-wise in years @KLM. Unacceptable. Fix your aircraft.
— noplasticshower (@noplasticshower) April 24, 2016
The worst bit is that @KLM already knew about the problem. Max heat for 20 minutes is absurd.
— noplasticshower (@noplasticshower) April 24, 2016
@noplasticshower That doesn't sound too good. Thank you for your feedback. We appreciate it. Which flight were you on? We are all ears.
— KLM (@KLM) April 24, 2016
Flight 1350 from prague. Known non-safety mechanical issue with HVAC. @KLM
— noplasticshower (@noplasticshower) April 24, 2016
The AMS hop was not much better, but the seating mistake was our fault.
Super fantastic use of seat guru (not) lands us 14C on @KLM b737-900 pic.twitter.com/GEr3vOdZQ0
— noplasticshower (@noplasticshower) April 24, 2016
It was nice to get to Oslo and find some modern world again.
Modern tranportation. Fast train from oslo airport into the city. @AmyBarley pic.twitter.com/l9ujwh6DpB
— noplasticshower (@noplasticshower) April 24, 2016
We ended up in Bergen via train.
SAS
Complex scheduling craziness ended up with SAS from Bergen feeding Air France. Avoid this complexity even if it costs more cash.
Seat 11B on @SAS b737-600. 11A has lots of legroom. pic.twitter.com/3oBcm9ntqy
— noplasticshower (@noplasticshower) April 26, 2016
Air France
Then it was Oslo to Paris on Air France, which just plain sucked. The flight was fine, but they lost one of our key bags for 4 days. When they found it, we were already back in the states. Amazing that it took Air France so long to rectify their mistake. They’ll be paying for some clothing and for the very expensive VAT refunds we could not get when we left London since the goods were not with us. Big fail Air France, you are now off the list.
https://twitter.com/noplasticshower/status/724971027940315136
Because @airfrance sucks and has not located the suitcase they lost (2 days ago), shopping in paris. pic.twitter.com/A3hRrmYETz
— noplasticshower (@noplasticshower) April 27, 2016
More shopping since NO WORD AT ALL from crappy @airfrance. https://t.co/xFAMntK5Ji pic.twitter.com/9tN4tGe8Hq
— noplasticshower (@noplasticshower) April 28, 2016
Virgin Atlantic
After 20 days in Europe and perhaps just a few too many cocktails the night before, it was back home on an 8 hour flight from London. Upper class continues not to suck.
Access to the Virgin Atlantic Club comes along with an upper class ticket as does an interesting checkin procedure at Heathrow.
The @VirginAtlantic upper class lounge in london six minutes late for breakfast pic.twitter.com/chVgyE6jHs
— noplasticshower (@noplasticshower) April 29, 2016
.@VirginAtlantic upper class pod 2A on an A330-300. Ok way to spend 8 hours. pic.twitter.com/6haFKYcVjx
— noplasticshower (@noplasticshower) April 29, 2016
The Zetter Townhouse is our favorite boutique hotel in London. We’ve been many times. One last night in London before flying home in the very swanky upper class on Virgin Atlantic rounded out the twenty day trip.
Room eleven got a workout this time when the bathtub was actually used!
Now paging Mr noplasticshower. Noplasticshower line one. No wait, that's a @ZetterTownhouse faucet. pic.twitter.com/xbKQyTvlyE
— noplasticshower (@noplasticshower) April 28, 2016
But by far the most fun was hanging out by the cat in the bar until all hours. Much fun was had.
The @ZetterTownhouse cat pic.twitter.com/bG9cMkXAKq
— noplasticshower (@noplasticshower) April 28, 2016
Pyromania @ZetterTownhouse (never ending story a la @thesavoylondon) pic.twitter.com/guFzFk6G6A
— noplasticshower (@noplasticshower) April 29, 2016
Super time @ZetterTownhouse last night pic.twitter.com/uwWDXBSmMV
— noplasticshower (@noplasticshower) April 29, 2016
Five showerheads and a long recovery over the ocean for the Zetter Townhouse and it’s fine bar.
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