Work and Mardi Gras...NOLA Bound!

I had a chance to go back to the city of New Orleans and work back in March. I had not been there in several years, pre hurricane actually, and was rather excited about going back. What I was not excited about was driving a box truck down there from Indiana and all the hassles that go with a truck. Not to mention we had back to back events right in the middle of Mardi Gras. It created so many extra headaches and delays. My frustration level was at a very high level.

I did notice on this trip that the city was cleaner than I remember. And there were a lot less panhandlers. Both are good things. But for Mardi Gras time, it seemed rather tame compared to what I have witness in the past. Though it was very cold and rainy most of the week and I did the majority of my drinking during the day on my down time and far away from the French Quarter where I was working. However, if people want to expose themselves to the populous for cheap beads then I say let 'em. I will always take a look at boobs.

view from my room at Roosevelt Hotel

The first work week was at the historic Roosevelt Hotel, which is just a couple of blocks from Bourbon street. It was a long week for the two man crew. But we, as always, preserved and made the client happy with the AV portion of the event.  I love the architecture of this hotel, but it a pain in the ass to work in for a conference. And the capper of it was the last night, after we loaded the truck and was ready to drive it back to the convention center parking area, the streets were shut down due to the parade. It was after 1am before I was able to move the box truck.

I had a few days off before the next event moved in. Unfortunately I could not find any reasonable hotels downtown being the big weekend before Mardi Gras. I reserved a room up in Metarie and stayed there for the weekend. I did make a trip to the French Quarter on Saturday to met up with a friend who came into town for the weekend. Nothing like drinking at 9am! When you are hitting up the Absinthe Bar before noon, you know it will be an interesting day.

My friend Burke had never been to NOLA. So we walked around, drank, and ate all day. Caught a part of parade too. But as more people flocked around and darkness neared, I felt it was time for me to head back north to my hotel.

During these down days I managed to make it to some unique spots like the Avenue Pub (a famous craft beer bar), Stein's Market & Deli (great deli sammys & very good bottled beer selection), Jackson Square, all around the French Quarter popping in and out of bars.

one of the daily parades

 The second week saw us down at the Riverside Hilton. So much easier to have the truck on site and not have to fight through traffic. Especially since load in was on Fat Tuesday. Again, another long week but successful event. Even managed to get out the hotel a couple of nights to find some more eateries. Happy clients are great for business but even more than that our company (I can say that because Markey's is now employee owned) wants to form partnerships with every one we work for. Enough of the business plug.

I've always loved Creole style cooking and ate plenty of it on this trip. Now we had to take another off day in order drive back to Indiana. We camped out in Slidell at a hotel and did not do much of anything. The journey home was long and eventually filled with snow. I am hating this winter.

the muddy waters of the Mississippi

New Orleans is a fascinating and unique city in America. A person is bound to be charmed by what it has to offer. If only I could have spend a little more time exploring. Guess it's a good thing I will heading back next month for Wrestlemania.





Observation of An Illogical mind by Sean Kimmel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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San Diego Sunshine!

Back in January I had the opprotunity to out to San Diego and work for a week. This was second trip out there. And though I have yet to really explore outside the Gaslamp District, this one of my favorite cities. A place I would move to if the right opprotunity presented itself. In the meantime, send me here to work often. Especially in the winter months.

My time spent here consited of a lot of long days. However I did manage to get out and enjoy some great food and beers in the area.

The Local Eatery and Pub - Good food and nice beer selection. A friendly bartender made it a point for a little conversation even though the place was packed.

Neighborhood - An awesome selection (including Pliny the Elder on tap) and gret atomosphere. The place filled up quickly and I am glad to have found a spot nestled up at the bar.

Hopping Pig Gastro Pub - Extremely good food and another place with a great selection of craft beer

So that was basically my wrap up to San Diego this time around. Soon I am going to take a real vacation out there to explore.





Observation of An Illogical mind by Sean Kimmel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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My Filipino Tour: Manila (again)

We had a two hour, basicly non-stop ride to the bus terminal in Manila. We drove right through the heart of Quezon City and Manila where I really able to view this large and populated city.

We got dropped off a few blocks from our accomodations for the evening, The Heritage Hotel. I had to lug my big ass suitcase down the sidewalk and up the over pass. It was a pain in the ass.

Upon arrival we were lucky they had a room ready. It was on noon. We had trouble deciding on how to spend the afternoon. I was very indecisive and not feeling well. And P didn't really care what we did. So we ended up back at the SM Mall of Asia for lunch at a Japanese Tempura restaurant. We walked around and then went back to the hotel.

A cople of hours later decided to go to the Global Beer Exchange. A neat little shop that serves and sells craft beers from the Philippines, which has a small but budding scene, and other craft from around the globe. It was a neat little place. I tried a local Fat Pauly's Pale Ale, a Hitachino from Japan, and grabbed a local brew to bring home.

With my beer craving content, we walked around and found a place to eat dinner. Another good meal consisting of sising. Then it was back to the hotel.
 
Early morning came and we jumped in a taxi. P wanted to come with me to the airport. I was dropped off at Terminal 2. We said our goodbyes and P left for the bus terminal. I breezed through security. Take note, there is a 550P exit fee to leave the country. About an hour later, I was on my full flight to Tokyo.

I had a five hour Layover in Japan. I walked away the terminal mindless for a couple of hours. Then waited. Eventually board the very packed plane for a twelve hour flight to Dallas. A very angry baby cried almost the entire trip. My headphones could not drown out the noise. Poor kid.

After landing in Dallas it took about an hour to get through Customs. Not bad really as I expected longer. I had a couple of hour layover so I grabbed food and a beer. Eventually boarded my plane for Fort Wayne. A couple of hours later we landed. I grabbed my luggage and drove home.

I was exhausted.

I was happy, for more than one reason, about my trip.





Observation of An Illogical mind by Sean Kimmel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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My Filipino Tour: Angeles City

After a long eight hours of slow, stop and go travel on the bus we arrived in Angeles City around 10pm and in the middle of a huge festival. The Mint Hotel said the street in front of the hotel, a main city street, was closed off and they would send a driver. About an hour later he arrived and it took another hour to get back to the hotel. The traffic was insane.

While we waited P insisted I tried ballut, which is a hard boiled fertilized duck or chicken egg. I have seen it eaten on television shows before and new exactly what it was. For me it's a mental picture of little half formed fetus which gets me queasy. But I tried it. The egg is full of warm broth which is tasty and the egg itself is decent too. Luckily mine did not have any little bones or peak. I ate it. Not sure I would again.

 After getting checked into the room we wondered out in the crowd to check out the festival. It was a madhouse. Wall to wall people walking and sitting with drinks and food. Several sound stages were set up about half block, each playing different music. When you wasn't directly in front of a speaker the sounds all blurred together. We managed to find a seat and ordered grilled chicken intestines and hearts, hot dogs (which are huge favorite in the country), and a pitcher of the national beer San Miguel.

Around 4am I woke up and could still hear the music blasting. I peaked outside the window to find more than a few people still carrying on the party. About 7am, I woke up again and looked outside the window. Almost everything was torn down and the street was open once again. I was impressed.

P is from one of the suburbs of Angeles. She claimed there isn't many sites to see and not much to do in the city. I think she was right. We walked around to find a place to eat lunch and stumbled about "Walking Street". It's the area where where lots of strip clubs and bars which cater to bar girls (prostitutes) can be found. Even before noon people can be seen hustling, trying to get you inside the doors. I saw lots of old men, mainly Aussies, which very young Filipina girls.The majority of the city's tourism seems to be based off these bar girls. It's accepted and tolerated but not really discussed. And being white skinned and walking around with a Filipina woman, who for the record is close to my age, I felt a lot of strange looks upon me the entire time in the city. Maybe I just imagined it because the situation there is rather sad. It's a poor country overall. And lots of young women with little skills thinking the only way out is to get an older Westerner with money. Or just any older man with money to take them away.

We ate light and walked around some more. Did a little shopping at the grocery. Went back to the hotel to relax. Neither of us got much sleep due to the festival. That night we ate the Shanghai China restuarant across the street. Pretty good food. We had lumpia, crab-corn chowder, and pork adobo. Walking around the busy streets with full bellies, we both decided to call it an early night. Back to the hotel we went.

The next day, P needed to run home. I stayed at the hotel and chilled out. When she returned, we decided to go to the SM Clark Mall to waste time in the afternoon. So we hopped one of many colorful jeeepney's (an elongated jeep used for transportation) and took the short ride. 

The mall was very busy. Then it occurred to me that malls in the Philippines are different. It's a place for family and friends to go spend time together. The bigger groceries, pharmacies, and hardware stores are at the mall so one needs to come here more often. Plus in a country with near 90 degree humid heat year round, it's a good place to get under the air conditioning and get cooled off. Little known fact - three of the largest malls in the world are located in this country.

We walked around talking and joking around. We decided to eat lunch at a buffet so I could try many different Filipino foods. Most of what I sampled was delicious. With full bellies once again, we walked around some more until we had had enough and caught a jeepney back to the hotel.

That night we ate late at a pizza place called Yellow Cab. It was decent, not spectacular pizza. Also had pistachio ice cream for dessert, which was very good.



The next morning I woke up with one last day before heading back to the US. We had breakfast and checked out of the Mint Hotel. Which is a decent hotel for a good price. It seems to be more of family oriented and business hotel than one where a good percentage of the clients are bringing in bar girls.

Off to the bus terminal we headed as P decided to join me on my last day Manila. Thankfully, this bus ride was under two hours.





Observation of An Illogical mind by Sean Kimmel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://www.seankimmel.com.
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My Filipino Tour: Vigan

After exiting the bus and getting to the hotel, My Vigan Home Hotel, we had a couple of hours to walk around the city of Vigan. We had traveled far enough south that the rain had stopped. it was hot and sunny. Vigan City is a tourist town with lots of Spanish infleunce remaining (especially in the architecture) and Catholic symbolism. The main spot where this can be seen is called Heritage Village.

Lots of little shops, eateries, and very neat looking, old buildings. Nuch historical wonderment can be found. The Spanish influence here reminded a lot of the US Southwest. Vigan is also known for empanadas, bibingka (a sweet pastery), and longinissa (a small breakfasst sausage). We stopped and ate each of these items on our walk around the area.

 Afte a few hours, we had a light dinner and retired for the evening. The hotel we stayed out is fairly famous. Apparantly it was on old church and it gets a lot Filipino celebrites. I thought the hotel was decent for decent price, but over all I was not too impressed. They do serve a good breakfast.

We had some time in the morning before check out  and decided to check out a couple of other spots. The first was the free zoo called Baluarte. A short trike drive and we were there.

The zoo was moderately busy. And they had a good amount of animals, though some appeared a little ragged and unhealthy. I guess that the nature of being a free to the public zoo. Not a bad place to spend time and I would recommed as there are a few animals I have never seen before.

 After a couple of hours we headed to the next destination called Hidden Garden. It's a really neat place. A free garden to tour with many different plants species available to purchase. There is an awesome bonsai tree section. Plus lots of other trees, a few caged birds and lizards, and a restaurant. I really enjoyed this place.

We headed back to hotel and gathered our belongings and made a trike trip to the bus terminal. Vigan turned out to be one of the best places visited on the trip and I am glad P made the suggestion. We both had a lot of fun here.

Now it wa time to catch the bus to Angeles City, which is P's hometown. This was another, long and slow bus ride. In total about 8 hours and it was mainly because of the constant stopping in all the small towns for passengers to get on and off. One must have patient for the Phillipine transit system.

It was late when we arrived in Angeles City. And in the middle of a huge celebration....












Observation of An Illogical mind by Sean Kimmel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://www.seankimmel.com.
Please feel free to share the link but contact me for any other uses or publication. Thanks.