A Little Ludwig Goes A Long Way

Just back from a stay in West Hollywood. Stayed at Le Parc Suites. I think this place had its best moments 10 years ago. Not terrible, the service levels were good, the street is nice, but the facility is aging and probably wasn’t great to start with.

From walking around, where we should have stayed (kitchen a requirement):
* Palihouse. Looks very cool and good kitchens. Not as nice a street location as Le Parc but looks way awesomer.
* Petit Ermitage. Also full kitchens.

Close but lacking a real kitchen:
* LeMontrose Suite Hotel. Kitchenette type facilities
* Chamberlain. Kitchenette as well in some rooms

• Urth Cafe — sandwiches, salads, coffee, tea, breakfast too, and open at dinner time. Nice baked goods too
• Bravo Pizza
• Cha Cha Chicken — WAY better than the website. A favorite
• Lula Mexicana — good authentic mexican. I am always a sucker for tamales
• Shoop’s Deli. Solid sandwich and salad fare, closed at dinner
• Bergamot Station — good collection of galleries, easy to walk around
• The Bridge Cinema. Ok not in Santa Monica at all, in Culver City, nice high end theatre. Reserved seating which is cool.

• Brett on Stuff » Distilleries of Scotland. A reason to hike Scotland
• WOW — stronger authentication than your bank. What does that say about the world.
• Running DC thru the house. An idea whose time has come again?
• Indie games DB. Often way better than mainstream games
• Guided Bullets. Why not.
• Thingiverse. Kind of an open source design site.
• Denhaus — awesome pet furniture
• Nitrogen-infused golf clubs. Golfers will buy anything.
• Dutch 5 Euro coin. Awesome, wish I could order. Not the first time I have been blocked from ordering a euro product, wish I could sign up for a forwarding PO box in Europe.
• Mini Magnetosphere. Maybe we all need one of these

Looking for a place.  Homeaway, VacationRentals, Vacation Rental By Owner, OnlyInLaguna, SBBeachRentals, ParadiseRetreats seem to have bunches of listings.  Lots of overlap, obviously owners crosslist anywhere they can.

10 Amazing Hotels With Ultra Stylish Minimalist Designs — these all look fun.

USC Trojans vs Ohio State Buckeyes Football Tickets [9/13/2008] at StubHub! — stubhub seems to have the best selection.

El Gato Azul :: 316 W. Goodwin St. Prescott AZ :: — awesome tapas place with great margaritas and a great creekside location with indoor or outdoor dining. live music. we had a great time. PS Google Maps and Hertz EverLost both have the wrong location for this restaurant. 316 West Goodwin is right — about a block and a half west of town square on Goodwin.

Residence Inn Prescott: Spacious suites and amenities for longer stays — this place is amazing. I’ve stayed in a number of Residence Inns, this one is fairly new and has great furnishings, interesting room designs, full set of services. Amazingly nice, much much nicer than the typical Residence Inn

Maui Hotels: Fairmont Kea Lani – Maui Seaside Hotel at Polo Beach — okay this place is stupidly expensive and they nickel and dime you to deal (except of course nothing costs a nickel here, they $10 and $20 you to death). But…they have amazing support for people with food allergies — they strictly adhere to an ingredients list you provide, use dedicate pots and pans, your food is cooked by a sous or head chef, served by a manager, the assistant head of food service will meet with you daily to discuss menus, etc etc. Really an amazing service and has made it possible for us to stay here — recommended if you have a food allergy or allergies to deal with. And when I travel in the future, I will ask hotels if they have an equivalent program.

Rules governing up at NWA, Hawaiian Air, UPS. Not that complicated as long as you stay under 2 kilos of dry ice. And you want some sort of insulated box, Washington Packaging has one type of box.

The World’s Creepiest Places in Parties  Holidays on Concierge.com — look like my kind of vacations

World Heritage Centre – World Heritage List — good resource for next trip, places i really should see

Some of these look fun…

• Welcome to The Society of International Railway Travelers (IRT) — luxury trains, rail tours
• The California Native — particularly the Copper Canyon trips

From Dave, Wide Open Baja — 4-7 day tours of Baja in off road cars.

for an extended stay — need a kitchen in particular. Woodfin Suite Hotel, a premier all-suite hotel in Dublin, Ohio looks like a reasonable choice. Not that far from the Whole Foods in Columbus which is a plus.

Good thanksgiving at The Boulders Resort & Golden Door Spa — maybe not the best family resort in the world, but their service was impeccable, the weather was great, we had a good time. They especially did a great job delivering a Thanksgiving meal to our casita.

We had a great weekend. Some people that made it possible:

• Paraclete Charter Service – Your charter and ferry service to the San Juan Islands, Washington
• Everyone at Greene Partners — great job on our place. Just a great design at every level that really worked for us, and super people who helped us with so much more.
• Jennifer Randall & Associates — also a great job on our place. Everything from broad schemes to little details were just awesome, and again great people.
• Ravenhill Construction — also a great job on our place. The workmanship, fit and finish were all great.
• On-Site Island Services — super job getting everything ready
• Vita’s — awesome takeout and a nice wine recommendation
• Alwyn at Rhythm Auto Repair — provided us with wheels, very appreciated.

Can’t wait to get back.

Early look at some stuff for next summer — Minnesota Vacation Rentals – VRBO? is Vacation Rentals by Owner Minnesota – Minnesota Hotels, Minnesota Lodging, Minnesota Travel and Tourism — Ely rentals — Grand Ely Lodge — Superior charters

UPDATE: homeaway.com from today’s wsj is another site. Also lakeplace

Haven’t had much opportunity to travel in the last year but hopefully will get the chance to do so. In the meantime there are some trips I am dying to take and I might as well collect all the links so I can quickly organize when I get the chance.

I’ve been dying to go to Chile for many years now. The natural beauty really calls to me. The highlight of my trip will be an Earth River expedition in Patagonia. This pretty much pins the trip to the Chilean summer months — December thru March.

Certainly I’ll want to spend time before or after the river in and around Santiago — some online guides:

• NYtimes
• ContactChile
• CIA factbook on Chile
• Consular Information Sheet from the state department
• Fodor’s, World Travel Guide, TripAdvisor

And then probably will want to get out of Santiago and see one other part of the country…not sure where…maybe should stay in Lake District a while at end of rafting trip tho maybe I’d be all watered out at that point? Or maybe Valparaiso and Vina del Mar in central Chile — here is one guy’s idea of an itinerary. Easter Island would be a fascinating choice too but that just doesn’t feel to me like really getting to know Chile. Maybe the wine district — stay at Termas Jahuel.

Rich finds some great places to visit in BC. I hear King Pacific Lodge is nice too. And Eaglenook might be fun.