b-kpf

gleff you're such a tease!

gleff

About to post more... promise!

SMART51

Hello Gleff

I enjoy eading your report. Nice pictures again.

On your return do try this place, it has the best Peking duck i have tasted and i have tried few around the world.
http://www.pekinggourmet.com/
Waiting for more.

gleff

Thanks, that is indeed good Peking Duck. The rest of the food is stndard chinese restaurant fare. But good duck ^

Ben Ell

but more importantly, you can also bungy jump.

Highest in the world at ~233 metres. I've jumped 134 metres a couple of times and that is incredible (3rd highest in the world, 8-9 seconds top to bottom, long enough for you to take in whats happening around you), just need to find a little bit of time to get to Macau to do this one.


Enjoying the TR so far, can't wait for the Fat Duck report

gleff

I had hoped to add another segment to the report this weekend, but... but.. Will get there, promise !

baggageinhall

I'm going to the Fat Duck on Saturday. Which will I see first, the Gleff version or my own?

gleff

Magic 8 Ball? Unclear...

Jetboy

i cant bare it! more more more!

SMART51

We wait and wait and wait. As a penalty next time i am in DC you are inviting me to dinner at the above mentionned place. Fair warning, i eat a lot

gleff

After our last complimentary 'all you can order off the menu' breakfast, we said goodbye to the Westin. I had a bit of a confusing interaction with the front desk over the bill, but it was minor. I should have had complimentary internet, but they charged for two days' worth. When I asked about this they explained that their system offered two speeds, the slower internet was free, I had selected the faster option.

Now, I'm confident that I didn't do that, as I guessed that they might charge for the faster speed, I didn't really need it, and I didn't feel like asking. But they initially stood their ground. As did I, and they removed it from my bill.

Rather than taking the hotel's free shuttle, I opted to hang around an extra 15 minutes or so and ordered up a cab so that I could leave at my leisure. Couldn't have been more than $10. And we quickly arrived at the ferry dock.

Once again I was glad to be riding the ferry in Super Class, if only not to have to wait in any lines (not to mention the extra baggage allowance, though I didn't see them enforcing restrictions in the next line over).

We quickly had our tickets and proceeded through passport control. There were a couple of tours departing at the same time we were, and I still wonder why everyone but me had a 'Turbojet' lapel sticker. But we were through immigration quickly, we went straight to our ferry gate as we had timed things rather closely. And we... waited. The boat was a bit late coming in from the airport and then they needed a few minutes to freshen it up before returning. They boarded quickly, we proceeded upstairs and had our seats.





Almost immediately after departure we were handed our snack trays which were strikingly similar to the ones we had on the way over, same tuna fish and all. The waters were really rough and there were a few gutwrenching waves, but after 45 minutes we had safely arrived at the airport.





Straight to the transfer desk, they issued boarding passes and keyed in our luggage tags that we received in Macau, then to the booth for a refund of airport taxes as hadn't entered Hong Kong but American Airlines didn't know that when issuing our tickets, and then through transit security and on to the Wing. Sadly I wouldn't visit The Pier this trip, as again our flight was departing from a gate near the Wing and that's also where we were clearing security. I couldn't imagine that the Pier was going to be worth the long trek, so we simply settled into our familiar surroundings.

I visited The Haven, first class dining area of the Wing, and boy was it packed! So I took a plate from the buffet back to the open seating area overlooking the gates and an attendant followed with napkins and silverware for me. Another attendant quickly came by to offer beverages. And my wife visited the noodle bar.



Then we just relaxed until it was time to board for London and we had to leave the peace and quiet of the lounge. The gate area was a madhouse for our full 747 to Heathrow. They board business and first class together, but once we made it into the first class cabin all was peaceful. They were expecting (and had) a completely full flight, but even with nine out of nine seats occupied it never felt crowded. In fact sitting in the Cathay Pacific First Seat, in row 1, you rarely notice that there's anyone else in the cabin.

It was time for the very familiar service routine.. predeparture beverage and towel, menus, nuts and another beverage after takeoff, orders taken and the first meal begins.







Here's the menu for the flight:
<BLOCKQUOTE>
LUNCH

Caviar and Balik
Caviar and Balik salmon "Tsar Nicolaj"

International Favourites
Lobser Bisque

Mesclun salad with asparagus, sun-dried tomato and Balsamic vinaigrette

Grilled beef tenderloin with gratin potato, asparagus and baby carrots
Or
Pesto totellini with tomato sauce and pine nuts

Chinese Favourites
Pork soup with winter melon and dried duck gizzard

Cold plate - deep fried sea bass with sweet vinegar dressing

Prawn butterfly wrapped with bean curd skin
Or
Braised duck with onion sauce

Served with steamed jasmine rice, stir-fried asparagus, pepper and shimeji mushrooms

Cheese and Dessert
Forme d'Ambert, Manchego, Arenberger, French Brie

Fresh berries and ginger syrup

Cherry clafoutis cake with vanilla ice cream and raspberry coulis

Black sesame soup

Tea and coffee

Pralines

SNACKS
Beef skewer with salad and capsicum relish

Assorted sandwiches

Ice cream

From our series of classic Signature dishes
Shrimp wontons with noodle in soup
Szechuenese dan dan noodle in soup

DINNER

Starter
Seasonal fresh fruit

Main courses
Pan-fried cornfed chicken with rosemary, grilled new potatoes, French beans, capsicum and mushrooms

Steamed cod fillet in preserved olive, steamed jasmine rice and stir-fried broccoli

Mushroom and garlic agnolotti with basil tomato concasse and mixed mushrooms

Cheese and Dessert
Cambozola, Comte, Double Gloucester, Chaumes

Selected pastries

Tea and Coffee

Pralines
</BLOCKQUOTE>

Once again I opted to dine with my wife, I took the buddy seat in her suite and they installed a table extender. This time even the Chinese meal wasn't quite as good, and I had already learned to always opt for the Chinese choices on Cathay. Ultimately I wasn't overly impressed by the cuisine -- it was perfectly adequate, nothing was bad, but not at all impressive in the way that ANA and Asiana offer.

First, a little welcoming note. Though the flight attendant forgot to sign it! (She remembered on my wife's.)



Then lunch.













After a filling 'adequate' meal it was time to relax. I changed into my pajamas (and learned better than to take a large this time!) while a flight attendant made my bed.





I relaxed with a few classic movies before drifting to sleep. I woke up maybe 5 hours outside of London and decided to have a snack instead of taking the second meal (which really didn't especially appeal based on the menu).

I had the beef skewers and the dan dan noodle soup, the flight attendant suggested that she might add wontons to it and I accepted.





An hour or so from arrival I filled out our immigration cards, slipped them into our passports along with our fast track invitations, and as soon as we landed we were ready to go! Second in line at immigration after the long trek through Heathrow and out of the airport rather quickly, on to the Waldorf Hotel and the Fat Duck Restaurant!

beta1607

Can't wait to read the rest!

gleff

Last November, after my stay at the Prince de Galles in Paris, I decided that I would always endeavor to pick a hotel in a major European city that had an executive lounge.

Now, the Euro has been falling relative to the dollar in recent weeks (oh, those profligate Greeks, Portugese, and Spaniards, you make the Italians look fiscally responsible!). But Europe is just really hard on my wallet, and a lounge there yields especially good value -- for my morning coffee, for breakfast, for access to water. I'll never 'get' Europeans who don't drink water and no I'm not willing to chug multiple bottles of marked-up Evian over lunch every day.

So I decided to burn some Hilton points for London, and as a Diamond I had heard that the executive lounge at the Waldorf Hotel was perfectly reasonable.

For such a short stay - only two nights - in London, I was also pretty location-sensitive and the Waldorf fit the bill.



In the future if I were going to be having lunch at the Fat Duck the day after arriving in London, I'd probably just grab a hotel at Heathrow for the first night -- since Bray is on the wrong side of the airport relative to Central London -- and then change hotels. But I did both nights at the Waldorf.

I wasn't impressed with the place relative to other hotels I've stayed in, or stayed in on this trip. But it fit the bill for a major European city where I could use points and save cash.

It's the archetypical 'once-nice' property that lives on the past glory of its reputation. It's clearly a four rather than five-star hotel. An aging physical plant, and it's way too much a Hilton to be truly nice. Just as the stylized "Hilton Breakfast" brochures in the room felt out of place on Cebu in the Philippines, they felt out of place for an ostensibly luxury European hotel. The generic sunrise graphic just seems to smash any sense of place, making it seem as though I could be at any generic Hilton Garden Inn in the middle of flyover country in the U.S.

Had I been in the US I would have felt like I was in a tiny room, but I clearly received an upgrade as a Diamond in this older European property. There was an entryway before reaching the bedroom, the bedroom wasn't tiny, and it had two closets as well:





There was a hallway between the bedroom and the bathroom that housed a desk:



The bathroom was small but functional.





.. though it wasn't especially well designed. The glass shield didn't do a good job keeping water off the floor in the bathroom. It also made the shower/tub combo feel especially narrow. A curved shower rod and curtain would go a long way in this tub to let one stretch out. Further the showerhead was immobile which meant I had to be directly underneath it, between the wall and the glass, and couldn't stretch out behind the end of the glass. That said, given the shower design this was an important feature rather than flaw -- otherwise even more water would get onto the floor. And the most annoying feature? The bubbling up of the bottom of the tub, I felt like I sas surfing in the shower as the floor popped beneath my feet. Then there was the loud noise from the pipes when flushing the toilet...

I never visited the lounge in the evening so can't speak to their canapé offerings. But the space is nice enough, and breakfast fairly abundant with both hot and cold offerings.









The one thing the lounge especially lacked from my perspective was bottles of non-carbonated water that I might take with me. The hotel did provide one big bottle in the room each day, but my biggest need besides breakfast and coffee out of a lounge is access to water. But fortunately there was a market across the street where I could pick up as many bottles as I wished perfectly inexpensively.

gleff

Ok, still to come (finally!) The Fat Duck Restaurant, BA F LHR-YYZ, then the Sheraton YYZ and returning home to DC..

l etoile

Very much enjoying your report. And as this post should close up page 4, you can add the next installment.