The same breakfast as before, only as we were at prime time
we were reduced to picking up our food in the regular room
cafeteria-style and moving it to the restaurant next door.
One does eat a bit less under this system, I admit.

We'd mulled over the possibilities for exploring the region.
It is said to be possible to use the bus system as described
before, but one might have to stand around a bit or even be
put in a situation similar to that of our Mesoamerican
colleagues the other day; car rental is a possibility; or,
for not too much money, one can take a tour. Okay.

We reported to the parking lot at 8, where our young guide
Adem, who also had learned his English in the military, met
us with the minibus and driver. As usual, lili took seat 1A,
and I necessarily took 1B (we did switch between us, but
nobody else got the prime seats, ever).

Our first destination was actually within walking distance -
the Rose Valley, so called because at dusk the failing light
tints the cliff walls - in the morning, you don't get this
effect, but on the other hand you see stuff: vertiginous
cliff dwellings (apparently in use until the 1920s, when
there was a mass trade between Turkey and Greece, each
sending its ethnic minority to its place of origin), slot
canyons, exotic fruit trees now gone wild. Adem was both
knowledgeable and enthusiastic as well as a good hiker.
Oddity: right before a slot canyon, in the middle of
nowhere, there was a little makeshift pub under a tent,
selling mostly pomegranate juice at not-too-inflated prices
but decorated with wine fiaschi, so they must sell that too.

Having been suitably tired out by a several kilometer walk,
we trooped meekly to the bus for our next destination,
Pasabaglari, home of the most striking mushroom formations
(the tourist brochure photos are mostly of this place) but
now quite overrun with vendors of rugs, knickknacks, camel
rides, Fanta, ... . we were given half an hour here, which
was fine, as though one might want to go off and explore at
length, there were just so many touts and shops that one's
thought was mostly to get out of there as soon as possible.

Of course, there was the obligatory visit to a craft store:
this was an actually pretty good one, Kaya Seramik in Avanos,
the famous pottery center on the Red River (source of a
distinctive red clay since Hittite times). Adem had shown
himself to be quite a rug enthusiast so this stop instead
of one to a rug store was slightly puzzling, until we saw
the handiwork here, which was exquisite. After the tour of
the workshop and a demonstration, we were given ample time
in the company store, which had everything from museum-
quality handpainted work (3 to 6 months' attention by an
individual artisan, if the guide-demonstrator was to be
believed) to middle-of-the-road stuff, to mass-produced
everyday ware whose only handcraftsmanship was the word
Avanos scrawled onto the bottom of the pieces. Our group
bought exclusively from the last category.

We returned to Goreme for lunch at Aydede restaurant,
apparently a mecca for tour guides - the place was crowded
with groups, and many travelogues of the region mention it.

Not bad, the appetizers much better than the main course.
Our meze included yogurt, which I didn't taste; hummus,
quite good; lentil-tomato patties, rather spicy and my
favorite dish of the meal; and some diced eggplant-potato
stuff served cool. The main was pottery chicken, overcooked
and not nearly so good as the pottery lamb at the other
place. Semolina pudding, a riff on cream of wheat, for
dessert. More Efes, more cheap red wine.

It is said that one shouldn't leave Cappadocia without
visiting an underground city, so our tour took us to the
second most famous and second largest, Kaymakli. The other,
whose name I'm not sure of (Denizli?), is twice as big and
has two more levels down and is said to be overkill. The
cities were originally constructed in early Christian times
under the threat of various sorts of marauding and rapine;
then they were mysteriously abandoned and forgotten and were
rediscovered just in the last century and half or so - and
more are still being found. Anyhow, imagine a rabbit warren
seven or more layers deep, but with passages big enough for
humans. Imagine the amount of effort went into their making
and the terrible things outside that would cause people to
live in these conditions. I was impressed by the structure
and what it said about the human will to survive under the
most adverse circumstances.

Speaking of adverse, I was getting a little parched by the
time we emerged from Kaymakli, and the Kocabag wine-tasting
room was most welcome as the last stop on our trip. Opened
for tasting:

Emir white, a neutral, pleasant wine, slightly too sweet for
me;

Kapadokya, a blend of the local grapes Bogazere and Okuzgozu
- uncomplicated but also pleasant, and not too expensive at
about L20 a bottle;

Kalecikkavasi, the premium wine - made of Rhone and Bordeaux
varietals, this cost twice as much as the above, but aside
from being plummy while the other was cherryish, and having
a bit more body and perhaps depth, the difference was not
substantial.

I got 2 bottles of Kapadokya, figuring they would come in
handy someday.

We were dropped off at the hotel, from which we went back
into town and dined at the Local restaurant (that's its
name), which had come highly recommended and, importantly,
had a fireplace. We asked to sit by the fire, as the
temperature had begun to plummet.

I ordered Sultan steak, essentially about a half pound
sirloin smothered in sour cream and mushrooms - sort of a
deconstructed stroganoff; lili ordered lamb chops.

A language contretemps - we asked for our food rare, and the
waiter, confused, called over the owner, who translated for
him - the word he used sounded like "ipshmish."

Unfortunately, it all came out medium well, so we had to
call him over again and explain again, after which he
apologetically offered to take our plates back. lili decided
that there was some charm in medium-well lamb chops, so only
my steak went back, shortly replaced by a more satisfactory
one. It was all done in seemingly good humor, and we did I
think leave enough money. But for future reference, any
Turkic speakers out there who could tell me what the real
word for "rare" is - and what "ipshmish" really means?

The plan was to use this as a random walk day, but it was a
really drizzly gray morning, so we stayed in extra long
before finally deciding to check out another town - so we
walked to the town square, where we found that the next bus
was to Nevsehir. Whatever; the round trip was only 2 or 3
lira, so no great loss any way. It's about a 20 min ride,
and we alit in a bustling and very foreign-feeling town.
I believe that none of those we encountered here spoke any
English at all, and why would they? Tourists are few and
far between as there's little to distinguish the place,
despite having been claimed to be the site of the Roman
city Nyssa. On the hilltop overlooking the city is the now
mostly unmaintained castle, which shows signs of having had
some tourist-oriented sprucing up several decades ago, but
in order to get there (which we wanted to do ever since
espying it in the distance from near the bus stop, which is
just a collecting and distribution point on a shop-jammed
street downtown) we had to negotiate disused, rocky, and
steep tracks that at one point may have been actual paths.

The castle so-called is actually a Byzantine fortification
built to lord it over one of the branches of the Silk Road;
I suppose there was nothing for it to do after a while, so
it fell into disuse. There wasn't a whole lot for us to see,
so we went back down via a set of steps that petered out a
few tantalizing and overgrown yards from an actual street,
found a several-hundred-year-old Orthodox shrine that is now
just a target of graffiti, saw a rather nifty Monument to
Peace in one of the main squares, toured a nondescript
residential section of town, and rode the bus back. The main
reason for our not having lunch here (doner kebap at 3 TL
and looking pretty good - quite a bargain) was that there
was no beer available anywhere we saw in town. Our first
order of business on returning to Goreme was hitting the
grocery store for Efes Xtra (sort of the Turkish equivalent
of Bud Ice) and Efes dark (ditto Amber Bock) and a bottle
of local Turasan wine, which had a picture of the rock
formations on it.

The restaurant Dibek, in the former stables of a 475-year-
old building, had caught my eye, so we went inside. A small
child greeted us and apparently said that it would go
upstairs and fetch its parents; presently some guy came
down and seated us in a very ornate and darkly atmospheric
room that appeared empty but turned out to also be housing
a young Japanese couple smooching in the corner.

lili ordered manti - these came as little coarse dumplings
stuffed with who knows what, swimming in an extremely sour
yogurt flavored copiously with dried mint. It was probably
pretty authentic, but neither of us much liked it. Guvec
here was an essentially meatless eggplant stew, but not bad.

I'd take the atmosphere here and the food at Silk Road
any day, but we don't have that pick and choose luxury.

We went home to consume our beer acquisitions and lounged
about a while - it was still not nice enough to do much
more exploring. As Fat Boys is just down at the bottom of
the hill, on this side of town, that's where we had what
passed for dinner: she ordered a burger, which turned out
to be a weird kofte thing; I just had beer.

Pleasant stroll up the hill home, where my bed felt really
good despite some of the cave ceiling having crumbled
onto the covers (a hazard, one supposes, of living in a cave).

Our agency had booked us a Metro (one of the major brands in
these parts) bus at 8:30 that turned out to be a shuttle van
to the Nevsehir bus depot, which in contrast to the local
station is a large and impressive edifice, recently built a
ways out of town for the benefit of the longhaul trade; its
architecture, modern in a sort of folkish way, reflects the
mushroomy rock formations for which the region is famous.
Here we waited for the big bus, which showed up late enough
that we were given that little frisson of uncertainty as to
whether it would show up but early enough to make the 9:30
scheduled departure, plus or minus a few (plus).

As the bus is to the rural Cappadocians what air travel is
to us, service is fairly elaborate; there are two attendants
in addition to the driver, with frequent offerings (free) of
tea/coffee/water; about a third of the way to Ankara we had
a snack, the rather Twinkie-like Solen Luppo Tropic, whose
supposedly chocolate filling had long been absorbed by the
dryish cake.

The road to Ankara may look like a superhighway on the map,
but it's a pitted relic, sometimes four lanes, sometimes
two lanes with two more in construction, sometimes just the
two lanes, plus you get to hope for two more for your next
trip. So it's 4 hours and change for about a 130-mile trip,
counting stopping in every town plus being flagged down once
by someone at an intersection in the middle of nowhere.

We had a rest stop; while the others were filing into the
facility for toilets and Turkish delight, I stayed outside
looking at the big bleak lake in the distance and the less
than welcoming sign that advised tourists of what to do in
the unlikely event of a bandit attack.

Ankara has a huge depot, the Heathrow of bus stations.
Luckily it's reasonably well signed (in Turkish), plus I'd
read that the taxi stand was at the far side of the place,
so it was easy to find a cab to the citadel, about a half
hour trip, where we dropped our stuff off at Angora House,
the only hotel inside the citadel proper. The attendant
spoke not a single word of English but smiled nicely and
gave us our room keys with good grace. lili's room on the
second floor was pleasantly reminiscent of the guest room
at a friend's house; mine, on the third, was darker and
spookier and reminded one of the guest room at one's
grandmother's house, if one's grandmother happened to be
a rich Turk. Both rooms had two beds, and I suppose we
could have economized had we thought to do so, Ankara being
somewhat more cosmopolitan than the rest of the interior.

It hadn't started to rain yet, so we did a short examination
of the neighborhood, including the extremely uninviting and
disused fortress on the crest of the hill. Interesting that
the capital of the most important country in the region has
this instant attraction, and it just sits there moldering.
Nice views from near there over the city, though. After a
bit of this we hied ourselves to the Museum of Anatolian
Civilization, which was just down the hill a (rather
strenuous especially on the uphill return) quarter mile.
Amazing place, of which it's claimed as having the world's
greatest collection of Hittite artifacts (and a pretty
good assortment of neolithic, Ephesian, Roman, Hellenistic,
what have you - all the civilizations that have left their
mark on Cappadocia. We soaked it all up for over an hour
and then returned to the hotel and the restaurant next to
it - I never found out the name, but its address is
Kalekapisi Sok. 16, in case anyone's in the neighborhood.
There was something Fawlty about the place from the very
beginning. We were steered away from the apparently busy
downstairs (a bar I think) and sent to a deserted upper
floor, open to the outside; presently we were joined by a
pair of Russians who were sent diagonally to the opposite
end of the fairly large room. Service, such as it was, came
from the proprietor, who trekked up the stairs from time
to time as he saw fit.

First we ordered one wine and one beer, as usual, and what
came out was the usual red ink and Efes. Then we tried to
order appetizers, but everything we ordered was out: the
ritual was. Oh, we'll get the X; then he went downstairs
to fetch X and returned with the news that X was out. Then
this procedure was repeated with Y, Z, and the main courses.

Once we found out by trial and error what on the printed
menu was actually available (not much), food was quite good.
I had lamb stew (et guvec), and aside from the meat being a
tad chewy, it was excellent; lili's shishkebab was also
nice. I'm guessing that someone's wife was cooking whatever
she felt like downstairs and passing the savings on to us.

The Russians didn't seem thrilled with the treatment and
decided to leave, so we were the only ones again in the
restaurant, and it was getting cold. Eventually the
proprietor came by with some raki, and all was well. It was
only a 50-foot stagger to the hotel, though the steep and
now dark and wet steps were a bit of a hazard.

We used the hotel computer to try to check in for our
flights. There was no problem with mine, but lili was unable
to check in at all. Called UA on a fading-in-and-out cell
signal: a 20 minute roaming call mostly related to getting
her upgrade straightened out - the 1K desk read the dread
computer-generated note "not supported by a Mileage Plus
member"; as I was the supporting member, and as I'd signed
the bluey in Los Angeles with lili watching, some months
ago, I too extreme exception to that, and after a bit of
effort on both ends, her check-in was completed - with her
restored to the waitlist, but in a most unadvantageous
position. That was all the very apologetic agent could do.

I was suitably miffed by this, but the bottle of Turasan
Cappadocia 06 red that we'd picked up in Goreme helped out a
bit: it was a bit too acidy and light cherryish, but not
bad: probably more of that Okuzgozu and Bogazkere stuff.

During the night there was a huge intense thunderstorm.
The setting was rendered extra spooky by spates of gloomy
dark punctuated by giant crashing bolts of fire. A black
cat would have made the picture complete, but there was
that restaurant next door. (joke)

I was glad that 1. there was a taxi stand at the entrance
to the citadel and that 2. I'd made a reservation for an
early early cab to the airport: quote TL55.

The guy was right on time, and we loaded up quickly in the
rain. I think I caught a few words between the night manager
and the driver to the effect that there had been a couple
lightning strikes on the hill during the night. The trip
was gloomy and rainy, with the driver contributing a few
single-word descriptions of the places we were passing, in
somewhat understandable French or totally incomprehensible
English. He seemed unduly impressed by the factories we
passed as we neared the airport, reciting each name as
though it were a station of the cross or on the road to
national prosperity or something. It had been a fast ride
up the deserted expressway, and when we got there the meter
read 54. I gave the guy that plus all the rest of our lira,
about 5, which made him almost dance with glee.

Check-in, via a TK agent, was pretty easy, except I couldn't
get a boarding pass for FRA-ORD - all three of lili's BPs
printed out just fine, but no upgrade. It was suggested that
we work our issues out with a UA rep in Frankfurt.

We had an hour to enjoy the Millennium Lounge, nicely
catered with breakfasty things. I sampled most of the
cookies, some vaguely salty, some vaguely sweet, all very
shortbready. lili liked the chocolate chip ones; I was
pleased by a kind that tasted like halvah, but not so sweet.

There was an assortment of HA RE liqueurs - the usual mint,
almond, coffee things and a couple less normal ones, rose I
think for instance. Long John Scotch wasn't so bad, other
from possessing that normal cheap booze characteristic of
tasting like licking an ashtray.

The house beer was a name I didn't recognize, starting with
B. I believe it too was brewed by Efes. Other things that I
just had to try: cola-flavored vodka, which wasn't so bad;
and red wine of the usual rotguttish sort, only this time
presented in a nice carafe. We didn't bother boarding until
they made the announcement in the club, by which time the
line was snaking out fifty feet past security. Again there
was a problem with security line crashers, only this time
the guards just sort of shrugged.

LH3363 ESB MUC 0615 0815 321 6AC

We were assigned A and C in the same row and had hoped for
a blocked middle, but it turned out to be a surprisingly
jam-packed flight - when we arrived we found a headscarfed
young woman in B who happily traded for the aisle.

Breakfast was an okay cold cut plate that included something
that looked sort of like ham, but I think was turkey ham or
something; our seatmate poked suspiciously at it and put it
aside.

We got to MUC in time to check out the Senator Cafe, which
is quiet and nice but no self service. They were pouring a
rather better standard of red - the Nipozzano Chianti from
Frescobaldi. Breakfast orders were taken at the counter;
I didn't have any of that stuff but contented myself with
a nice sour cream poppy seed cake and a very ripe kiwi.

LH 967 MUC FRA 0955 1100 321 24BC

Originally we'd been assigned 21D and 22A, but I'd got us
exit row, which was reasonably pleasant. The flight was
very short. I don't recall where I was or to whom I posed
the question of my mysteriously unprintable BP, butI was
informed that this happened all the time, and the Tower
Lounge had a dedicated UA lady, and that I should check
there. How to cross the border sans document? A quick
explanation with a harried, confused look and a
verification of the number of the flight worked nicely.

lili went off to stake out territory in the very crowded
lounge, while I worked with the dedicated UA lady, who
offered the welcome news that lili's upgrade had been
processed and the less welcome news that her assigned seat
was the one just behind mine, with the galley between. Okay,
that news was less welcome to me; I didn't ask her opinion.
Not possible at this late time to assign two seats together,
but a note would be made in the record.

I sought lili out in the lounge; she'd ordered me a chicken
panino, the only variety that didn't have obvious dairy
product. I sent her off to check in at the desk. And was
immediately drawn to the Campari lady, who was fixing
Campari sodas with orange juice. It clashed badly with the
sandwich, so I got me a glass of Blaufranksch.

UA 941 FRA ORD 1245 1505 777 9DE Ch9 Empower^

Luckily the guy in 9E wasn't too tall and wasn't so attached
to his seat, and the trade was easily made - 9E for 11D.

A pleasant mostly black cabin crew.

to begin
Smoked Tyrolean beef and Roma salami with tomato,
mozzarella and pesto
and
Fresh seasonal greens - classic Caesar or roasted garlic
red wine vinaigrette

All these things were okay and as advertised, the beef being
dry, tough, and gamy, the salami rather fatty and therefore
better.

main course
Grilled filet mignon with shiitake Port demi-glace -
garlic mashed potatoes with chives and a carrot zucchini
saute

Utterly mediocre, except that the garlic mash tasted
pretty good and soaked up the gravy nicely - no discernible
Port or shiitake in this, though. The meat was although pink
in the middle some of the most tasteless protein I have
ever encountered. Sort of like solid water.

Roasted chicken with sweet chili sauce - mixed pepper
risotto and green beans with sun-blushed tomatoes

Asparagus cannelloni with tomato cream sauce

dessert
International cheese selection - Bavarian bleu, red Cheddar

Specialty dessert

As usual, this was ice cream.

midflight snack
Mini Toblerone candy; Walkers shortbread cookies - please
help yourself to assorted snacks located near the galley

prior to arrival
Tuscan-style wrap sandwich - herb marinated chicken, salami
and cheese with tomato and kalamata olives

Cheese plate with fresh seasonal fruit - Cheddar, Brie,
Chaumes

Today's menu features beef from South America

Champagne
Pommery brut royal NV Champagne

white wine
Selbach Riesling Kabinett "Feinherb" Mosel, Germany 2007
or
Kapuka Sauvignon Blanc 2008 Marlborough

Jean-Claude Fromont Chablis 2008
or
Errazuriz Chardonnay 2008 Casablanca, Chile

red wine
Altos "R" Tempranillo 2007 Rioja
or
Cave La Suzienne Racines Profondes 2007 AOC Cotes-du-Rhone

Finca La Escondida Reserva Malbec 2007/2008 San Juan

beverages
Aperitifs, cocktails, spirits, liqueurs and beer
Sandeman Founders Reserve Porto will be offered during the
main meal's dessert.
STARBUCKS coffee will be available throughout the flight.

A perfectly fine flight all round, if one discounts the
food, which was as expected.

Global Entry vs. the real thing: even with the rather long
line, it made 5, maybe 10 minutes difference. lili and I
were supposed to meet at the restrooms at the end of the
bag claim, so I went straight on there. I waited for 5 or so
when someone informed me that the ladies' room was out of
service. So I wandered around and eventually went outside
to see if she had left. The door guard guy understandably
wouldn't let me back in but let me stay just outside and
peer in. At some point, getting tired of this, I collared a
UA employee whose badge had the promising word "Beer" on it
to go inside and check the vicinity of the ladies' room -
she came back reporting negative, so, not having much better
to do, I stayed put. 15 minutes later I saw lili pacing just
inside the secured area as I was pacing outside, and after a
joyful reunion we went on to the Hilton, where I got what
was called a junior suite: actually a huge and featureless
room with the ordinary furniture spread out on the edges, an
architectural and interior decorative enigma. Despite the
size of the living area, it had a smallish bathroom.

We were supposed to meet my friend the Dodger for dinner at
six; he was quite late, but that didn't detract from the
pleasure of seeing him. As we were on that side of the hotel
and kind of tired of Andiamo (which I persist in calling
Andale), we headed for the Gaslight Club, which is less
crowded and has better food. A throwback to the days when
men went to man caves for their steaks and Bourbon and
cigars, this is one of the last bastions of a genre that was
epitomized by the Playboy Club in the '60s and '70s.

Our waitress was appropriately buxom and scantily clad, the
Russian bartenders or managers or whatever appropriately
adding just a touch of thuglike menace the way a shake of
hot sauce adds to an omelet.

lili had the filet, which was done as ordered, tasty, and
tender. To test my hypothesis that Wiener Schnitzel is
better the farther you are from Vienna, I had one: it was
pretty good. The Dodger deemed the duck breast excellent.

The bill was not too huge, even with various drinks at the
usual absurd markups.

In the morning we met up for breakfast before going out
to find this fabled Holiday Inn shuttle. The continental was
part of my diamondness kowtow, and we were pleased at the
price (0), the quality, and the selection, which was a lot
more generous than most continentals, including as it did
breafast meats and I recall some egg preparation as well
as the usual dreary round of pastries and unripe fruit.

Too the shuttle bus with a bunch of other FTers to the
Holiday Inn Elk Grove, where we found registration and
socializing in full swing. The manager invited us to
breakfast, even though it was really past time, so we had
another breakfast, this time steam table scrambled eggs
(okay), sausage (spongy and weird), and home fries (bad).
Danish on the side; two kinds of orange juice, one okay,
one bad. The easier-to-use dispenser had the worse-tasting.
Later we discovered that we might have saved the DO
organizers a couple bucks if had refused the meal, which
we probably should have done.

As we are both IC Nothing and arrived late to boot, we
got the slimmest of pickings - smoking rooms, mine
overlooking the highway, hers the parking lot.

Though I have known him for a decade or more, I'd never
attended VJ's presentation, which was nicely done, though
the scaling up by an order of magnitude made it less
interactive than he was accustomed to - and when the
interactions took place, they had more the nature of
highjackings than anything else. Happens when the population
is largely made up of know-it-alls.

Pizza for lunch - I can't eat much cheese, and what I
tasted of the pizza was below average.

In the afternoon we had an energetic and worthwhile
advanced seminar by wannaflyforless, which I thought the
meatiest part of the weekend. Certainly the pizza wasn't.

At 6 there was a bus to Pappadeaux for a dinner organized
by UpgradedFirst; lili was feeling crummy, and it's just as
well she didn't go, as most of the food was of the fishy
persuasion, the alternative being a slightly higher order
of rubber chicken. satori sat at our end of the table and
spilled the beans on his hotel points presentation for the
next day. Food: I ordered the seafood platter, which was
altogether too much food and a little too little sea:
stuffed crab, stuffed shrimp, crabcake, fried catfish,
fried shrimp, in order of my preference. I wasn't thrilled
by the stuffed things: there was a lot of breading in all
three of the preparations. But the seafood itself was pretty
nice. After the initial welcome adult beverage, every boozal
thing was a la carte, and a couple beers did not come cheap.

After this massive pig-out, bed was extra welcome.

I like your writing style. It made me Hungary for a trip to Turkey. Thanks for a fine accounting of your travels, remarkably and admirably accomplished without a single photograph!

I'm notoriously unvisual and don't even have a camera -
when tourists hand me theirs with the request to snap
their picture (this happens reasonably often, as I am
Asian and thus must be an expert with cameras, right),
I'm often beside myself with anxiety about figuring out
which button to push, and so on.

Identical breakfast to the previous day. In his hotel tips
seminar, satori shared his experiences, many of which he had
tipped his hand on on the previous night at dinner! It was
enjoyable nonetheless.

Followed by a giant cold cut sub lunch, to which I said bah
humbug and joined KMA26, the_happiness_store, and El_Chiflero
for beers ($2) and burgers, which were pretty good, at Old
Chicago, the hotel restaurant.

Legends of FT was very amusing: Pudding Guy, wannaflyforless
again, mrpickles, gleff, and beaubo; each of these proffered
an amusing and sometimes edifying side to this peculiar
obsession of ours. I savored every moment of this one.

There was this bus thing to Jameson's for dinner, but lili
was still a little under the weather, and by the time we
got our act together, it was way gone. We joined up with
Frenchie Flyer and her +1 (Texas Viking), who had a car.
It's a nice midrange steakhouse; I sneaked a peek into the
back room and noted that the tables were overfull already,
so we stuck with the four-top they gave us instead of
joining the crowd.

lili and I split a big porterhouse and some Rodney Strong
Merlot; both were good. Via a complex coupon connection-like
switch with our friends she ended up with onion soup, I got
cream of chicken rice, and Frenchie Flyer and +1 got salads
with their burgers, something they were not apparently
entitled to without paying a supplement.

It's always a letdown after a Do.

lili and I were staying an extra day to enjoy the city and
also getting much-needed Hilton stay credit. This involved
much use of hotel transportation and just a little bit of
shenanigans, during which we had some more time constraints.
Our plan was to take this shuttle to the other shuttle and
then the third shuttle to the CTA so we could spend the
day downtown. It sort of worked out.

We just missed a scheduled trip to the airport and
happily espied a hotel van in the driveway, whose sullen
driver indicated he was going "nowhere." Okay, whatever.
Eventually a functioning one came and got us to ORD, and
then we flagged down the other shuttle (Thrifty Rent-a-Car,
which subcontracts to the Hampton Inn next door).

lili needed a Hilton stay but wasn't going to stay the
night, so as I need no more Hilton stays she checked me
into the Hampton, getting the credits, Orbitz-like, while
I actually occupied the room.

The first room, supposedly nonsmoking, smelled like a
chimney, so on application she (I) was upgraded to a room
on the top floor with a somewhat nicer desk and a somewhat
worse view. The elite amenity: an Oreo 6-pack and a liter
of Ice Mountain water.

As it was just before 10, they hadn't taken away breakfast -
Western omelet and extremely shatteringly crisp bacon along
with the usual continental-type things; in addition lili had
a waffle from one of those self-serve machines, with some
pretty nasty fake syrup.

She dropped off her bag, we washed up, and off on another
great adventure, which owing to the lateness of the hour and
the crankiness of all the shuttle drivers and the even slower
than normal behavior of the Blue Line was restricted to
the Art Institute. It's all right, I really like the Art
Institute and could spend all day there. It has changed
quite a bit since I was last there, which was I believe
when the Dodger first got his appointment at Northwestern,
so that was a long time ago (after a good career there he
moved to U of C, where he's been for a decade). So I had a
hard time finding things for an efficient tour of the place.

Saw the sights as best we could in half a day (a special
pilgrimage to Nighthawks, of which we saw a 3-D homage in
Rome earlier this year and side trips to American Gothic,
La Grande Jatte, and Van Gogh's self portrait complete with
ear). I was more interested in Impressionists, but she is
sort of tired of them, so we compromised and spent an
inordinate time in Modern.

We didn't want to cut it too close, so we got on the L
before rush hour: back to the hotel, pick up her bag,
back to the airport. Interestingly, the shuttle drivers
got more cheerful as the day went on.

I used one of the many standard methods of getting through
security and joined her at the F RCC for some of that
Concannon. The bartender, who talked more like a college
student FTer than an RCC drone, said that his fiancee, who
works for American Eagle, had noted that the Admiral's Club
had gone to free booze, so we decided to check it out.

That story was indeed true, but the wine was worse than
the RCC stuff. On a lark I hunted for the drink coupons we'd
hidden the last time we were there together - there was
still one, dated September something, in the hiding place.
lili rehid it elsewhere. Oh, to be young and living
dangerously.

I saw her off at the gate, where boarding was just about
over but she still got her originally assigned seat in F.

Toddled back via the Thrifty shuttle to the hotel, where I
promptly collapsed, waking up many hours later in a state
of modest disarray. Back to the club to spend a few coupons
before they expired forever.

premium
A glass of Perrier-Jouet Grand Brut made a nice breakfast:
lemony, crisp, nice bubbles, and a grapefruit-peel finish.
A good deal for two soon-to-be-worthless chits.

premium
312 Urban Wheat ale - very much like Blue Moon but maybe
a little less spicy.

complimentary
Concannon Merlot 08 - pretty decent, berries and cherries,
a little sweet, slightly coffeeish. Not much finish.

premium
Forefront by Pine Ridge Pinot Noir (Willamette) 08 - typical
- a tad sweet, cherry nose meaty-cherry-plum on the palate;
plum finish.

premium
Tierra Secreta Malbec (Mendoza) 08 - raisins and stems on
the nose, pleasing, a bit too acid on the tongue, meaty,
long finish, consistent raisin skin character from
beginning to end.

I didn't have the stomach to check out the other two premium
offerings, Ch. Bonnet Rouge (Bordeaux) 05 and Joel Gott 815
Cabernet (California). Speaking of stomach, I needed to fill
it, so I headed for the hated Manchu Wok for a respectable
spicy tofu and a Mongolian beef that could almost have
qualified as vegetarian, as it was mostly mushrooms.

UA 652 ORD BOS 1203 1517 320 2D Ch9^ Empower

On this flight we had poker-faced but reasonably attentive
FAs, both of which traits please me: I'm not in favor of
20-somethings with IQs the temperature of dishwater who
prance and dance and smile and get my order wrong, no
matter what their other endowments may be.

Warm nuts, cold Courvoisier.

As it was a noon flight, there was no way even United could
deny a meal, but it could deny a choice. So everyone got

"cream of corn" soup - this tasted heavily cumined but had
little other flavor and just a few dried-up kernels swimming
around; not bad for that;

a chicken breast (large, very dry) on salad consisting of
lettuce, yellow and red peppers, olives, canned Mandarin
orange segments, almonds, and edamame, with Conway's
altogether too familiar sesame ginger dressing;

Vita Vigor breadsticks; and the expected and welcome
chocolate chip cookie.

Random notes: In the chatter I discovered that a rather
hard blonde FA had been in the air on 9/11/01. There's a
new show on the IFE: House.

We landed on time, maybe early, and I alit to a nice autumn
day, a nip in the air. Boston has free wi-fi, so I checked
Hotwire for an airport hotel, as all the regular channels
reported back horrid prices. I ended up with the Red Roof
Inn, Saugus, okay but hard to get to, with neither public
trans nor airport shuttle. It's sort of Hamptonish, but a
little lower-class. The oddest thing was there was this
rather spooky guy in the lobby when I checked in at 5 pm;
at 5 am checkout he was still there, pacing around.

The best thing about the place is that it's next door to
the Midwest Grill. I didn't feel like the whole AYCE
churrascaria thing, so I asked the very pleasant waitress
for just picanha and rice: $8.95 for a pound of meat,
$3.95 for rice, $4.50 for a Sam, and I was happy.

UA 897 BOS IAD 0933 1116 320 1D Ch9 Empower

Had a preternaturally jolly agent checking docs. The line
was short, as it usually is here. After the rapescan, a TSA
lady, unable to find a justification for manhandling me,
did so to my passport instead, folding it almost double and
wrinkling heck out of it (which it survived; the last time
this particular event had happened it had been done by a
very grumpy German border official about 5 years ago.

RCC new list of freebies:
Jim Beam white
Seagram's 7 Crown
Dewar's white
Smirnoff
Gilbey's
Sauza Extra Gold
Cruzan white
triple sec
dry & sweet vermouth

promo cards:
Red Stag (a cherry-infused Beam it looks like)
Republic of Tea products

I chatted with the club staff about the blending of the UA
and CO cultures; they were somewhat upbeat except for the
possibility of losing some jobs in the merger. During the
conversation the question came up - was DL ever in Star? I
didn't think so, though it had a codeshare agreement with UA
back in the '90s; but one of the longtime agents swore up
and down that DL had been part of Star.

I don't know how I got the worst first seat in the fleet,
but there I was. Got the purser, a pleasant and energetic
Hispanic guy, to give me the makings of a hot toddy, as I
was getting a bit phlegmmy. Courvoisier goes well in toddy.
Four snack services on an hour flight: the basket, augmented
with big navel oranges; blueberry muffins; the basket again;
then rather large red packages of trail mix.

Toddled to the RCC to complete my investigation of the red
wine situation only to find that the IAD selections were
completely different from the ORD ones:

a Matchbook Lake County Malbec that was the most syrupy,
Jell-Oish wine I've encountered lately;

Wild Rock Pinot Noir (Central Otago) 08 - pretty standard,
low concentration, bright fruit, okay;

Joseph Carr Cabernet (Napa) 07 - rather nice, dark and
musty, bramble fruit, the one most to my taste of the lot;

Hewitson "Ned & Henry's" Shiraz (Barossa) 07 - good standard
issue wine, a little sweet, so the black raspberry milkshake
effect went well with cheese.

Hopped the 5A bus - it now costs $6! - to Rosslyn and
transferred to the Georgetown bus, as I wanted to visit
either Old Glory or Bistro Francais for lunch. I don't
recall what tipped the balance, but French it was.

Started with a roasted corn soup that bore a strong
resemblance to the cream of corn I'd had on the plane -
sort of disappointing just for that reason, though not
bad food; followed by kidneys in a cream-enriched
red-wine demi. These had that same core issue that I
periodically fuss about, so at the end of the course
I had a little pile of ugly white things on my plate.

Almond tart was rather austere but tasted pretty good.

Chateau Haut La Pereyre (Entre-deux-Mers) (05 I think)
was a pretty elegant glass, classically cassis and pepper,
but a little light for the kidneys, especially not quite
clean ones.

BoXer DO

This was a preemptive farewell to the DCA President's Club
and a welcome into the fold, or rather penalty box, for us
UA flyers. Started out with those needing access to the club
hanging around near the ticket counter so cova could show us
how to get gate passes (it turns out that now RCC members
have the same status as PC members to get gate passes for
the club). The PC, which I'd not been in in recent memory,
is rather nicer than the admittedly quite acceptable other
Star choices at this airport (RCC in pier B and the USAC in
pier C being the others), but the wine, some pineapply
purple dreck, is inferior, not that I didn't take three
stomach-churning glasses of it. People gradually filtered
in, and we ended up with a table of ten-odd, with a couple
of satellite tables; the few other guests looked either
nervously or wonderingly at us. Thanks to USA18DCA for the
idea; it was good to reconnect with renard, chrisw, cova,
and scubaflyer again and to meet the rest of you!

On to Lauriol, an extremely happening Latinate restaurant,
where drinks were reasonable and my duck with orange sauce,
though done a bit more than I expect, was classically
palatable. Then a mild barhopping:

The priapic Madam's Organ, where we invaded the dingy and
dilapidated but somehow rather raffish roof, followed by
Bourbon (the Adams Morgan bars vie with each other for
catchy names, and what's more catchy than Bourbon?), where
a glass of Eagle Rare was most welcome. Some of the younger
and more vigorous went on elsewhere, but I had public trans
to deal with and an early day the next day and so walked
renard and Steph3n to the Woodley Park metro, where
goodbyes and promises of a rematch were given.

Thus ended four weeks of DO-related gyration, which was
followed by 3, count 'em days of respite before Star MegaDO.