Monday, March 15, 2010
Alaska 2007
I had wanted to visit Alaska for years; with the rising Euro and British pound, the ever increasing airfares during the summer to Europe I decided in March 2007 that this was the year. I cashed in sixty thousand Delta airmiles for a first class round trip ticket. This also made brilliant sense as an economy ticket to London is 60,000 mile and first class 90,000 during the summer for a seven hour flight. Anchorage was a 9 hour flight for the price of economy to London.
As my flight descended down through the clouds towards Anchorage, I got my first glimpse of the majestic snow topped peaks of the slate grey Alaska Mountains, that surround the city on three sides and the deep aquatic blue of Cook Inlet. A tingle went through me, anticipating the expedition into a world that is both familiar yet strangely unknown.
After a 10 ½ hour trip from New York via Cincinnati, I arrived at Ted Stevens’s airport at 8pm local time (midnight in NYC). I had reservations on the 6:45am train to Seward and had booked a room at the Econo Inn close to the train depot. While waiting for the motel shuttle, I had an interesting chat with a TSA agent, who was posted up there for the summer from California, being from Piso Beach, with no major airport nearby, he frequently gets posted to busy areas. Last Christmas/New Year’s he was posted to Washington’s Reagan airport. He does not agree with all the TSA procedures, but has to follow command! What other job in Piso Beach would give him these travel opportunities.
By the time I got to my room at 9pm my body clock was saying 1am but the sun was still shining so I went in search of a drink and a bite to eat. There was not much around in the immediate area, but I did find La Cabana Mexican restaurant, which served a good margarita and tasty seafood tacos.
I got to bed around 11pm and boy did that 5am alarm go off quick, the Alaska railroad require you to check-in 1 hour prior to departure just like the airlines, fortunately they had good coffee.
When we finally got to board, I was located in the last reserved car which was one of their older rolling stock and had big comfortable reclining seats. Each car has an assigned tour guide, in my case it was the lovely Jennifer and it just so happened her Dad was in the seat directly behind me. Jen was a high school senior and eager to show off her knowledge of her home state. Like did you know, that no houses in the state have basements due to the permafrost and that the Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet (which we passed) has the second largest tidal change in the world, forty feet between high and low. The largest change is the Bay of Fundy in Canada with a sixty foot differential. Turnagain Arm got its name when Captain Cook sailed up it and found a cul de sac, hence turnagain!Dad just kept asking more and more questions; bring out the best in her.
Although the journey is only 128 miles the train takes 4 ½ hours, slowing down for all animal sightings and the three glaciers it passes. There are two domed cars for 360 degree viewing, in addition to the oversized windows at your large reclining seat. The scenery outside the window is mesmerizing, the snow capped mountains slope down through emerald green forests to the crystal clear aqua blue lakes that mirror the mountains and sky. The houses dotted along the lake shores don’t have cars parked in the driveways, but seaplanes moored at the dock. A higher percentage of people commute by plane than car in Alaska. If you are really lucky, you will see some Dahl sheep, a moose or an elk, it is extremely unlikely to see a bear from the train, but it has been known.
When you finally pull into Seward at the head of Resurrection Bay, it is almost the epitome of a picturesque fishing village, until you look off to your left and see the huge ugly conveyor belt pier that stretches out into the bay, this is for loading coal, that is brought by train down from the interior for shipment to Korea and Peru.
The train depot is right beside Seward small boat harbour and I had booked a room at the Breeze Inn Motel across the street. My room was not ready so after dropping my bag off I went for an exploratory walk around town, but that only took 40 mins. it’s a small town ! Never the less it was enough to sharpen up my appetite for lunch, I had only had coffee and a power bar on the train. Most of the towns restaurants seemed to be of the same coffee shop/dinner type, all advertising fish n chips except for 2 right on the waterfront, Chinooks & Roy’s. I decided on Chinooks for some reason and was glad I did, the lovely proprietor, Sandy was tending bar and we struck up a great conversation, she is originally from nearby Connecticut. I sampled a few of the local Alaskan ales and soaked them up with a delicious grilled salmon with rice & veg. A most satisfying lunch.
Now the effects of the late night early start and jet lag were starting to have an effect so I went to see if my room was ready but alas the Breeze Inn are very firm about their 3pm check-in time and I was once more cast out to fend for myself for at least another hour. In no mood to do any more exploring I headed straight across the parking lot to the Breeze Inn’s bar/restaurant to kill the hour over a beer.
Initially there were just a few guys, all of whom were smoking, so I stayed down the emptier end of the bar on my own, but then several of the restaurant waitresses came in to cash up their tips and have an after work drink, well they perked me right up and one of them was from Dublin, naturally! We had a great time and before you knew it, it was 5pm, they had to go home and I needed a nap, surely my room would be ready by now?
After a short nap I got up and wandered over to Ray’s which was packed but I managed to find a stool at the bar and ordered up a Tanquary martini while I perused the menu. Well it had been a most satisfying first day in Alaska to I decided to treat myself to a pound of King Crab Legs and a bottle of Cloudy Bay, awesome. Half way through dinner 3 guys joined me at the bar, they had just come in off a charter and one poor sod had not done so good, his mates were enjoying razzing him and I chimed in.
I finally shuffled out of Rays at 11pm but it only felt like 7 in New York as it was still quite bright, I felt like having a nightcap at the Breeze bar but it had been a very long day and I had a glacier boat tour booked for 9am so bedways was bestway.
When I opened my eyes in the morning I could not believe it, I had slept through 2 alarms and it was 9:30, my ship had sailed, shit! I got up and looked out through the curtains and the whole fjord/harbour was locked in by low clouds and fog, I had lucked out, it was a crappy day to out on the water. I called the office across the street and explained my predicament; a very nice lady asked if I was traveling solo? And when I said yes she said I was better off missing the boat I was booked on, it held almost 200 passengers. She recommended I book the Captain’s choice tour for tomorrow which is on a much smaller vessel and so far there were only 16 bookings, thank you, yes there is a god, back to bed for an hour!
When I finally emerged into the day it was a very damp fog that reminded me of the old famous pea soupers in the London of my youth. It was a good day for indoor activities, so I headed for the Alaska Sea Life Center, a mile down the road in downtown Seward. It was built with a donation from Exxon after the Exxon Valdes disaster decimated all the local sea life.
The sea life center is well worth a visit regardless of the weather, lots of very interesting exhibits of the local aquatic life and plenty of live mammals and birds which have been rescued due to various accidents.
I walked back to the small boat harbour and decided to have lunch at Chinooks again with Sandy, but unfortunately she was not working. I had their seafood chowder (better than Roy’s) and the crab cakes, very good.
After lunch I caught a shuttle out to Exit Glacier, what a difference a valley makes. In Seward it had been very overcast and misty; here it was 70 degrees, clear blue skies and sunny. It was a nice easy 1 mile hike to the glacier and although small in glacier terms it is very impressive, especially as you can get to within about 10 feet and feel the cold emanating off it.
Upon my return to Seward I had a quick nap then went for dinner again at Roy’s and met a very interesting man while dining at the bar, Steve, he worked for the coal mine in Healy which shipped the coal down via Alaska RR to Seward
I had originally planned to take the train up to Denali and the bus back but the bus was booked and the return train would not connect with my flight, so I had been forced to rent a car, but now Steve said I had made the right choice. The first 4 hours of the train journey were very boring and I would cover the distance in half the time with a car, but also that the train was packed with cruise passengers. Also being on the train I would not see Talkeetna, a beautiful little Alaskan town well worth a stop for lunch. We were then joined at the bar by a woman from Ketchikan which is down the southeast peninsula, she and Steve started swapping stories, how hard it is sometimes living up there in the dark, she had moved up from the lower forty eight but Steve was a third generation Alaskan, I was very privileged.
I had mentioned to Steve about my planned boat trip the next morning to see wildlife and a calving (falling ice) glacier and he told me on my next trip I should plan going to a tiny town called Cordova on Prince William Sound that is only reachable by ferry or plane where you can sit on the beach and watch the glacier calve all day, sounds perfect.
It was getting late so I bid my new Alaskan friends good night as I did not want to miss the boat, again.
The next morning dawned foggy as the day before but I had seen how quickly it changes from fjord to fjord. There were still only 16 bookings for our boat so things looked good. I saw the line of people queuing for the 8am boat which was the same size as the one I missed and was I ever glad of oversleeping. It would have been hell.
I felt positively naked when we boarded, I was dressed in jeans, long sleeve shirt and a windbreaker, everyone else must have had about 2 or 3 layers of artic gear with rain gear on top!!
As we motored out of the small boat harbour we spotted our first bald eagle sitting on the coal conveyor to our left and as we came about there was another sitting on the channel marker to our right, beautiful, noble and strong creatures with no fear of the passing boat.
We moved down the fiord and the backdrop of the low lying clouds on the surrounding mountains with bright sunshine glinting off glaciers in the high valleys was very dramatic, it looked like a vision of Valhalla.
As we got out of the fiord past Fox Island and into Resurrection Bay, Ellen the first mate served up a breakfast of yogurt, fresh fruit and canola with coffee and told everyone to search the calm waters for signs of wildlife. It seemed to take for ever; I think we all thought they would be just there waiting in the bay for our enjoyment. But after an hour we finally spotted a humpback whale gracefully swimming along, it was beautiful to watch.
Further out into the bay we came upon the Chiswell Islands where we saw dozens of sea lions and literally millions of sea birds, the noise was incredible and what I found even more incredible was that some of them can dive to 400 feet underwater to fish, even the cuddly cute puffin can dive to 350 feet. During the winter when these waters virtually freeze over the birds will fly 4 to 500 miles south in the Pacific and winter there, not touching land for over 6 months.
We then motored up Aialik Bay to Aialik Glacier, it was very eerie, with a low lying fog and it was getting colder by the minute. Now I started to understand why all these people had were wearing so many layers of clothing but then I looked at Captain Joe and mate Ellen and they were not overly bundled so what the hell, how bad could it get!
After about half an hour of cautious sailing the fog lifted and we were confronted with a 400 foot wall of ice, it was just an incredible sight and felt like standing in front of an open freezer door, WOW and the noise was also incredible, it creaked and groaned as large chunks fell away into the freezing artic waters. We were bobbing in a sea of large ice chunks just a ¼ mile from the glacier face. Local law prohibited us from going any nearer and Joe could not cut the engine to get the full noise effect, due to the fact that we might need full power any second should a large enough piece calve to cause a wave which could swamp our small boat. I doubt if I, in my light clothing, would have lasted more than 40 seconds in that water but I would have loved to have experienced the glacier in total silence.
The glaciers are constantly moving, being pushed forward by pressure from above and move an average of 4 miles per day. We scooped up ice as it floated past the boat, it was so clear and pure looking, I could only think of making a martini or a gin n tonic.
Motoring back down the bay I noticed some kayakers beached on the shore. I asked Joe how they got here and he told me there are outfitters who will drop you off and then return to pick you up, weather permitting!! Now that would be the way to visit a glacier, maybe next time!
Exiting Aialik Bay we came upon a killer whale with her calf just frolicking in the open water, we heaved too to observe them and then another passenger spotted 3 more a couple of hundred yards off the port side. Joe was trying to decide whether we should move when they changed course and came to join the mother and calf by us. It was a male and 2 females and all 5 swam around us for a few minutes before the male took off and the rest of the pod followed what an exhilarating experience.
Heading back to Seaward all of the passengers seemed content to huddle in the main cabin sipping tea and soup as if the return leg offered nothing. I on the other hand grabbed a beer and sat up beside Joe in the wheel house. Joe and his ancestors have lived here all their lives making a living from the sea. He told me all about the great quake of March 27th 1964 which wiped out the town of Seaward, Joe happened to be in Kodiak that day, which also got hit but not as bad.
It took years of hard work, living through harsh winters in make shift shelters to rebuild the town and the fishing industry so when the tourist industry started to take off in the nineties Joe literally jumped ship and traded his fishing net for a tour microphone.
Back on the dock at 5pm I had ninety minutes till my bus to Anchorage, so I decided to have a bite to eat at Chinooks and was rewarded with the lovely Sandy being behind the bar. I told her all about my great day on the boat with Joe and Ellen and of course she knew them, they usually come in most evenings after work about 7ish when the boat was all ship shape, alas I would be gone.
Naturally I ordered the chowder and followed it up with their Halibut cheeks cerviche which was out of this world. I’ve had Grouper cheeks cerviche in Florida (I made it myself) but it was nothing on this. This was a taste explosion in my mouth; forget about lobster, this is seafood at its finest. Halibut cheeks are reason enough for a return trip, they never leave the dock! There just happened to be a couple of ‘tourist fishermen sitting down the bar and they agreed, it was the tastiest part of the fish and luckily for all the locals when tourists catch Halibut they only ask for the filets, leaving all the good stuff for them and me.
Traveling on ones own has its benefits, firstly you don’t have to conform to other people’s requirements and most importantly you usually get to ride up front on boats, shuttles and of course buses. This bus was no different, I grabbed the front seat and we had a good chat. He was retired from New Jersey to Florida and had to take care of his mother down there but for five months a year he came to Alaska to supplement
his income by driving a bus for the park shuttle service. I had seen a lot of buses zooming around with cruise line names on them and asked if he had ever tried drove them, he had made inquires at the start of this season but they require that you drive 13 out of 14 days, i.e. 1 day off every two weeks, sod that he said, “they pay more but I did not come here to kill myself”.
After 2 local stops we mutually ended the conversation as he hit the highway and put the hammer down, he was cruising at 80 mph and you have to keep your eyes on the road as an animal can wander out at any moment. He had had a few close calls, but none on this day.
We got into Anchorage around 9pm which was really good going and the bus stop was just a few blocks from the Econo Inn so I was checked in by 9:30pm. Although it had been a long grueling day and I was pretty knackered with it being full daylight I had no inclination to sleep so I headed for my new favorite Mexican joint La Cabana for a couple of Margarita’s and some fish tacos, I would be able to sleep-in in the morning as I had reserved a rental car at the airport for noon.
Although I had wanted to sleep late I found myself wide awake at 8am with the bright sunshine outside. Well I had not seen much of Anchorage so now was as good a time as any, check out was not until eleven so I had a couple of hours, figured I’d wander downtown and grab some breakfast preferably consisting of salmon or halibut but no such luck, every joint I went into had an all you can eat breakfast buffet, yuck! So I settled for a Starbucks latte and their egg Mc muffin sandwich, the last thing I wanted, well almost last thing, Micky D’s or Burger King would have been worse but I had been walking for almost an hour.
There is nothing to downtown Anchorage, its all souvenir shops so I headed back to the motel, grabbed my bag and took the shuttle to the airport.
Heading northeast out of Anchorage on route 1 there is some decent scenery but when you turn north onto route 3 through Wasilla the terrain get very flat green and boring just as Steve had said, there was very little traffic after Wasilla so I just floored the rental, next stop Talkeetna, which is 115 mile from Anchorage and I managed to make it in under 2 hours.
Talkeetna is a cute little town that still looks like it probably did back in the goldrush days but now it is caught up in the tourist rush. I walked around the whole town in ten minutes and figured the only place I would set foot in was the joint I had parked in front off, The West Pub & Grill; surely I would find some fish here for lunch. It looked a bit ominous when I walked in as most people in the small garden appeared to be eating burgers but a peruse of the menu offered a salmon filet with homemade slaw, sold with a pint of Alaska Amber Ale.
Naturally I got talking to the bartender, Simon and asked the obvious question, do you live here year round? No he only came up here five months of the year, tending bar 2 days a week and teaching kayaking the rest of the time. What he makes in the 5 months supports him in Costa Rica surfing for the winter, very cool. My advice to him was to keep living that life as long as possible, you never know what is around the corner.
I got back on the road by 4pm, I wanted to be in Denali by 7 and it was 155 miles north through what promised to be spectacular scenery. After about an hour I came upon the south Denali lookout point and got my first glimpse of the great mountain, even at over 120 miles away it was spectacular.
When I got to Denali just before 7pm it was just as Steve had described in Seward, “glitter gulch”. I came across a small rise and there laid out before me was a small valley chock full of condos, restaurants, fast food joints and souvenir shops, yuck, but a necessary by-product of Denali’s success.
All the condo/hotels in the area were priced at $175 and up per night, a little out of my range and not the kind of place I would like to stay anyway. Through some digging on the web I had found a cabin with shared bathroom facilities @ The Salmon Bake for $50 per night, much more my speed and now I was pulling up outside.
The Salmon Bake is the largest locally owner restaurant in the area and they were doing a thriving business, all 3 of their dining rooms were packed and there was a pungent smell of fish.
Reception was the cashier’s desk and upon production of my confirmation e mail I was handed the key to cabin 5 and a map to find it up in the woods, it wasn’t that far just a little complicated.
Up the hill I found 10 little canvas covered frame cabins connected by a wooden walkway surrounding a triple bathroom/shower house. Inside they were quite cozy, carpeted floor, small desk for writing postcards and 2 queen size beds with complimentary water bottles on each bed.
After getting my bearings and settling in I wandered back down to the main building and was amazed that the whole place had emptied out, I suppose it’s just like this on the boats, cruise/herd mentality.
Upstairs the bar was equally as quiet, I ordered an Alaskan Blond (beer), fish chowder and grill Halibut n chips, excellent, after another few beers I decided to have a wander around the neighborhood, you can’t really call it a town because I don’t think anyone actually lives there permanently
After about an hour I wandered back up the hill past the cabin site and found a small bar/restaurant called The Overlook, which was attached to the Crow’s Nest motel. They also had cabins but were made of logs and looked better decorated inside (I checked the web; they go for $199 per night). I stopped in for a quick nightcap and called it a day.
Next morning I was awake at 7am and decided to go for a long walk as I would be spending eleven hours on a bus for the rest of the day, I had booked the 9:30am trip to Wonder Lake which is 90 miles into the park and if Denali is out, there would be spectacular views. Private vehicles are not allowed past mile post 15 without a permit, there is a small parking lot there and it is a good spot to hike the Savage River.
At the bus depot I was third in line as I wanted one of the coveted left side window seats which has all the best views for the outbound leg, when the bus pulled up I got the perfect seat half way back with a full pane by my seat but unbeknownst to me the couple I had been talking to behind me in the line had a group of graduating high school seniors with them and they all piled into the back. There were about eight girls in the group and they did not shut up for a second, after half an hour if I had a gun I would have shot them. At one point the driver stopped the bus and asked them nicely to stop talking and one of them replied” we are college girls, we don’t stop talking”. No wonder we saw so few animals on the way out, we could be heard for miles.
The tension was broken when our bus pulled up beside another bus exiting the park and the two drivers leaned out to talk to each. After a few minutes our driver dug into his backpack and passed a jar of Grey Poupon to his fellow driver, he explained it had been a running joke between them all season and yesterday he had been in Anchorage and so picked up the mustard, very funny in the middle of nowhere, although not everyone got the joke, guess who!!
As we got into the park we got our first clear look at Denali from about 90 miles, it’s awesome to look at something that big and that far away. The mountain makes its own weather systems at that altitude and we did not see it again until we were about 40 away, now it really started to look overpowering. Our destination, Wonder Lake, is the closest the road gets to it at 24 miles but looking at now the signs were not good that it would be out when we got there.
Sure enough when we got to the lake, Denali was totally engulfed in cloud, there was not much to do except eat lunch and have a wander around. The terrain was very flat and treeless, just a lot of tall shrubbery. From the top of a small knoll I could see there were a lot of people camping in small pup tents dotted around the area, waiting for that elusive glimpse of the mountain.
The bus only stays for 40 minutes but with the mountain socked in and the mosquito’s being pretty bad there was no point staying the extra hour for the last bus of the day and beside the girls had finally quietened down. The return journey was pretty quiet but with every seat taken it was very cramped. When we stopped at Toklat River where the park service has a large tent set up to sell books and souvenirs the driver announced we would be here for another 40 minute break. The drivers had a small tent to the side for them to take a break. So when I saw one exiting as ours entered I asked when he was leaving and if he had space, he had and I had 5 minutes. A quick whiz, I grabbed my bag off the other bus and away we went.
This bus was virtually empty with only about eighteen people on a fifty seater, I was going to take the back seat but there was a family of six (Mum, Dad, 3 sons & 1 daughter, (boy, girl, boy, boy)) occupying the third and fourth rows from the back so it seemed a bit rude to sit behind them. After about twenty minutes the youngest son said he was tired so Mum told him to lie down in the back so I felt I had done the right thing. Two minutes later he is jumping up and down, hollering and waving 2 twenty dollar bills in his hands, he had found them on the floor, lucky bugger that would have bought a nice bottle of Cloudy Bay to erase the memories of the yakkedy yak school girls.
I don’t know if it was having fewer people on the bus not making noise or the time of day but we saw a lot more wildlife on the return trip, two separate brown bear sightings, a family of Foxes who’s den was just twenty yards from the road, two Moose that ran right in front of us and a Caribou, it was such a difference from the first bus.
Getting back to the bus terminal almost an hour ahead of schedule was a delight, I could have called the Salmon Bake Camp to send their shuttle but decided to hoof it. When I was out walking earlier that day I had seen a trail that lead to the park but did not know where it came out so I started walking around the parking lot looking for a trailhead when I came upon a young guy looking for the same thing. We agreed where we thought it should be and just as I was about to say lets hike together he took off into the woods like Bambi on speed, I tried to follow but within minutes I was totally discombobulated and lost, the immediate thought of running into a bear any moment suddenly became very real. I decided to backtrack and quickly realised I had no idea in which direction I was going, for someone who always prides themselves on knowing their north’s and south’s this was very disconcerting. All of a sudden I stumbled through some thick trees and found myself on the edge of a storm drain by the side of a road.
I was not sure which way was which but I had the feeling I was facing south so I turned to the left, as I wandered down the road a man appeared out of a side road about 500 yards ahead of me and just stood there, as I approached I figured I could at least ask him if I was headed in the right direction but as I drew close he shouted “are ya headed to town?, I replied “if towns this way, then that’s where I’m going”, it is he said, may I walk with you? sure!
After exchanging pleasantries and such (sorry I forgot his name) my new friend explained that he was going to town to buy a new tent as his had just been stolen, I was aghast. He had been hiking around Alaska for the past few months and just came upon this campsite at the entrance to Denali. He had booked a campsite for the night and someone stole his tent. I naturally thought that it had been erect but no, he had just gone to the bathroom, left his pack and tent roll outside but when he returned the tent was gone!! I explained this was not really a town in the normal sense but merely a collection of hotels, motels, RV parks and eateries with one gas station, I don’t think there is a hardware or grocery store so buying a tent would not be an option. He did not seem worried and started to ask about my trek into the park that day and how far I had got. I explained about the bus system and he asked if there was a trail as he wanted to walk to Wonder Lake. Walk!! It was ninety miles through bear country. He reckoned it would take him 5 to 6 days and I calculated I would be back at work in New York by then. I have no idea if he ever made it or if he even got a new tent but I thought of him often, especially when I saw a trailer for a new movie coming out “Into The Wild”.
The Salmon Bake was thankfully devoid of tourists when I got back so I retired to the bar for a well deserved martini followed of course by the fish chowder and their seafood quesadilla, excellent as usual, I’m really getting spoilt on all this fantastic fish.
After a stroll around I looked into the Overlook but it was a very loud cruise type of crowd so I decided to have an early night, write some postcards and get a quick start in the morning, it was after all my last day and I wanted to make the most of it.
While this trip was in the planning stages I had considered all the other “adventure” things to do while up here, white water rafting, I’d seen the river, it’s fast moving but not white water. Four wheel all terrain vehicles, just did not seem very ecco friendly so I just decided to drive into mile 15 of the park, leave the car and go hiking up the Savage River trail. Great move, there was nobody out there and the silence was deafening.
I drove back to the visitors centre for lunch and had excellent Halibut n chips which really surprised me as the concession is run by non other than Aramark, the global conglomerate that ruined my trip to the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai.
There are a number of short hiking trails from the visitors centre and I chose Horseshoe Lake which is about 2 hours round trip and I was rewarded by the sight of 2 Moose cooling off from the afternoon heat with a frolic in the lake.
As you exit the park there is one hotel, The Grande Denali Lodge, spectacularly positioned atop a mountain opposite and I thought I must have a cocktail there and get a panoramic photo but now I was going to drive up to Healy.
Healy is a small town of approx one thousand people just fourteen miles north of Denali but out of the Alaska Mountain Range, it sits on the open tundra and the main industry is the coal mine. I had been talking to the bartender last night at the Salmon Bake and he was born and bred in Healy. His dad worked for the coal company but he could not see himself going down that road. Last winter he had tended bar at The Totem Pole motel which was pretty dead so now with the money he was making he was going to Hawaii for the winter.
Needless to say there was not very much to see so I just turned around and headed back. I just made it over the Nenana river bridge when it was closed to all traffic due to the movement of a huge piece of machinery that was being moved north presumably to the coal mine. It was wrapped in white plastic, took up both lanes of the highway was about 20 foot high by 40 foot and sat in this immense trailer that was cradled between two bogies each with seven axles and eight wheels per axle all being pulled by a Peterbilt truck at approx 3 miles per hour. I stopped to watch it crawl over the bridge and noticed that the railroad ran above the other bank and cut into a tunnel under the bridge, the railroad was built to Fairbanks back in the 1920’s and they did not get around to building the road until 1974.
Well it around 5:30 by now and time for that pre dinner martini at The Grande Denali Lodge. There must have been at least eight switchbacks in the gravel road leading up the mountain but what a view from the top, of course Denali itself was not out, it must be fantastic when it is. The lodge itself was nothing to look but when you step in the door to the lobby, wow! It was a huge cavernous room of gleaming varnished wood , reception desk to the right, gift shop to the left and straight ahead a lovely seating area in front of a huge fireplace. Past the fireplace was the bar and dining room which sat out over the cliff and had floor to ceiling windows on 3 sides offering dramatic views, I ordered an in&out Tanqueray martini up with a twist and the barmaid apologetically tells me they have no vermouth, NOOOOOO, who ever heard of a bar with no vermouth, I was outraged, it took the shine off the whole place. I opted for a gin n tonic and she did not even have a slice of lemon, I had to settle for lime, now I’m pissed off, this place is a sham.
I downed the drink and headed for home to The Salmon Bake, it might not be pretty or have great views but it sure knows how to do food and drink. Later that night I got talking to the young girl who was the bar back that night and she said she used to work there as a waitress and hated every minute of it, this she said was the place work even though she made less money, she was happy.
Bellying up to the bar I got my perfect martini ordered the fish chowder, of course, followed by the Dungeness crab cakes, all washed down with a nice New Zealand sauvignon blanc, heavenly, my last supper in Alaska.
After dinner I got talking to a couple of girls and they were working as chambermaids across the road at the Denali Princess Lodge which they hated, they were filing applications at The Salmon Bake for next year.
Well that was it, time to hit the sack, I had to have the car back at Anchorage airport by noon so I would have to up by 6, on the road by 7 so I could be downtown Anchorage by 11 to eat before hitting the airport, I had noticed a place called the City Diner last week near the airport so I figured I’d try it.
What a great choice this turned out to be, there was a half hour wait for tables but I snagged a seat at the counter and ordered up some salmon hash with poached eggs. It was fantastic but I could not finish it, huge portions.
Well that was it, my last meal in Alaska, time to head for the airport, turn in the car and settle down in the Alaskan Airlines lounge as I had a 3 hour wait for my flight.
The lounge was virtually empty and what a nice surprise to find they had Alaskan Blond on draught, I got a pint and settled down to watch The Battle of Britain on my DVD. When I went back to get another pint there was a wonderful fish smell in the air and when I enquired from the bartender she informed me there was fresh fish chowder available in the kitchen, just help myself. Ah one last taste of Alaskan cooking.
I was originally scheduled to have a three hour lay-over in Seattle and had toyed with the idea of getting a cab downtown for a quick bite to eat at The Flying Fish but had to dismiss that idea when my flight out of Anchorage was delayed by 30 minutes.
Despite the delay I was very impressed by Alaska Airlines, the lounge, staff and facilities were superb but that was nothing compared to when I got on the plane. The flight crew were the most charming I have ever met and the service was impeccable. Good wines served in glasses, nice salmon and pasta served on china with real silverware, things that have gone missing on other major American airlines since September 2001.
Another nice touch in their first class is that they had out preloaded personal DVD players which contain about 20 movies, cartoons and a lot of nature shows about Alaska, as an alternative there was the spectacular scenery of the Alaskan and Canadian coastline, I must have counted at least eight cruise ships during the flight.
Landing at Sea Tac airport it turns out even if the flight had been on time I would not have had time to make it downtown, we pulled into the very last gate of the North terminal and when I checked the board my Delta flight was leaving out of the last gate on concourse A, the transfer would take 2 trains and a lot of walking about 40 minutes all told. As it was I was only going to get about 45 minutes in the Delta Crown Room but it was enough to have a couple of glasses of wine and watch a late Mariners rally which failed against the visiting Red Sox.
My flight was being called and it was time to end my latest odyssey next stop was JFK and back to reality.
As my flight descended down through the clouds towards Anchorage, I got my first glimpse of the majestic snow topped peaks of the slate grey Alaska Mountains, that surround the city on three sides and the deep aquatic blue of Cook Inlet. A tingle went through me, anticipating the expedition into a world that is both familiar yet strangely unknown.
After a 10 ½ hour trip from New York via Cincinnati, I arrived at Ted Stevens’s airport at 8pm local time (midnight in NYC). I had reservations on the 6:45am train to Seward and had booked a room at the Econo Inn close to the train depot. While waiting for the motel shuttle, I had an interesting chat with a TSA agent, who was posted up there for the summer from California, being from Piso Beach, with no major airport nearby, he frequently gets posted to busy areas. Last Christmas/New Year’s he was posted to Washington’s Reagan airport. He does not agree with all the TSA procedures, but has to follow command! What other job in Piso Beach would give him these travel opportunities.
By the time I got to my room at 9pm my body clock was saying 1am but the sun was still shining so I went in search of a drink and a bite to eat. There was not much around in the immediate area, but I did find La Cabana Mexican restaurant, which served a good margarita and tasty seafood tacos.
I got to bed around 11pm and boy did that 5am alarm go off quick, the Alaska railroad require you to check-in 1 hour prior to departure just like the airlines, fortunately they had good coffee.
When we finally got to board, I was located in the last reserved car which was one of their older rolling stock and had big comfortable reclining seats. Each car has an assigned tour guide, in my case it was the lovely Jennifer and it just so happened her Dad was in the seat directly behind me. Jen was a high school senior and eager to show off her knowledge of her home state. Like did you know, that no houses in the state have basements due to the permafrost and that the Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet (which we passed) has the second largest tidal change in the world, forty feet between high and low. The largest change is the Bay of Fundy in Canada with a sixty foot differential. Turnagain Arm got its name when Captain Cook sailed up it and found a cul de sac, hence turnagain!Dad just kept asking more and more questions; bring out the best in her.
Although the journey is only 128 miles the train takes 4 ½ hours, slowing down for all animal sightings and the three glaciers it passes. There are two domed cars for 360 degree viewing, in addition to the oversized windows at your large reclining seat. The scenery outside the window is mesmerizing, the snow capped mountains slope down through emerald green forests to the crystal clear aqua blue lakes that mirror the mountains and sky. The houses dotted along the lake shores don’t have cars parked in the driveways, but seaplanes moored at the dock. A higher percentage of people commute by plane than car in Alaska. If you are really lucky, you will see some Dahl sheep, a moose or an elk, it is extremely unlikely to see a bear from the train, but it has been known.
When you finally pull into Seward at the head of Resurrection Bay, it is almost the epitome of a picturesque fishing village, until you look off to your left and see the huge ugly conveyor belt pier that stretches out into the bay, this is for loading coal, that is brought by train down from the interior for shipment to Korea and Peru.
The train depot is right beside Seward small boat harbour and I had booked a room at the Breeze Inn Motel across the street. My room was not ready so after dropping my bag off I went for an exploratory walk around town, but that only took 40 mins. it’s a small town ! Never the less it was enough to sharpen up my appetite for lunch, I had only had coffee and a power bar on the train. Most of the towns restaurants seemed to be of the same coffee shop/dinner type, all advertising fish n chips except for 2 right on the waterfront, Chinooks & Roy’s. I decided on Chinooks for some reason and was glad I did, the lovely proprietor, Sandy was tending bar and we struck up a great conversation, she is originally from nearby Connecticut. I sampled a few of the local Alaskan ales and soaked them up with a delicious grilled salmon with rice & veg. A most satisfying lunch.
Now the effects of the late night early start and jet lag were starting to have an effect so I went to see if my room was ready but alas the Breeze Inn are very firm about their 3pm check-in time and I was once more cast out to fend for myself for at least another hour. In no mood to do any more exploring I headed straight across the parking lot to the Breeze Inn’s bar/restaurant to kill the hour over a beer.
Initially there were just a few guys, all of whom were smoking, so I stayed down the emptier end of the bar on my own, but then several of the restaurant waitresses came in to cash up their tips and have an after work drink, well they perked me right up and one of them was from Dublin, naturally! We had a great time and before you knew it, it was 5pm, they had to go home and I needed a nap, surely my room would be ready by now?
After a short nap I got up and wandered over to Ray’s which was packed but I managed to find a stool at the bar and ordered up a Tanquary martini while I perused the menu. Well it had been a most satisfying first day in Alaska to I decided to treat myself to a pound of King Crab Legs and a bottle of Cloudy Bay, awesome. Half way through dinner 3 guys joined me at the bar, they had just come in off a charter and one poor sod had not done so good, his mates were enjoying razzing him and I chimed in.
I finally shuffled out of Rays at 11pm but it only felt like 7 in New York as it was still quite bright, I felt like having a nightcap at the Breeze bar but it had been a very long day and I had a glacier boat tour booked for 9am so bedways was bestway.
When I opened my eyes in the morning I could not believe it, I had slept through 2 alarms and it was 9:30, my ship had sailed, shit! I got up and looked out through the curtains and the whole fjord/harbour was locked in by low clouds and fog, I had lucked out, it was a crappy day to out on the water. I called the office across the street and explained my predicament; a very nice lady asked if I was traveling solo? And when I said yes she said I was better off missing the boat I was booked on, it held almost 200 passengers. She recommended I book the Captain’s choice tour for tomorrow which is on a much smaller vessel and so far there were only 16 bookings, thank you, yes there is a god, back to bed for an hour!
When I finally emerged into the day it was a very damp fog that reminded me of the old famous pea soupers in the London of my youth. It was a good day for indoor activities, so I headed for the Alaska Sea Life Center, a mile down the road in downtown Seward. It was built with a donation from Exxon after the Exxon Valdes disaster decimated all the local sea life.
The sea life center is well worth a visit regardless of the weather, lots of very interesting exhibits of the local aquatic life and plenty of live mammals and birds which have been rescued due to various accidents.
I walked back to the small boat harbour and decided to have lunch at Chinooks again with Sandy, but unfortunately she was not working. I had their seafood chowder (better than Roy’s) and the crab cakes, very good.
After lunch I caught a shuttle out to Exit Glacier, what a difference a valley makes. In Seward it had been very overcast and misty; here it was 70 degrees, clear blue skies and sunny. It was a nice easy 1 mile hike to the glacier and although small in glacier terms it is very impressive, especially as you can get to within about 10 feet and feel the cold emanating off it.
Upon my return to Seward I had a quick nap then went for dinner again at Roy’s and met a very interesting man while dining at the bar, Steve, he worked for the coal mine in Healy which shipped the coal down via Alaska RR to Seward
I had originally planned to take the train up to Denali and the bus back but the bus was booked and the return train would not connect with my flight, so I had been forced to rent a car, but now Steve said I had made the right choice. The first 4 hours of the train journey were very boring and I would cover the distance in half the time with a car, but also that the train was packed with cruise passengers. Also being on the train I would not see Talkeetna, a beautiful little Alaskan town well worth a stop for lunch. We were then joined at the bar by a woman from Ketchikan which is down the southeast peninsula, she and Steve started swapping stories, how hard it is sometimes living up there in the dark, she had moved up from the lower forty eight but Steve was a third generation Alaskan, I was very privileged.
I had mentioned to Steve about my planned boat trip the next morning to see wildlife and a calving (falling ice) glacier and he told me on my next trip I should plan going to a tiny town called Cordova on Prince William Sound that is only reachable by ferry or plane where you can sit on the beach and watch the glacier calve all day, sounds perfect.
It was getting late so I bid my new Alaskan friends good night as I did not want to miss the boat, again.
The next morning dawned foggy as the day before but I had seen how quickly it changes from fjord to fjord. There were still only 16 bookings for our boat so things looked good. I saw the line of people queuing for the 8am boat which was the same size as the one I missed and was I ever glad of oversleeping. It would have been hell.
I felt positively naked when we boarded, I was dressed in jeans, long sleeve shirt and a windbreaker, everyone else must have had about 2 or 3 layers of artic gear with rain gear on top!!
As we motored out of the small boat harbour we spotted our first bald eagle sitting on the coal conveyor to our left and as we came about there was another sitting on the channel marker to our right, beautiful, noble and strong creatures with no fear of the passing boat.
We moved down the fiord and the backdrop of the low lying clouds on the surrounding mountains with bright sunshine glinting off glaciers in the high valleys was very dramatic, it looked like a vision of Valhalla.
As we got out of the fiord past Fox Island and into Resurrection Bay, Ellen the first mate served up a breakfast of yogurt, fresh fruit and canola with coffee and told everyone to search the calm waters for signs of wildlife. It seemed to take for ever; I think we all thought they would be just there waiting in the bay for our enjoyment. But after an hour we finally spotted a humpback whale gracefully swimming along, it was beautiful to watch.
Further out into the bay we came upon the Chiswell Islands where we saw dozens of sea lions and literally millions of sea birds, the noise was incredible and what I found even more incredible was that some of them can dive to 400 feet underwater to fish, even the cuddly cute puffin can dive to 350 feet. During the winter when these waters virtually freeze over the birds will fly 4 to 500 miles south in the Pacific and winter there, not touching land for over 6 months.
We then motored up Aialik Bay to Aialik Glacier, it was very eerie, with a low lying fog and it was getting colder by the minute. Now I started to understand why all these people had were wearing so many layers of clothing but then I looked at Captain Joe and mate Ellen and they were not overly bundled so what the hell, how bad could it get!
After about half an hour of cautious sailing the fog lifted and we were confronted with a 400 foot wall of ice, it was just an incredible sight and felt like standing in front of an open freezer door, WOW and the noise was also incredible, it creaked and groaned as large chunks fell away into the freezing artic waters. We were bobbing in a sea of large ice chunks just a ¼ mile from the glacier face. Local law prohibited us from going any nearer and Joe could not cut the engine to get the full noise effect, due to the fact that we might need full power any second should a large enough piece calve to cause a wave which could swamp our small boat. I doubt if I, in my light clothing, would have lasted more than 40 seconds in that water but I would have loved to have experienced the glacier in total silence.
The glaciers are constantly moving, being pushed forward by pressure from above and move an average of 4 miles per day. We scooped up ice as it floated past the boat, it was so clear and pure looking, I could only think of making a martini or a gin n tonic.
Motoring back down the bay I noticed some kayakers beached on the shore. I asked Joe how they got here and he told me there are outfitters who will drop you off and then return to pick you up, weather permitting!! Now that would be the way to visit a glacier, maybe next time!
Exiting Aialik Bay we came upon a killer whale with her calf just frolicking in the open water, we heaved too to observe them and then another passenger spotted 3 more a couple of hundred yards off the port side. Joe was trying to decide whether we should move when they changed course and came to join the mother and calf by us. It was a male and 2 females and all 5 swam around us for a few minutes before the male took off and the rest of the pod followed what an exhilarating experience.
Heading back to Seaward all of the passengers seemed content to huddle in the main cabin sipping tea and soup as if the return leg offered nothing. I on the other hand grabbed a beer and sat up beside Joe in the wheel house. Joe and his ancestors have lived here all their lives making a living from the sea. He told me all about the great quake of March 27th 1964 which wiped out the town of Seaward, Joe happened to be in Kodiak that day, which also got hit but not as bad.
It took years of hard work, living through harsh winters in make shift shelters to rebuild the town and the fishing industry so when the tourist industry started to take off in the nineties Joe literally jumped ship and traded his fishing net for a tour microphone.
Back on the dock at 5pm I had ninety minutes till my bus to Anchorage, so I decided to have a bite to eat at Chinooks and was rewarded with the lovely Sandy being behind the bar. I told her all about my great day on the boat with Joe and Ellen and of course she knew them, they usually come in most evenings after work about 7ish when the boat was all ship shape, alas I would be gone.
Naturally I ordered the chowder and followed it up with their Halibut cheeks cerviche which was out of this world. I’ve had Grouper cheeks cerviche in Florida (I made it myself) but it was nothing on this. This was a taste explosion in my mouth; forget about lobster, this is seafood at its finest. Halibut cheeks are reason enough for a return trip, they never leave the dock! There just happened to be a couple of ‘tourist fishermen sitting down the bar and they agreed, it was the tastiest part of the fish and luckily for all the locals when tourists catch Halibut they only ask for the filets, leaving all the good stuff for them and me.
Traveling on ones own has its benefits, firstly you don’t have to conform to other people’s requirements and most importantly you usually get to ride up front on boats, shuttles and of course buses. This bus was no different, I grabbed the front seat and we had a good chat. He was retired from New Jersey to Florida and had to take care of his mother down there but for five months a year he came to Alaska to supplement
his income by driving a bus for the park shuttle service. I had seen a lot of buses zooming around with cruise line names on them and asked if he had ever tried drove them, he had made inquires at the start of this season but they require that you drive 13 out of 14 days, i.e. 1 day off every two weeks, sod that he said, “they pay more but I did not come here to kill myself”.
After 2 local stops we mutually ended the conversation as he hit the highway and put the hammer down, he was cruising at 80 mph and you have to keep your eyes on the road as an animal can wander out at any moment. He had had a few close calls, but none on this day.
We got into Anchorage around 9pm which was really good going and the bus stop was just a few blocks from the Econo Inn so I was checked in by 9:30pm. Although it had been a long grueling day and I was pretty knackered with it being full daylight I had no inclination to sleep so I headed for my new favorite Mexican joint La Cabana for a couple of Margarita’s and some fish tacos, I would be able to sleep-in in the morning as I had reserved a rental car at the airport for noon.
Although I had wanted to sleep late I found myself wide awake at 8am with the bright sunshine outside. Well I had not seen much of Anchorage so now was as good a time as any, check out was not until eleven so I had a couple of hours, figured I’d wander downtown and grab some breakfast preferably consisting of salmon or halibut but no such luck, every joint I went into had an all you can eat breakfast buffet, yuck! So I settled for a Starbucks latte and their egg Mc muffin sandwich, the last thing I wanted, well almost last thing, Micky D’s or Burger King would have been worse but I had been walking for almost an hour.
There is nothing to downtown Anchorage, its all souvenir shops so I headed back to the motel, grabbed my bag and took the shuttle to the airport.
Heading northeast out of Anchorage on route 1 there is some decent scenery but when you turn north onto route 3 through Wasilla the terrain get very flat green and boring just as Steve had said, there was very little traffic after Wasilla so I just floored the rental, next stop Talkeetna, which is 115 mile from Anchorage and I managed to make it in under 2 hours.
Talkeetna is a cute little town that still looks like it probably did back in the goldrush days but now it is caught up in the tourist rush. I walked around the whole town in ten minutes and figured the only place I would set foot in was the joint I had parked in front off, The West Pub & Grill; surely I would find some fish here for lunch. It looked a bit ominous when I walked in as most people in the small garden appeared to be eating burgers but a peruse of the menu offered a salmon filet with homemade slaw, sold with a pint of Alaska Amber Ale.
Naturally I got talking to the bartender, Simon and asked the obvious question, do you live here year round? No he only came up here five months of the year, tending bar 2 days a week and teaching kayaking the rest of the time. What he makes in the 5 months supports him in Costa Rica surfing for the winter, very cool. My advice to him was to keep living that life as long as possible, you never know what is around the corner.
I got back on the road by 4pm, I wanted to be in Denali by 7 and it was 155 miles north through what promised to be spectacular scenery. After about an hour I came upon the south Denali lookout point and got my first glimpse of the great mountain, even at over 120 miles away it was spectacular.
When I got to Denali just before 7pm it was just as Steve had described in Seward, “glitter gulch”. I came across a small rise and there laid out before me was a small valley chock full of condos, restaurants, fast food joints and souvenir shops, yuck, but a necessary by-product of Denali’s success.
All the condo/hotels in the area were priced at $175 and up per night, a little out of my range and not the kind of place I would like to stay anyway. Through some digging on the web I had found a cabin with shared bathroom facilities @ The Salmon Bake for $50 per night, much more my speed and now I was pulling up outside.
The Salmon Bake is the largest locally owner restaurant in the area and they were doing a thriving business, all 3 of their dining rooms were packed and there was a pungent smell of fish.
Reception was the cashier’s desk and upon production of my confirmation e mail I was handed the key to cabin 5 and a map to find it up in the woods, it wasn’t that far just a little complicated.
Up the hill I found 10 little canvas covered frame cabins connected by a wooden walkway surrounding a triple bathroom/shower house. Inside they were quite cozy, carpeted floor, small desk for writing postcards and 2 queen size beds with complimentary water bottles on each bed.
After getting my bearings and settling in I wandered back down to the main building and was amazed that the whole place had emptied out, I suppose it’s just like this on the boats, cruise/herd mentality.
Upstairs the bar was equally as quiet, I ordered an Alaskan Blond (beer), fish chowder and grill Halibut n chips, excellent, after another few beers I decided to have a wander around the neighborhood, you can’t really call it a town because I don’t think anyone actually lives there permanently
After about an hour I wandered back up the hill past the cabin site and found a small bar/restaurant called The Overlook, which was attached to the Crow’s Nest motel. They also had cabins but were made of logs and looked better decorated inside (I checked the web; they go for $199 per night). I stopped in for a quick nightcap and called it a day.
Next morning I was awake at 7am and decided to go for a long walk as I would be spending eleven hours on a bus for the rest of the day, I had booked the 9:30am trip to Wonder Lake which is 90 miles into the park and if Denali is out, there would be spectacular views. Private vehicles are not allowed past mile post 15 without a permit, there is a small parking lot there and it is a good spot to hike the Savage River.
At the bus depot I was third in line as I wanted one of the coveted left side window seats which has all the best views for the outbound leg, when the bus pulled up I got the perfect seat half way back with a full pane by my seat but unbeknownst to me the couple I had been talking to behind me in the line had a group of graduating high school seniors with them and they all piled into the back. There were about eight girls in the group and they did not shut up for a second, after half an hour if I had a gun I would have shot them. At one point the driver stopped the bus and asked them nicely to stop talking and one of them replied” we are college girls, we don’t stop talking”. No wonder we saw so few animals on the way out, we could be heard for miles.
The tension was broken when our bus pulled up beside another bus exiting the park and the two drivers leaned out to talk to each. After a few minutes our driver dug into his backpack and passed a jar of Grey Poupon to his fellow driver, he explained it had been a running joke between them all season and yesterday he had been in Anchorage and so picked up the mustard, very funny in the middle of nowhere, although not everyone got the joke, guess who!!
As we got into the park we got our first clear look at Denali from about 90 miles, it’s awesome to look at something that big and that far away. The mountain makes its own weather systems at that altitude and we did not see it again until we were about 40 away, now it really started to look overpowering. Our destination, Wonder Lake, is the closest the road gets to it at 24 miles but looking at now the signs were not good that it would be out when we got there.
Sure enough when we got to the lake, Denali was totally engulfed in cloud, there was not much to do except eat lunch and have a wander around. The terrain was very flat and treeless, just a lot of tall shrubbery. From the top of a small knoll I could see there were a lot of people camping in small pup tents dotted around the area, waiting for that elusive glimpse of the mountain.
The bus only stays for 40 minutes but with the mountain socked in and the mosquito’s being pretty bad there was no point staying the extra hour for the last bus of the day and beside the girls had finally quietened down. The return journey was pretty quiet but with every seat taken it was very cramped. When we stopped at Toklat River where the park service has a large tent set up to sell books and souvenirs the driver announced we would be here for another 40 minute break. The drivers had a small tent to the side for them to take a break. So when I saw one exiting as ours entered I asked when he was leaving and if he had space, he had and I had 5 minutes. A quick whiz, I grabbed my bag off the other bus and away we went.
This bus was virtually empty with only about eighteen people on a fifty seater, I was going to take the back seat but there was a family of six (Mum, Dad, 3 sons & 1 daughter, (boy, girl, boy, boy)) occupying the third and fourth rows from the back so it seemed a bit rude to sit behind them. After about twenty minutes the youngest son said he was tired so Mum told him to lie down in the back so I felt I had done the right thing. Two minutes later he is jumping up and down, hollering and waving 2 twenty dollar bills in his hands, he had found them on the floor, lucky bugger that would have bought a nice bottle of Cloudy Bay to erase the memories of the yakkedy yak school girls.
I don’t know if it was having fewer people on the bus not making noise or the time of day but we saw a lot more wildlife on the return trip, two separate brown bear sightings, a family of Foxes who’s den was just twenty yards from the road, two Moose that ran right in front of us and a Caribou, it was such a difference from the first bus.
Getting back to the bus terminal almost an hour ahead of schedule was a delight, I could have called the Salmon Bake Camp to send their shuttle but decided to hoof it. When I was out walking earlier that day I had seen a trail that lead to the park but did not know where it came out so I started walking around the parking lot looking for a trailhead when I came upon a young guy looking for the same thing. We agreed where we thought it should be and just as I was about to say lets hike together he took off into the woods like Bambi on speed, I tried to follow but within minutes I was totally discombobulated and lost, the immediate thought of running into a bear any moment suddenly became very real. I decided to backtrack and quickly realised I had no idea in which direction I was going, for someone who always prides themselves on knowing their north’s and south’s this was very disconcerting. All of a sudden I stumbled through some thick trees and found myself on the edge of a storm drain by the side of a road.
I was not sure which way was which but I had the feeling I was facing south so I turned to the left, as I wandered down the road a man appeared out of a side road about 500 yards ahead of me and just stood there, as I approached I figured I could at least ask him if I was headed in the right direction but as I drew close he shouted “are ya headed to town?, I replied “if towns this way, then that’s where I’m going”, it is he said, may I walk with you? sure!
After exchanging pleasantries and such (sorry I forgot his name) my new friend explained that he was going to town to buy a new tent as his had just been stolen, I was aghast. He had been hiking around Alaska for the past few months and just came upon this campsite at the entrance to Denali. He had booked a campsite for the night and someone stole his tent. I naturally thought that it had been erect but no, he had just gone to the bathroom, left his pack and tent roll outside but when he returned the tent was gone!! I explained this was not really a town in the normal sense but merely a collection of hotels, motels, RV parks and eateries with one gas station, I don’t think there is a hardware or grocery store so buying a tent would not be an option. He did not seem worried and started to ask about my trek into the park that day and how far I had got. I explained about the bus system and he asked if there was a trail as he wanted to walk to Wonder Lake. Walk!! It was ninety miles through bear country. He reckoned it would take him 5 to 6 days and I calculated I would be back at work in New York by then. I have no idea if he ever made it or if he even got a new tent but I thought of him often, especially when I saw a trailer for a new movie coming out “Into The Wild”.
The Salmon Bake was thankfully devoid of tourists when I got back so I retired to the bar for a well deserved martini followed of course by the fish chowder and their seafood quesadilla, excellent as usual, I’m really getting spoilt on all this fantastic fish.
After a stroll around I looked into the Overlook but it was a very loud cruise type of crowd so I decided to have an early night, write some postcards and get a quick start in the morning, it was after all my last day and I wanted to make the most of it.
While this trip was in the planning stages I had considered all the other “adventure” things to do while up here, white water rafting, I’d seen the river, it’s fast moving but not white water. Four wheel all terrain vehicles, just did not seem very ecco friendly so I just decided to drive into mile 15 of the park, leave the car and go hiking up the Savage River trail. Great move, there was nobody out there and the silence was deafening.
I drove back to the visitors centre for lunch and had excellent Halibut n chips which really surprised me as the concession is run by non other than Aramark, the global conglomerate that ruined my trip to the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai.
There are a number of short hiking trails from the visitors centre and I chose Horseshoe Lake which is about 2 hours round trip and I was rewarded by the sight of 2 Moose cooling off from the afternoon heat with a frolic in the lake.
As you exit the park there is one hotel, The Grande Denali Lodge, spectacularly positioned atop a mountain opposite and I thought I must have a cocktail there and get a panoramic photo but now I was going to drive up to Healy.
Healy is a small town of approx one thousand people just fourteen miles north of Denali but out of the Alaska Mountain Range, it sits on the open tundra and the main industry is the coal mine. I had been talking to the bartender last night at the Salmon Bake and he was born and bred in Healy. His dad worked for the coal company but he could not see himself going down that road. Last winter he had tended bar at The Totem Pole motel which was pretty dead so now with the money he was making he was going to Hawaii for the winter.
Needless to say there was not very much to see so I just turned around and headed back. I just made it over the Nenana river bridge when it was closed to all traffic due to the movement of a huge piece of machinery that was being moved north presumably to the coal mine. It was wrapped in white plastic, took up both lanes of the highway was about 20 foot high by 40 foot and sat in this immense trailer that was cradled between two bogies each with seven axles and eight wheels per axle all being pulled by a Peterbilt truck at approx 3 miles per hour. I stopped to watch it crawl over the bridge and noticed that the railroad ran above the other bank and cut into a tunnel under the bridge, the railroad was built to Fairbanks back in the 1920’s and they did not get around to building the road until 1974.
Well it around 5:30 by now and time for that pre dinner martini at The Grande Denali Lodge. There must have been at least eight switchbacks in the gravel road leading up the mountain but what a view from the top, of course Denali itself was not out, it must be fantastic when it is. The lodge itself was nothing to look but when you step in the door to the lobby, wow! It was a huge cavernous room of gleaming varnished wood , reception desk to the right, gift shop to the left and straight ahead a lovely seating area in front of a huge fireplace. Past the fireplace was the bar and dining room which sat out over the cliff and had floor to ceiling windows on 3 sides offering dramatic views, I ordered an in&out Tanqueray martini up with a twist and the barmaid apologetically tells me they have no vermouth, NOOOOOO, who ever heard of a bar with no vermouth, I was outraged, it took the shine off the whole place. I opted for a gin n tonic and she did not even have a slice of lemon, I had to settle for lime, now I’m pissed off, this place is a sham.
I downed the drink and headed for home to The Salmon Bake, it might not be pretty or have great views but it sure knows how to do food and drink. Later that night I got talking to the young girl who was the bar back that night and she said she used to work there as a waitress and hated every minute of it, this she said was the place work even though she made less money, she was happy.
Bellying up to the bar I got my perfect martini ordered the fish chowder, of course, followed by the Dungeness crab cakes, all washed down with a nice New Zealand sauvignon blanc, heavenly, my last supper in Alaska.
After dinner I got talking to a couple of girls and they were working as chambermaids across the road at the Denali Princess Lodge which they hated, they were filing applications at The Salmon Bake for next year.
Well that was it, time to hit the sack, I had to have the car back at Anchorage airport by noon so I would have to up by 6, on the road by 7 so I could be downtown Anchorage by 11 to eat before hitting the airport, I had noticed a place called the City Diner last week near the airport so I figured I’d try it.
What a great choice this turned out to be, there was a half hour wait for tables but I snagged a seat at the counter and ordered up some salmon hash with poached eggs. It was fantastic but I could not finish it, huge portions.
Well that was it, my last meal in Alaska, time to head for the airport, turn in the car and settle down in the Alaskan Airlines lounge as I had a 3 hour wait for my flight.
The lounge was virtually empty and what a nice surprise to find they had Alaskan Blond on draught, I got a pint and settled down to watch The Battle of Britain on my DVD. When I went back to get another pint there was a wonderful fish smell in the air and when I enquired from the bartender she informed me there was fresh fish chowder available in the kitchen, just help myself. Ah one last taste of Alaskan cooking.
I was originally scheduled to have a three hour lay-over in Seattle and had toyed with the idea of getting a cab downtown for a quick bite to eat at The Flying Fish but had to dismiss that idea when my flight out of Anchorage was delayed by 30 minutes.
Despite the delay I was very impressed by Alaska Airlines, the lounge, staff and facilities were superb but that was nothing compared to when I got on the plane. The flight crew were the most charming I have ever met and the service was impeccable. Good wines served in glasses, nice salmon and pasta served on china with real silverware, things that have gone missing on other major American airlines since September 2001.
Another nice touch in their first class is that they had out preloaded personal DVD players which contain about 20 movies, cartoons and a lot of nature shows about Alaska, as an alternative there was the spectacular scenery of the Alaskan and Canadian coastline, I must have counted at least eight cruise ships during the flight.
Landing at Sea Tac airport it turns out even if the flight had been on time I would not have had time to make it downtown, we pulled into the very last gate of the North terminal and when I checked the board my Delta flight was leaving out of the last gate on concourse A, the transfer would take 2 trains and a lot of walking about 40 minutes all told. As it was I was only going to get about 45 minutes in the Delta Crown Room but it was enough to have a couple of glasses of wine and watch a late Mariners rally which failed against the visiting Red Sox.
My flight was being called and it was time to end my latest odyssey next stop was JFK and back to reality.
Inaugural Asian Tour Pt.4
The flight to Shanghai was fairly uneventful, but I did manage to put away the best part of a bottle of decent California cabernet with dinner, much to the steward’s angst and all the time enjoying The Commitments, which I was very surprised to see NWA had in their video library.
Upon landing I had about a 15 minute wait for immigration but poor Dave had a much longer wait. While waiting I found an ATM and looked about transportation into Shanghai, which is approx an hours taxi ride and maybe two hours on public transport. The newly opened Maglev train which runs at an incredible 275mph only operates between 9am and 5:30pm so would not even be of any use to us on our return as we had to be at the airport next Tuesday at 8am.
I checked out the taxi line and while there were plenty of them they were very small looking Volkswagens, Back inside the terminal I was approached by a young guy in an official uniform who inquired which hotel I was going to and that he could arrange transportation in a large sedan for 500 Yuan ($60).I knew the taxi fare should be in the range of 200 Yuan but being tired from the flight and knowing Dave had been squashed in the back the thought of an hour cramped in the back of a small Volkswagen was not very appealing, so I said yes and told him to hang on till my friend came through.
When Dave came out we told him to bring the car around and we see whether it was worth 500Y and it was, nice silver Acura. Not only was it comfortable but he got us to our hotel in 40 minutes, we thought he was trying out for the race on Sunday but little did we know this was tame compared to what we would encounter in the next few days.
As it turns out the Maglev train and New York’s train to the plane have a lot in common, both go to the airport and neither goes downtown. Just like N.Y. you have to take a subway to the airport train albeit a state of the art German engineered magnetic levitated train which has a top speed of 275 mph but what good is that when you are schlepping bags up and down stairs and escalators.
We checked into The Metropole Hotel, an old colonial building just a few blocks off The Bund, which was the heart of the Tai-Pan’s economic zone during the nineteenth century. Tai-Pan’s were the CEO’s of mostly British, French, Portuguese and Dutch companies that traded all the goods out of China to Europe
After throwing the bags in the rooms naturally we headed out for a few libations thinking we would just find some place and not bothering to ask at the desk, adventurous, yeah. Well it was rather dark outside, they do not have great street lighting, but we pressed on towards Nan-Jing Rd. There was a Mickey Dee’s on the corner which had rather a large crowd both inside and out. This did not look good, people gathering at McDonald’s at 10:30pm as a social hangout.
We pressed on a few blocks and then made a right turn, back in the direction of the hotel, this street was even darker and al of a sudden a couple of guys came out of the shadows offering to take us to bars, the first guy offered us a girlie bar but we said no, and the second guy offered to take us to a beer bar, so we followed him, but it turned out to be a girlie bar or to be more exact a brothel. We graciously declined and headed back to the hotel, grabbing a couple of cold beers on the way at a 711 (Lawson’s), we were tired and figured we have an early start in the morning.
I had read in the Shanghai Daily on the plane, that getting to the track last year had been a disaster. Only the night before the race had it was decided to provide free public buses, but nobody knew about them, so every body drove. This year they organized the buses well in advance and announced that they would leave from 4 central locations around the city. We showed the locations to the desk clerk in the hotel and asked her to write the address of the nearest in Mandarin so we could get a taxi.
Wow what a ride we had in the taxi, people think New York taxis are mad, they have nothing on these guys, and in fact the whole traffic situation is just plain chaos. Then when we got up on the elevated highway, more wow’s, the skyline was just spectacular, everyway you turned there was just more spectacular buildings and it went on and on into the suburbs.
When we got to Shanghai Stadium there was an incredible amount of buses but virtually nobody getting on them, we walked right on to the first bus and it left half empty. Once we got out of the city we were on virtually empty highways but it was a long ride, ninety minutes later we finally got to the track, it is in the middle of nowhere but at the rate that China is building it will be a suburb of Shanghai in a few years.
The track is absolute state of the art, this being only the second race at the facility, but there is one major flaw; they gave the catering contract to an American company, Aramark. Hamburgers, hot dogs, ham & cheese hero’s and one concession to Asian cuisine, chicken curry which did not look to appetizing. All the soft drinks were Coke Cola products and Fosters the sole beer supplier. In the Fosters tent behind the main grandstand it was very funny; when you walked up to the bar 10 little Chinese girls would all shout Ga’day, very cute. All in all, a disastrous culinary experience.
The second major disaster was the inflexibility of the police and security. During Friday and Saturday practice/qualifying you were only allowed to enter the facility through the gate marked on your ticket and could only sit in your designated seat. One of the major attractions of coming to the track on Friday and Saturday is the fact that you can wander around and experience the cars at various viewing points which can in turn influence your future purchase of tickets.
As a case in point the first year of a grand prix at the Indianapolis Speedway, 1999, Steve and I purchased seats in the southwest vista just before the final turn onto the main straight and at the entrance to the pit lane. Right away on Friday afternoon we hated the views and started looking for alternatives finally ending up at the other end of the track at the northwest vista which had views of the first six turns and we have been in those seats ever since. Looking down the track on race day, the southwest vista stand is totally empty.
After practice ended we decided to head back to Shanghai pronto as there was no point in sticking around, they would not even let you into the main grandstand after the cars had retired for the day.
Hopping on a bus in the same parking lot as we had disembarked we assumed it was heading back to Shanghai Stadium. After a very circuitous route through some very poor and dubious neighborhoods it was dark when we got back to the city and we did not immediately realize we were at a different stadium. We tried to walk around it, but it soon became obvious that was not an option and that was when we twigged it. Of course it was six o’clock on a Friday evening and like any busy city there was not a taxi to be seen anywhere. We had no clue where we were and lucked out when we saw a subway. This was a lot luckier than you would think in a city of ten million; they only have four subway lines, one each, north, east, south and west. This was the north one and we were able to get a train to Shanghai Railway Station which I knew was not that far from our hotel area.
Outside the main station it was murder trying to get a taxi, unlike the Japanese people who queue orderly, the Chinese are very rude and pushy, so when in Rome, do like the locals and give as good as you get. Within minutes we were on our way. Now I thought we had seen some amazing sights on the bus but they were nothing compared with some of the back alley’s this driver took, it was like going back 300 years and then he turns the corner, goes up the freeway entrance ramp, and you are back in the heart of a 21st century city, unbelievable.
.
Safely back at the hotel and after a quick shower it was time to see Nan Jing Road, Shanghai’s version of Time’s Square. Well it did not disappoint, enough neon to rival the best of them, Time’s Sq., Las Vegas and Shinjuku. As we walked up the street everybody wanted to sell us a Rolex watch, some wanted to sell CD’s and DVD’s and a few even wanted to sell their sisters!
After about twenty minutes of this crap, but what seemed like an eternity, we were gasping for a couple of cold beers and realized we had not seen one bar or anything even resembling one. Finally we spotted a bamboo tikki bar and dived in just to get away from the watch sellers whom were as eager as the African boys in Shinjuku at plying their trade.
Upon getting a couple of beers we realized in keeping with the tikki hut theme the place had no windows and all the watch sellers were congregated outside. Now in the front window were about 10 English guys who were being barracked by them, but one lad was taking charge and announced to all the watch boys that they would buy one watch in turn from each of them and if it passed their tests they would then purchase all that sellers watches.
Fair enough, all the boys agreed and the first Rolex was bought without any haggling for 100 Yuan ($12.50), the guy immediately dunks it into a pint of beer and declares the watch a failure, throws it back at the seller and shouts NEXT. The next lad offers his Rolex, gets his unquestioned 100Yuan and it receives the same treatment with the same results. A couple of the lads wander off knowing their watches don’t stand a chance but a few remain. The next watch gets the same treatment with again the same result and of course you would think this is the way it will go on all night until either the Brits fun kitty runs dry or they just tire of the game.
Well one young boy was still proudly offering his Rolex and it was dually bought and dunked, but low and behold it pasted the beer test. Everybody immediately sat up including us, the emcee started banging it on the table and it still kept going. Next he put it on the ground, stood up on his chair and jumped on it It still kept going so he took it outside on to the street and threw it as high as he could in the air, it came down with a thud but it was still working, amazing. Well a deal is a deal he declared and took out a large wad of notes to buy all his watches but the poor kid only had 2 , he could have sold 50 right there and then.
Now that was great street entertainment
Time now to go in search of some dinner and I really wanted some crispy duck and just around the corner was a restaurant with huge pictures of golden crispy duck outside, well this had to be the place and in we went. Immediately we were impressed, there was not a foreigner in sight, just families sitting around big tables digging into glorious food but alas they were out of duck. Well everything on all the other tables looked so good we stayed and it was well worth the 600 Yuan we splurged on gorging ourselves. I’ve always liked Chinese food but this was spectacular, how would I ever be able to eat it stateside or in Europe again and we washed it all down with a couple of bottles of Great Wall cabernet, which wasn’t bad.
On the way back towards the hotel we looked for someplace to have a nightcap but there was none so we settled again for a couple of cans from Lawson’s and I decided to try a small bottle of Sake, wow, an arsonists delight, pure mentholated spirits, 100% flammable. Needless to say I did not even taste it, straight down the sink.
Saturday morning we again took a taxi to the National Stadium but knowing the length of the ride we did not jump on the first bus but waited for a more luxurious one of which there were plenty scattered amongst the hard seat city types. Getting on the bus we received a package containing various advertising crap and a map showing the four departure locations and the major roads surrounding Shanghai and the track so I was able to work out the routes. Three of the locations were using the same route and the only one that differed was the one we had taken home last night to Hongkou FC stadium, now I could work out our strategy for getting home after the race, getting stuck in the middle of nowhere with a 150,000 people it not the way I want to spend Sunday evening. Last week we had gotten real lucky in Suzuka in that our grandstand had been the closest to the train station.
After qualifying which the Renault boys dominated we made a dash for the Pudong area buses, as I calculated they would have to pass the Bund where we were staying and if we got lucky we could jump off around there. As the bus came over the cross-town expressway a guy from the back seat went down and had a word with the driver and came back smiling. I just instinctively knew he had asked to get off early and told Dave who had been dozing to be alert as he had the aisle seat. The exit ramp took us straight into the tunnel under the river but as soon as we came out the other side the bus pulled over and about half the passenger scampered off.
Sometimes things just fall into place perfectly and this was one of them, right across the street was a Citibank, for some much needed cash and just a few blocks away the Pearl Tower, which we were planning to visit on Monday and could now knock off at 4pm on Saturday afternoon.
Now it was a nice sunny afternoon and Pudong has some amazing architecture, but when we got up the top of the Pearl Tower you could hardly see a thing with the smog.
Going out for the evening we asked the front desk for recommendations firstly for a bar and then somewhere to get good crispy duck. The girl directed us to the Bund Brewing Company which was located in a small street very close to where the guy had taken us to the brothel on Thursday night, so near and yet so far. Next she said we should return to the hotel restaurant for the duck.
The brewing company was full of Europeans eating Chinese food with knives and forks, how pathetic, we almost turned and walked out but the hostess at the door was really really cute, a Chinese version of Sandra Bullock so we sat down and had a couple of the local version of Paulaner Weiss which was very nice. After a few liveners we headed back to the hotel for some much anticipated duck only to find that the restaurant was closing up at 8:30pm, damn, where am I supposed to get some duck!
On the way back we had passed an Italian, a French bistro and a local place called “Grandmothers”, well with a name like that we just had to give it a shot. It was very basic, formica top tables and plastic chairs but hey sometimes these little places can be gems in the rough, and oh how glad we were this was one of them., the eel, the duck, the shrimp the crabs, everything was great and we washed it all down with a couple of bottles of Dynasty cabernet and the happy smiles of grandma’s grand-daughter’s (waitress’s), all for 160 Yuan ($20).They were a very friendly bunch and only the hostess spoke a few words of English. This was dinner sorted for the next couple of days, why bother going in search of anything else.
After dinner we went for a walk along The Bund, I particularly wanted to see The Peace Hotel, legendary in Tai Pan Folklore. It has a magnificent marble lobby with chic restaurants and bars, but it was the roof bar I wanted to see, which has staggering views of the city, but is legendary, in that it is not well sign posted, a fact I was aware of, or we would never have known it existed. The views were stunning and as we enjoyed a couple of glasses of Great Wall cabernet, I was thinking it must be awesome to be posted here from some stuffy London bankers or insurance house with all expenses paid. A few moments later, a young man asked if he could share our table, “of course we said”. We got chatting and he was from London, I told him of my thoughts just before he sat down and low and behold he was living that dream. He worked for a London based insurance company and they had sent him here, all expenses paid, on a two year contract. He had been here three months and become so comfortable with everything he now rode a bicycle through the chaotic traffic to work. His younger brother had just flown out for a weeks vacation but was now sleeping off the jet-lag, they would be at the race.
Sunday morning, race day, we decided we had better get an early start to the track and having assessed the various departure points we decided that leaving from the most westerly area and returning via the northern stadium was our best plan of attack...
The girl at the desk when asked to write the International Gymnastic Center was perplexed and had to make a phone call, she wrote the instructions on a piece of paper which we gave to a cab driver and off we went. Well he seemed to go a different direction when we got off the east-west expressway which I expected but we ended up at the same stadium as the two previous mornings. I think I have since figured this out, that is where all the school children were being bussed from and they therefore did not want any westerners witnessing this.
When we got to the track and tried to walk anti clockwise to our grandstands we encountered thousands and thousands of school children of every age being shepherded into the outer grandstands. We had seen a few classes of children attending the previous day’s practices but nothing of this scale; it was obviously to fill the grandstands for the world television audience, as very few local people could afford the ticket prices.
After watching the early morning warm-ups and with 3 hours to wait for the main event we decided to retire to the Fosters tent and be entertained by the Ga’day girls. We grabbed a couple of ham n cheese hero’s with a couple of cold ones and settled in under a nice shady table just outside. Our friend from the Peace hotel, the previous evening came by with his brother and we had a nice chat, we told him about our encounter with the watch boys and the Brits on Nan-Jing rd., which really amused him, he had not done many of the touristy things yet.
The race itself was a rather non event; the two Renault’s made it into turn one ahead of the field, Fisichella held back the McLarens of Raikkonnen and Montoya while Alonso took off to secure Renault the manufacturer’s title, game, set and match.
After the race we headed as fast as we could for the Hong Kow stadium buses as we figured they were the fastest way back to the city and we were right. Unfortunately we were sat in front of one of those, know it all, expat women, that seem to be in the shadows of all those old colonial movies, when the British Empire ruled the world, “anyone for tea”. I felt sorry for the poor people stuck with her, I think they were work colleagues, every time they tried to change the subject it just lead to another field of her expertise.
They had obviously taken a different bus out to the track and had no idea what part of the city they were now in but she persevered, that she knew the city well and they would be alright. As the bus pulled up opposite the stadium she started to change her tack and announced this must be one of the slummier parts of the city she was not familiar with, I took great joy in turning around and telling her that there was a subway around the corner that would take them to the central Shanghai railway station.
At the main station I was quick to commandeer the first taxi I saw and had to fight off two women that appeared from nowhere and tried to grab, it but I was having none of it, we weren’t in Japan anymore! To the drivers surprise I jumped into the front seat and put on the seat belt, well he took this as a challenge to scare the shit out of me, but I was looking forward to the chaotic ride and he did not disappoint. After about ten minutes of ducking and diving up and down off the highways and under various structures we stopped at a light and Dave shakily inquired from the back seat if I had any idea where we were? I said and indicated that the hotel was about 3 blocks to our left, the cabbie looked at me in disbelief and made the left turn, sorted.
While Dave went off for a wander I had to go and write my column for Home & Away which would be fairly brief owing to the dull nature of this final race and the bland atmosphere of the track. While writing I tuned in Q104.3 radio station from New York on the internet, it was the Sunday morning “with The Beatles” show and to my surprise the DJ starts talking about a Beatles benefit he had attended on Saturday night, organized by Jason Shela. It freaked me out, Jason is a good friend of mine and here I am sitting in a hotel room in Shanghai listening to some deejay in New York prattle on about one of my mates. The world is getting to be a very small place, you can run but you cannot hide, scary stuff!
After getting the ol column out of the way, I was gasping for a taste of the old amber nectar, so after meeting up with Dave in the lobby we headed to see darling “Sandra” at the Bund bar for a few well deserved Weiss beers and then on to Grandmothers and the smiley waitresses to sate our hunger pangs.
As per the previous night, everything was great, the food, the wine and especially the service, we could not stop congratulating ourselves on such a fantastic find. The down side to this is, that now that I am back in New York, writing this some two months later, I can no longer eat New York Chinese food, it’s bland and tasteless.
As Monday was to be our only real sightseeing touristy day we hit the sack early Sunday night to get a running start in the morning.
Well we didn’t get quite as early a start as we had hoped, the track had really sapped us the day before. When I called Dave around 8:30ish it was ARRRRRRRRRGH I’ll see you in an hour.
One great thing in the mornings, you did not have to go looking for breakfast, they left these (2) little egg cakes in your room. It was an almost hard boiled egg inside a little sponge cake, very tasty with a green tea.
Anyway we met up in the lobby and decided to take the subway to Pudong and then the Maglev to the airport. What a train, well it looks like a train but there are no wheels and no rails, it levitates on a magnetic track while doing 275 MPH, unbelievable. Sitting down inside if you do not look out the window you would not know it was moving, mind you, you cannot see much outside anyway, it is all a blur.
We got back into Shanghai around noon and decided to try and find a floating restaurant called the Seagull which we had heard Miss Knowitall talking about on the bus yesterday. It was just over the small bridge at the end of the Bund behind a hotel on the water front. It was not exactly a floating restaurant but gave the impression it was. The whole place was set on an open deck, the large bar set in the hull of a boat with a bamboo roof and all the tables were set in the hulls of smaller boats and individually glass enclosed with bamboo roofs. With the river as a backdrop it was very impressive but unfortunately it was closed and did not open until evening. We vowed to return.
As we returned to The Bund we encountered the usual watch sellers but this guy had something different, Mao Tse Tung watches, his arm going back and forth in a wave, cute, so we decided to buy a couple as they would make cool gifts. He wanted Y200 a piece so we offered him Y400 for 4 and he took it.
It was now time to start thinking about lunch and I had read in the Zaget guide that celebrated chef Jean George who operates a couple of great restaurants in New York that costs an arm and a leg, if you can get a reservation, had opened a new place here on The Bund, that had a prix fixe 3 course lunch for Y188 that was not to be missed.
It was located at 3 The Bund, a fantastic old Victorian building that housed a very up scale mall and it was just around the corner from our hotel. We made 2:30 reservations and went back to our place to freshen up.
When we got back the place was fairly empty as the main lunch crowd had departed and we got a prime table over looking the river. The food was out of this world, I had the Foie Gras appetizer and roast duck entrée, absolutely superb, I might have to return to Shanghai just for lunch.
After lunch we had a wander up back up to Nan-Jing Road as we had only been there at night and we wanted to see if there were really were any bargains to be found. Most of the stores we looked in were full of your typical western crap and priced at what you could find in any big department store like Walmart or Target.
Further up the road as Dave had walked ahead I was approached by a young couple who professed to be starving artists, who had studied in San Francisco and New York. Being very skeptical I asked the young girl who spoke perfect English various questions about New York and she was very chatty and nostalgic when I explained I lived there. They were trying to get people to go look at their art which was being exhibited in a local gallery and I agreed, Dave had returned now and was also very skeptical but I said I was going so he tagged along.
They took us in through a shopping mall full of small stalls, mostly selling clothes and up in the elevator to an office floor where there was a small gallery. We were introduced to a little man with a long grey beard and hair, ala, the master in the old Kung Fu show.
Most of the art was of typical Chinese settings pagoda’s, waterfalls, crouching dragon’s etc., but I was drawn to an oblong floral painting which I immediately knew Leslie, my godson’s mother would really like, and it so happened to have been painted by the young girl who had enticed me in, sold. Dave also purchased a small painting which I think was for his dear mother in Dublin.
Back out on the street we were elated with our very original purchases, far superior than the tourist clap trap being offered in shop windows. We were not the target however of all this drivel, far from it, we were vastly outnumbered by Chinese tourist from other parts of the country and it was these country bumkins that the watch boys and other touts were actually after.
We stopped into another couple of shopping malls but there really was nothing worth buying until I glimpsed a long black coat that was cut perfectly straight down to mid thigh with a high stand-up collar. I tried it on and it fit, I’m not sure where I can wear it but for $28 I was having it.
After a quick walk around peoples square it was time to head back for a few beers at the Bund Brewing Co. with the lovely “Sandra Bullock”. Being early Monday evening the place was quiet and all the waitresses were hanging out at the end of the bar. Sipping our beers we noticed they were all in a huddle, tittering and giggling and when one of them noticed we were looking the tittering got louder and two of them pointed towards me! I thought maybe it was red England Beckham shirt I was wearing ( he is so big in the East) and indicated so by pulling on the sleeve and pointing to the back but the older bartender said no between laughs, it was my platinum silver hair was the source of their admiration and amusement
Flattering as it was to have all these sixteen and seventeen year olds fawning over my hair we left to dump the shopping at the hotel and go revisit the floating restaurant and see what they had to offer. By the time we got there it was dark and easy to see why they did not bother opening during the daylight hours. The bar and all the individual boat hulls were lit with paper lanterns and strands of fairy lights connected all the structures. Out on the river real floating restaurants, dinner cruise boats all lit up in neon, cruised up and down in front of the magnificent Pudong skyline backdrop, it was an awesome sight to behold and totally blows away any myth that Manhattan is the most spectacular skyline.
We sat down ordered a couple of beers and perused the menu! Well I don’t know what Mrs. Knowitall ate when she found this place but it was obviously for locals and visitors with an extremely educated Chinese cuisine palate. Not that we were going to eat anyway, it was after all our last night and we had to dine with the girls at Grandmother’s and have a nightcap at the Bund bar.
Our flight on Tuesday morning was at 10am so we had to be there by 8 so we had to check out of the hotel at 6:30, an ungodly hour to be ending a vacation on, but it was a long way home. We got a regular cab and it was nowhere near as comfortable or as fast as the car we had hired coming in and it was only a few minutes before we rued not getting his number.
Check-in was a rather easy formality but I must say this was the only time I have ever enjoyed going through security. Naturally my knee implant set of the metal detector, it was 2 young girls manning the gate and led me off to the side where I expected them to call a male colleague for the pat down, but surprisingly they started to perform it themselves, all the while smiling and blushing, I think they enjoyed it as much as I did!
At the duty free we spent all our remaining yuan on silk presents which were an excellent value, then I dived into the first class lounge for an eye opener before the pre flight champers on board.
On board I had the pleasure of being seated beside a beautiful and very smart young Chinese girl who worked for Dell computers, she was on her first trip out of the country going to Austin, Texas. She wanted to know all about New York and I wanted to know more about the rapid growth of Shanghai and their love of American fast food, I had never seen so many Kentucky Fried Chicken’s and she explained that due to them Pepsi had out sold Coke in 2005 for the first time and she seemed quite proud of the fact. She also explained that they sell a lot more than just chicken and it is considered a treat for the whole family to go there for an afternoon and they are also very popular date venues, go figure.
Sadly she was switching to American Airlines at Narita, I would have really liked her company to Detroit.
On our way out of Narita I had spotted a beautiful blue kimono which I said I would pick-up on the return so I headed straight for the duty free zone. It was still there although I’m sure not the same one but anyway I started to try it on when an assistant came over to see if I need help, I said I don’t think so, these come one size fits all, right? Yes she replied, is she a large woman? Woman! I was buying this for myself, oh she said and blushed very brightly…..the men’s are down here. She pulled out a few and they were all just cotton and only black and white with very dull designs, but I felt very self conscious now about the so called woman’s gown, so I bought nothing. Reflecting on it later I should have just bought it, it fit and was a beautiful royal blue with a golden dragon on the back, good job I’m already booked to return next year, I’ll say nothing and just buy the one in the package.
The flight to Detroit was very uneventful and I was very disappointed NWA ran out of Japanese meals. I managed to stay awake the whole way and consequently when I got home that evening I went to bed early and after a 12 hour sleep I was right back on New York time.
Upon landing I had about a 15 minute wait for immigration but poor Dave had a much longer wait. While waiting I found an ATM and looked about transportation into Shanghai, which is approx an hours taxi ride and maybe two hours on public transport. The newly opened Maglev train which runs at an incredible 275mph only operates between 9am and 5:30pm so would not even be of any use to us on our return as we had to be at the airport next Tuesday at 8am.
I checked out the taxi line and while there were plenty of them they were very small looking Volkswagens, Back inside the terminal I was approached by a young guy in an official uniform who inquired which hotel I was going to and that he could arrange transportation in a large sedan for 500 Yuan ($60).I knew the taxi fare should be in the range of 200 Yuan but being tired from the flight and knowing Dave had been squashed in the back the thought of an hour cramped in the back of a small Volkswagen was not very appealing, so I said yes and told him to hang on till my friend came through.
When Dave came out we told him to bring the car around and we see whether it was worth 500Y and it was, nice silver Acura. Not only was it comfortable but he got us to our hotel in 40 minutes, we thought he was trying out for the race on Sunday but little did we know this was tame compared to what we would encounter in the next few days.
As it turns out the Maglev train and New York’s train to the plane have a lot in common, both go to the airport and neither goes downtown. Just like N.Y. you have to take a subway to the airport train albeit a state of the art German engineered magnetic levitated train which has a top speed of 275 mph but what good is that when you are schlepping bags up and down stairs and escalators.
We checked into The Metropole Hotel, an old colonial building just a few blocks off The Bund, which was the heart of the Tai-Pan’s economic zone during the nineteenth century. Tai-Pan’s were the CEO’s of mostly British, French, Portuguese and Dutch companies that traded all the goods out of China to Europe
After throwing the bags in the rooms naturally we headed out for a few libations thinking we would just find some place and not bothering to ask at the desk, adventurous, yeah. Well it was rather dark outside, they do not have great street lighting, but we pressed on towards Nan-Jing Rd. There was a Mickey Dee’s on the corner which had rather a large crowd both inside and out. This did not look good, people gathering at McDonald’s at 10:30pm as a social hangout.
We pressed on a few blocks and then made a right turn, back in the direction of the hotel, this street was even darker and al of a sudden a couple of guys came out of the shadows offering to take us to bars, the first guy offered us a girlie bar but we said no, and the second guy offered to take us to a beer bar, so we followed him, but it turned out to be a girlie bar or to be more exact a brothel. We graciously declined and headed back to the hotel, grabbing a couple of cold beers on the way at a 711 (Lawson’s), we were tired and figured we have an early start in the morning.
I had read in the Shanghai Daily on the plane, that getting to the track last year had been a disaster. Only the night before the race had it was decided to provide free public buses, but nobody knew about them, so every body drove. This year they organized the buses well in advance and announced that they would leave from 4 central locations around the city. We showed the locations to the desk clerk in the hotel and asked her to write the address of the nearest in Mandarin so we could get a taxi.
Wow what a ride we had in the taxi, people think New York taxis are mad, they have nothing on these guys, and in fact the whole traffic situation is just plain chaos. Then when we got up on the elevated highway, more wow’s, the skyline was just spectacular, everyway you turned there was just more spectacular buildings and it went on and on into the suburbs.
When we got to Shanghai Stadium there was an incredible amount of buses but virtually nobody getting on them, we walked right on to the first bus and it left half empty. Once we got out of the city we were on virtually empty highways but it was a long ride, ninety minutes later we finally got to the track, it is in the middle of nowhere but at the rate that China is building it will be a suburb of Shanghai in a few years.
The track is absolute state of the art, this being only the second race at the facility, but there is one major flaw; they gave the catering contract to an American company, Aramark. Hamburgers, hot dogs, ham & cheese hero’s and one concession to Asian cuisine, chicken curry which did not look to appetizing. All the soft drinks were Coke Cola products and Fosters the sole beer supplier. In the Fosters tent behind the main grandstand it was very funny; when you walked up to the bar 10 little Chinese girls would all shout Ga’day, very cute. All in all, a disastrous culinary experience.
The second major disaster was the inflexibility of the police and security. During Friday and Saturday practice/qualifying you were only allowed to enter the facility through the gate marked on your ticket and could only sit in your designated seat. One of the major attractions of coming to the track on Friday and Saturday is the fact that you can wander around and experience the cars at various viewing points which can in turn influence your future purchase of tickets.
As a case in point the first year of a grand prix at the Indianapolis Speedway, 1999, Steve and I purchased seats in the southwest vista just before the final turn onto the main straight and at the entrance to the pit lane. Right away on Friday afternoon we hated the views and started looking for alternatives finally ending up at the other end of the track at the northwest vista which had views of the first six turns and we have been in those seats ever since. Looking down the track on race day, the southwest vista stand is totally empty.
After practice ended we decided to head back to Shanghai pronto as there was no point in sticking around, they would not even let you into the main grandstand after the cars had retired for the day.
Hopping on a bus in the same parking lot as we had disembarked we assumed it was heading back to Shanghai Stadium. After a very circuitous route through some very poor and dubious neighborhoods it was dark when we got back to the city and we did not immediately realize we were at a different stadium. We tried to walk around it, but it soon became obvious that was not an option and that was when we twigged it. Of course it was six o’clock on a Friday evening and like any busy city there was not a taxi to be seen anywhere. We had no clue where we were and lucked out when we saw a subway. This was a lot luckier than you would think in a city of ten million; they only have four subway lines, one each, north, east, south and west. This was the north one and we were able to get a train to Shanghai Railway Station which I knew was not that far from our hotel area.
Outside the main station it was murder trying to get a taxi, unlike the Japanese people who queue orderly, the Chinese are very rude and pushy, so when in Rome, do like the locals and give as good as you get. Within minutes we were on our way. Now I thought we had seen some amazing sights on the bus but they were nothing compared with some of the back alley’s this driver took, it was like going back 300 years and then he turns the corner, goes up the freeway entrance ramp, and you are back in the heart of a 21st century city, unbelievable.
.
Safely back at the hotel and after a quick shower it was time to see Nan Jing Road, Shanghai’s version of Time’s Square. Well it did not disappoint, enough neon to rival the best of them, Time’s Sq., Las Vegas and Shinjuku. As we walked up the street everybody wanted to sell us a Rolex watch, some wanted to sell CD’s and DVD’s and a few even wanted to sell their sisters!
After about twenty minutes of this crap, but what seemed like an eternity, we were gasping for a couple of cold beers and realized we had not seen one bar or anything even resembling one. Finally we spotted a bamboo tikki bar and dived in just to get away from the watch sellers whom were as eager as the African boys in Shinjuku at plying their trade.
Upon getting a couple of beers we realized in keeping with the tikki hut theme the place had no windows and all the watch sellers were congregated outside. Now in the front window were about 10 English guys who were being barracked by them, but one lad was taking charge and announced to all the watch boys that they would buy one watch in turn from each of them and if it passed their tests they would then purchase all that sellers watches.
Fair enough, all the boys agreed and the first Rolex was bought without any haggling for 100 Yuan ($12.50), the guy immediately dunks it into a pint of beer and declares the watch a failure, throws it back at the seller and shouts NEXT. The next lad offers his Rolex, gets his unquestioned 100Yuan and it receives the same treatment with the same results. A couple of the lads wander off knowing their watches don’t stand a chance but a few remain. The next watch gets the same treatment with again the same result and of course you would think this is the way it will go on all night until either the Brits fun kitty runs dry or they just tire of the game.
Well one young boy was still proudly offering his Rolex and it was dually bought and dunked, but low and behold it pasted the beer test. Everybody immediately sat up including us, the emcee started banging it on the table and it still kept going. Next he put it on the ground, stood up on his chair and jumped on it It still kept going so he took it outside on to the street and threw it as high as he could in the air, it came down with a thud but it was still working, amazing. Well a deal is a deal he declared and took out a large wad of notes to buy all his watches but the poor kid only had 2 , he could have sold 50 right there and then.
Now that was great street entertainment
Time now to go in search of some dinner and I really wanted some crispy duck and just around the corner was a restaurant with huge pictures of golden crispy duck outside, well this had to be the place and in we went. Immediately we were impressed, there was not a foreigner in sight, just families sitting around big tables digging into glorious food but alas they were out of duck. Well everything on all the other tables looked so good we stayed and it was well worth the 600 Yuan we splurged on gorging ourselves. I’ve always liked Chinese food but this was spectacular, how would I ever be able to eat it stateside or in Europe again and we washed it all down with a couple of bottles of Great Wall cabernet, which wasn’t bad.
On the way back towards the hotel we looked for someplace to have a nightcap but there was none so we settled again for a couple of cans from Lawson’s and I decided to try a small bottle of Sake, wow, an arsonists delight, pure mentholated spirits, 100% flammable. Needless to say I did not even taste it, straight down the sink.
Saturday morning we again took a taxi to the National Stadium but knowing the length of the ride we did not jump on the first bus but waited for a more luxurious one of which there were plenty scattered amongst the hard seat city types. Getting on the bus we received a package containing various advertising crap and a map showing the four departure locations and the major roads surrounding Shanghai and the track so I was able to work out the routes. Three of the locations were using the same route and the only one that differed was the one we had taken home last night to Hongkou FC stadium, now I could work out our strategy for getting home after the race, getting stuck in the middle of nowhere with a 150,000 people it not the way I want to spend Sunday evening. Last week we had gotten real lucky in Suzuka in that our grandstand had been the closest to the train station.
After qualifying which the Renault boys dominated we made a dash for the Pudong area buses, as I calculated they would have to pass the Bund where we were staying and if we got lucky we could jump off around there. As the bus came over the cross-town expressway a guy from the back seat went down and had a word with the driver and came back smiling. I just instinctively knew he had asked to get off early and told Dave who had been dozing to be alert as he had the aisle seat. The exit ramp took us straight into the tunnel under the river but as soon as we came out the other side the bus pulled over and about half the passenger scampered off.
Sometimes things just fall into place perfectly and this was one of them, right across the street was a Citibank, for some much needed cash and just a few blocks away the Pearl Tower, which we were planning to visit on Monday and could now knock off at 4pm on Saturday afternoon.
Now it was a nice sunny afternoon and Pudong has some amazing architecture, but when we got up the top of the Pearl Tower you could hardly see a thing with the smog.
Going out for the evening we asked the front desk for recommendations firstly for a bar and then somewhere to get good crispy duck. The girl directed us to the Bund Brewing Company which was located in a small street very close to where the guy had taken us to the brothel on Thursday night, so near and yet so far. Next she said we should return to the hotel restaurant for the duck.
The brewing company was full of Europeans eating Chinese food with knives and forks, how pathetic, we almost turned and walked out but the hostess at the door was really really cute, a Chinese version of Sandra Bullock so we sat down and had a couple of the local version of Paulaner Weiss which was very nice. After a few liveners we headed back to the hotel for some much anticipated duck only to find that the restaurant was closing up at 8:30pm, damn, where am I supposed to get some duck!
On the way back we had passed an Italian, a French bistro and a local place called “Grandmothers”, well with a name like that we just had to give it a shot. It was very basic, formica top tables and plastic chairs but hey sometimes these little places can be gems in the rough, and oh how glad we were this was one of them., the eel, the duck, the shrimp the crabs, everything was great and we washed it all down with a couple of bottles of Dynasty cabernet and the happy smiles of grandma’s grand-daughter’s (waitress’s), all for 160 Yuan ($20).They were a very friendly bunch and only the hostess spoke a few words of English. This was dinner sorted for the next couple of days, why bother going in search of anything else.
After dinner we went for a walk along The Bund, I particularly wanted to see The Peace Hotel, legendary in Tai Pan Folklore. It has a magnificent marble lobby with chic restaurants and bars, but it was the roof bar I wanted to see, which has staggering views of the city, but is legendary, in that it is not well sign posted, a fact I was aware of, or we would never have known it existed. The views were stunning and as we enjoyed a couple of glasses of Great Wall cabernet, I was thinking it must be awesome to be posted here from some stuffy London bankers or insurance house with all expenses paid. A few moments later, a young man asked if he could share our table, “of course we said”. We got chatting and he was from London, I told him of my thoughts just before he sat down and low and behold he was living that dream. He worked for a London based insurance company and they had sent him here, all expenses paid, on a two year contract. He had been here three months and become so comfortable with everything he now rode a bicycle through the chaotic traffic to work. His younger brother had just flown out for a weeks vacation but was now sleeping off the jet-lag, they would be at the race.
Sunday morning, race day, we decided we had better get an early start to the track and having assessed the various departure points we decided that leaving from the most westerly area and returning via the northern stadium was our best plan of attack...
The girl at the desk when asked to write the International Gymnastic Center was perplexed and had to make a phone call, she wrote the instructions on a piece of paper which we gave to a cab driver and off we went. Well he seemed to go a different direction when we got off the east-west expressway which I expected but we ended up at the same stadium as the two previous mornings. I think I have since figured this out, that is where all the school children were being bussed from and they therefore did not want any westerners witnessing this.
When we got to the track and tried to walk anti clockwise to our grandstands we encountered thousands and thousands of school children of every age being shepherded into the outer grandstands. We had seen a few classes of children attending the previous day’s practices but nothing of this scale; it was obviously to fill the grandstands for the world television audience, as very few local people could afford the ticket prices.
After watching the early morning warm-ups and with 3 hours to wait for the main event we decided to retire to the Fosters tent and be entertained by the Ga’day girls. We grabbed a couple of ham n cheese hero’s with a couple of cold ones and settled in under a nice shady table just outside. Our friend from the Peace hotel, the previous evening came by with his brother and we had a nice chat, we told him about our encounter with the watch boys and the Brits on Nan-Jing rd., which really amused him, he had not done many of the touristy things yet.
The race itself was a rather non event; the two Renault’s made it into turn one ahead of the field, Fisichella held back the McLarens of Raikkonnen and Montoya while Alonso took off to secure Renault the manufacturer’s title, game, set and match.
After the race we headed as fast as we could for the Hong Kow stadium buses as we figured they were the fastest way back to the city and we were right. Unfortunately we were sat in front of one of those, know it all, expat women, that seem to be in the shadows of all those old colonial movies, when the British Empire ruled the world, “anyone for tea”. I felt sorry for the poor people stuck with her, I think they were work colleagues, every time they tried to change the subject it just lead to another field of her expertise.
They had obviously taken a different bus out to the track and had no idea what part of the city they were now in but she persevered, that she knew the city well and they would be alright. As the bus pulled up opposite the stadium she started to change her tack and announced this must be one of the slummier parts of the city she was not familiar with, I took great joy in turning around and telling her that there was a subway around the corner that would take them to the central Shanghai railway station.
At the main station I was quick to commandeer the first taxi I saw and had to fight off two women that appeared from nowhere and tried to grab, it but I was having none of it, we weren’t in Japan anymore! To the drivers surprise I jumped into the front seat and put on the seat belt, well he took this as a challenge to scare the shit out of me, but I was looking forward to the chaotic ride and he did not disappoint. After about ten minutes of ducking and diving up and down off the highways and under various structures we stopped at a light and Dave shakily inquired from the back seat if I had any idea where we were? I said and indicated that the hotel was about 3 blocks to our left, the cabbie looked at me in disbelief and made the left turn, sorted.
While Dave went off for a wander I had to go and write my column for Home & Away which would be fairly brief owing to the dull nature of this final race and the bland atmosphere of the track. While writing I tuned in Q104.3 radio station from New York on the internet, it was the Sunday morning “with The Beatles” show and to my surprise the DJ starts talking about a Beatles benefit he had attended on Saturday night, organized by Jason Shela. It freaked me out, Jason is a good friend of mine and here I am sitting in a hotel room in Shanghai listening to some deejay in New York prattle on about one of my mates. The world is getting to be a very small place, you can run but you cannot hide, scary stuff!
After getting the ol column out of the way, I was gasping for a taste of the old amber nectar, so after meeting up with Dave in the lobby we headed to see darling “Sandra” at the Bund bar for a few well deserved Weiss beers and then on to Grandmothers and the smiley waitresses to sate our hunger pangs.
As per the previous night, everything was great, the food, the wine and especially the service, we could not stop congratulating ourselves on such a fantastic find. The down side to this is, that now that I am back in New York, writing this some two months later, I can no longer eat New York Chinese food, it’s bland and tasteless.
As Monday was to be our only real sightseeing touristy day we hit the sack early Sunday night to get a running start in the morning.
Well we didn’t get quite as early a start as we had hoped, the track had really sapped us the day before. When I called Dave around 8:30ish it was ARRRRRRRRRGH I’ll see you in an hour.
One great thing in the mornings, you did not have to go looking for breakfast, they left these (2) little egg cakes in your room. It was an almost hard boiled egg inside a little sponge cake, very tasty with a green tea.
Anyway we met up in the lobby and decided to take the subway to Pudong and then the Maglev to the airport. What a train, well it looks like a train but there are no wheels and no rails, it levitates on a magnetic track while doing 275 MPH, unbelievable. Sitting down inside if you do not look out the window you would not know it was moving, mind you, you cannot see much outside anyway, it is all a blur.
We got back into Shanghai around noon and decided to try and find a floating restaurant called the Seagull which we had heard Miss Knowitall talking about on the bus yesterday. It was just over the small bridge at the end of the Bund behind a hotel on the water front. It was not exactly a floating restaurant but gave the impression it was. The whole place was set on an open deck, the large bar set in the hull of a boat with a bamboo roof and all the tables were set in the hulls of smaller boats and individually glass enclosed with bamboo roofs. With the river as a backdrop it was very impressive but unfortunately it was closed and did not open until evening. We vowed to return.
As we returned to The Bund we encountered the usual watch sellers but this guy had something different, Mao Tse Tung watches, his arm going back and forth in a wave, cute, so we decided to buy a couple as they would make cool gifts. He wanted Y200 a piece so we offered him Y400 for 4 and he took it.
It was now time to start thinking about lunch and I had read in the Zaget guide that celebrated chef Jean George who operates a couple of great restaurants in New York that costs an arm and a leg, if you can get a reservation, had opened a new place here on The Bund, that had a prix fixe 3 course lunch for Y188 that was not to be missed.
It was located at 3 The Bund, a fantastic old Victorian building that housed a very up scale mall and it was just around the corner from our hotel. We made 2:30 reservations and went back to our place to freshen up.
When we got back the place was fairly empty as the main lunch crowd had departed and we got a prime table over looking the river. The food was out of this world, I had the Foie Gras appetizer and roast duck entrée, absolutely superb, I might have to return to Shanghai just for lunch.
After lunch we had a wander up back up to Nan-Jing Road as we had only been there at night and we wanted to see if there were really were any bargains to be found. Most of the stores we looked in were full of your typical western crap and priced at what you could find in any big department store like Walmart or Target.
Further up the road as Dave had walked ahead I was approached by a young couple who professed to be starving artists, who had studied in San Francisco and New York. Being very skeptical I asked the young girl who spoke perfect English various questions about New York and she was very chatty and nostalgic when I explained I lived there. They were trying to get people to go look at their art which was being exhibited in a local gallery and I agreed, Dave had returned now and was also very skeptical but I said I was going so he tagged along.
They took us in through a shopping mall full of small stalls, mostly selling clothes and up in the elevator to an office floor where there was a small gallery. We were introduced to a little man with a long grey beard and hair, ala, the master in the old Kung Fu show.
Most of the art was of typical Chinese settings pagoda’s, waterfalls, crouching dragon’s etc., but I was drawn to an oblong floral painting which I immediately knew Leslie, my godson’s mother would really like, and it so happened to have been painted by the young girl who had enticed me in, sold. Dave also purchased a small painting which I think was for his dear mother in Dublin.
Back out on the street we were elated with our very original purchases, far superior than the tourist clap trap being offered in shop windows. We were not the target however of all this drivel, far from it, we were vastly outnumbered by Chinese tourist from other parts of the country and it was these country bumkins that the watch boys and other touts were actually after.
We stopped into another couple of shopping malls but there really was nothing worth buying until I glimpsed a long black coat that was cut perfectly straight down to mid thigh with a high stand-up collar. I tried it on and it fit, I’m not sure where I can wear it but for $28 I was having it.
After a quick walk around peoples square it was time to head back for a few beers at the Bund Brewing Co. with the lovely “Sandra Bullock”. Being early Monday evening the place was quiet and all the waitresses were hanging out at the end of the bar. Sipping our beers we noticed they were all in a huddle, tittering and giggling and when one of them noticed we were looking the tittering got louder and two of them pointed towards me! I thought maybe it was red England Beckham shirt I was wearing ( he is so big in the East) and indicated so by pulling on the sleeve and pointing to the back but the older bartender said no between laughs, it was my platinum silver hair was the source of their admiration and amusement
Flattering as it was to have all these sixteen and seventeen year olds fawning over my hair we left to dump the shopping at the hotel and go revisit the floating restaurant and see what they had to offer. By the time we got there it was dark and easy to see why they did not bother opening during the daylight hours. The bar and all the individual boat hulls were lit with paper lanterns and strands of fairy lights connected all the structures. Out on the river real floating restaurants, dinner cruise boats all lit up in neon, cruised up and down in front of the magnificent Pudong skyline backdrop, it was an awesome sight to behold and totally blows away any myth that Manhattan is the most spectacular skyline.
We sat down ordered a couple of beers and perused the menu! Well I don’t know what Mrs. Knowitall ate when she found this place but it was obviously for locals and visitors with an extremely educated Chinese cuisine palate. Not that we were going to eat anyway, it was after all our last night and we had to dine with the girls at Grandmother’s and have a nightcap at the Bund bar.
Our flight on Tuesday morning was at 10am so we had to be there by 8 so we had to check out of the hotel at 6:30, an ungodly hour to be ending a vacation on, but it was a long way home. We got a regular cab and it was nowhere near as comfortable or as fast as the car we had hired coming in and it was only a few minutes before we rued not getting his number.
Check-in was a rather easy formality but I must say this was the only time I have ever enjoyed going through security. Naturally my knee implant set of the metal detector, it was 2 young girls manning the gate and led me off to the side where I expected them to call a male colleague for the pat down, but surprisingly they started to perform it themselves, all the while smiling and blushing, I think they enjoyed it as much as I did!
At the duty free we spent all our remaining yuan on silk presents which were an excellent value, then I dived into the first class lounge for an eye opener before the pre flight champers on board.
On board I had the pleasure of being seated beside a beautiful and very smart young Chinese girl who worked for Dell computers, she was on her first trip out of the country going to Austin, Texas. She wanted to know all about New York and I wanted to know more about the rapid growth of Shanghai and their love of American fast food, I had never seen so many Kentucky Fried Chicken’s and she explained that due to them Pepsi had out sold Coke in 2005 for the first time and she seemed quite proud of the fact. She also explained that they sell a lot more than just chicken and it is considered a treat for the whole family to go there for an afternoon and they are also very popular date venues, go figure.
Sadly she was switching to American Airlines at Narita, I would have really liked her company to Detroit.
On our way out of Narita I had spotted a beautiful blue kimono which I said I would pick-up on the return so I headed straight for the duty free zone. It was still there although I’m sure not the same one but anyway I started to try it on when an assistant came over to see if I need help, I said I don’t think so, these come one size fits all, right? Yes she replied, is she a large woman? Woman! I was buying this for myself, oh she said and blushed very brightly…..the men’s are down here. She pulled out a few and they were all just cotton and only black and white with very dull designs, but I felt very self conscious now about the so called woman’s gown, so I bought nothing. Reflecting on it later I should have just bought it, it fit and was a beautiful royal blue with a golden dragon on the back, good job I’m already booked to return next year, I’ll say nothing and just buy the one in the package.
The flight to Detroit was very uneventful and I was very disappointed NWA ran out of Japanese meals. I managed to stay awake the whole way and consequently when I got home that evening I went to bed early and after a 12 hour sleep I was right back on New York time.
Labels: Shanghai
Inaugural asian Tour Pt.3
Tuesday morning we caught the 10am Shinkansen to Hakata on the southern island of Kyushu, you can actually catch a ferry here to Pusan in South Korea. We had basically done the 3 hour trip to see the countryside and visit Hiroshima. Well we did not see as much scenery as we thought we would, southern Japan is very mountainous and the high speed train was in and out of tunnels every couple of minutes.
In Hakata we had an hour till the return train so we looked at the map, picked canal city as a likely destination and headed in that direction. It was a 20 minute walk and surprisingly we found a nice shrine there.
Back at the station we grabbed some box lunches for the journey to Hiroshima. Every station kiosk sells them and they are excellent value for money, a mix of sushi and noodles from Y700 to Y1200. Yeah it’s a real expensive place alright.
At Hiroshima the A bomb memorial and museum were clearly sign posted via a tram which took about 10/12 minutes. It’s an eerie feeling riding through a city that was totally demolished less that sixty years ago and is now completely rebuilt.
The Atomic Bomb & Peace Memorial Park which is a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) World Heritage Site, is a deeply moving emotional place that makes you examine your conscience. The dome building at the north end of the park was the only structure left standing afterwards, as the bomb had detonated directly overhead, instantly cremating everything in a one kilometer radius. When a lady who was saying prayers , spotted us, she insisted on bestowing upon each of us a blessing!
It was a quiet reflective train ride back to Osaka.
That evening we went looking for another ex pat bar we saw on the map, The Covent Garden, which turned out to be a really nice Canadian bar in a quiet neighborhood of small restaurants and boutiques . It was about a ten minute walk west of the Pig n Whistle. After a few Asahi’s we headed back towards the Pig n Whistle area which is where all the neon and brashness starts.
Getting hungry, I was all for going back to the same place as last night, there were a lot of other items on the menu to taste but the others were into trying something different and different was what Steve got. It wasn’t late, around 9:30 but we noticed a lot of restaurants were starting to close up so they opted for a very garish looking place with some 4 floors, the food getting more elaborate and expensive the higher you went. I know this because there was a large showcase outside with plastic samples & prices per floor. We opted for the ground floor plastic tables and chairs and the food was quite good, but the fun was watching Steve eat his while the bowl of broth had a fire underneath of petroleum jelly, that you could not put out, Niagara falls was coming off his forehead while he tried to slurp his way through it. Thank god Murphy’s was only around the corner when he finally finished it. He said it was great and I’m sure it was, just very difficult to eat.
Next morning we caught the 10am Shinkansen to Tokyo which is a nice relaxing 3 hour run with limited stops. Upon arrival in Tokyo it felt like home, familiar surroundings, we just hopped on the Chuo line and were in Shinjuku in 20 minutes. After throwing the bags in the hotel we decided to go see the shrine where Steve had his Chelsea prayer said.
Harajuku is just 2 local stops down the line going towards Shibuya, what a great street scene, it was the St. Marks place of Tokyo, except better. As we walked towards the shrine I got stopped by two young reporters and asked if I would do a quick interview for Radio Tokyo, for which I was only to happy to oblige. They asked questions like where I had been in Japan, what I thought of the country/food/culture and what had inspired me to come. Well when I told them I had come from New York for the Formula 1 they thought it was fantastic and I told them we adored their country. All the time I did not know I was under the watchful eye of a giant David Beckham billboard, brilliant.
I wonder if it was ever broadcast?
The shrine was very nice and Steve checked to make sure some wayward Chelsea fan had not disturbed his prayer plaque, it was intact and as of writing this in early November they have been beaten twice and drawn once but not in the Premier League, still he has a chance this weekend when they play his beloved Manchester United.
Back out in Harajuku we spotted a football shop and of course had to have a look, England and Premier League club shirts were over a $100 each, knock offs in Shinjuku were $10 each. United had been in Japan on their pre-season tour so, Steve and Dave were able to pick-up lots of little souvenirs.
Back on the street we followed the crowd and found ourselves walking down what is known as Fashion Alley, WOW. The girls fashion here is out of this world and this is 4pm on Wednesday afternoon, apparently Sunday is the day to be here when they all really dress-up outrageously, well we will just have to go back.
We adjourned back to The Hub in Shinjuku for happy hour and to grab a quick shower at the hotel. It was our last night in Tokyo and we did not want to waste any of it.
We had not been to the Roppongi area yet but it is notorious for strip clubs and there were enough of them where we were, so we decided to head for Shibuya and a pub called The Aldgate. We actually found it very easily and they had a decent selection of beers except most of them were British, but there were a couple of local micro brews, which were pretty good.
There was a young single girl sitting next to me drinking a pint of Guinness and naturally I had to ask her how she acquired a taste for it, a friend had turned her on to it some years ago and she thought this place served one of the best pints. She visited a few times a week for the black nectar and the music. The bar had one of the best music collections I have ever seen, over 6,000 vinyl/CD albums, in between pulling pints they play any requests.
Well we could not leave Tokyo without a revisit to our new favorite pubs, Hazelburn and Mother’s, so back to Shinjuku we headed and made it to Hazelburn by midnight running the gauntlet of the African pimps.. After a few pints of Speckled Hen, some Haggis Bruchette and a few single malts, we went in search of Mother’s. In the labyrinth of small lanes none of could remember where it was. So after half an hour and finding ourselves standing out side our hotel, I gave up and retired for the night. Steve and Dave pressed on but Dave gave up ten minutes later and of course you know it, Steve found it around the next corner.
The next morning we checked out of the hotel at eleven and had three hours to kill until the train to the plane (Narita Express). First we went to visit the Takashimaya Department store which has an open roof garden and great views of the Tokyo skyline. Then it was off to find the little lunch place we had found the first day. After another successful meal we retired to the station and just sat outside on the plaza for a while which is something we should have been doing everyday, the people watching was incredible.
Now in all our travels up and down Japan on every kind of transport we had never once heard anyone talking on their cell phone. Everybody had them in their hands with their thumbs twitching away but no talking. Well we are on the Narita Express from Shinjuku and at Tokyo station a big guy gets on and I said to Dave “ spot the yank” and sure enough he sat down behind Steve, pulled out his cell and started talking to a friend, REALLY LOUD. Everyone in the car were putting their fingers to their lips but he took no notice and American’s wonder why nobody likes them when they travel!
At Narita we went our separate ways, Steve with his AA Platinum card was eager to try all the One World first class lounges. He had researched them on flyertalk.com and each one had different strengths, Cathy Pacific obviously for its food, I think British Airways for the drinks and I’m not sure if American had any, I might be wrong.
Dave and I were on a different concourse for Northwest, on a business class ticket i had access to their lounge and I tried to get Dave in, but too no avail.
In Hakata we had an hour till the return train so we looked at the map, picked canal city as a likely destination and headed in that direction. It was a 20 minute walk and surprisingly we found a nice shrine there.
Back at the station we grabbed some box lunches for the journey to Hiroshima. Every station kiosk sells them and they are excellent value for money, a mix of sushi and noodles from Y700 to Y1200. Yeah it’s a real expensive place alright.
At Hiroshima the A bomb memorial and museum were clearly sign posted via a tram which took about 10/12 minutes. It’s an eerie feeling riding through a city that was totally demolished less that sixty years ago and is now completely rebuilt.
The Atomic Bomb & Peace Memorial Park which is a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) World Heritage Site, is a deeply moving emotional place that makes you examine your conscience. The dome building at the north end of the park was the only structure left standing afterwards, as the bomb had detonated directly overhead, instantly cremating everything in a one kilometer radius. When a lady who was saying prayers , spotted us, she insisted on bestowing upon each of us a blessing!
It was a quiet reflective train ride back to Osaka.
That evening we went looking for another ex pat bar we saw on the map, The Covent Garden, which turned out to be a really nice Canadian bar in a quiet neighborhood of small restaurants and boutiques . It was about a ten minute walk west of the Pig n Whistle. After a few Asahi’s we headed back towards the Pig n Whistle area which is where all the neon and brashness starts.
Getting hungry, I was all for going back to the same place as last night, there were a lot of other items on the menu to taste but the others were into trying something different and different was what Steve got. It wasn’t late, around 9:30 but we noticed a lot of restaurants were starting to close up so they opted for a very garish looking place with some 4 floors, the food getting more elaborate and expensive the higher you went. I know this because there was a large showcase outside with plastic samples & prices per floor. We opted for the ground floor plastic tables and chairs and the food was quite good, but the fun was watching Steve eat his while the bowl of broth had a fire underneath of petroleum jelly, that you could not put out, Niagara falls was coming off his forehead while he tried to slurp his way through it. Thank god Murphy’s was only around the corner when he finally finished it. He said it was great and I’m sure it was, just very difficult to eat.
Next morning we caught the 10am Shinkansen to Tokyo which is a nice relaxing 3 hour run with limited stops. Upon arrival in Tokyo it felt like home, familiar surroundings, we just hopped on the Chuo line and were in Shinjuku in 20 minutes. After throwing the bags in the hotel we decided to go see the shrine where Steve had his Chelsea prayer said.
Harajuku is just 2 local stops down the line going towards Shibuya, what a great street scene, it was the St. Marks place of Tokyo, except better. As we walked towards the shrine I got stopped by two young reporters and asked if I would do a quick interview for Radio Tokyo, for which I was only to happy to oblige. They asked questions like where I had been in Japan, what I thought of the country/food/culture and what had inspired me to come. Well when I told them I had come from New York for the Formula 1 they thought it was fantastic and I told them we adored their country. All the time I did not know I was under the watchful eye of a giant David Beckham billboard, brilliant.
I wonder if it was ever broadcast?
The shrine was very nice and Steve checked to make sure some wayward Chelsea fan had not disturbed his prayer plaque, it was intact and as of writing this in early November they have been beaten twice and drawn once but not in the Premier League, still he has a chance this weekend when they play his beloved Manchester United.
Back out in Harajuku we spotted a football shop and of course had to have a look, England and Premier League club shirts were over a $100 each, knock offs in Shinjuku were $10 each. United had been in Japan on their pre-season tour so, Steve and Dave were able to pick-up lots of little souvenirs.
Back on the street we followed the crowd and found ourselves walking down what is known as Fashion Alley, WOW. The girls fashion here is out of this world and this is 4pm on Wednesday afternoon, apparently Sunday is the day to be here when they all really dress-up outrageously, well we will just have to go back.
We adjourned back to The Hub in Shinjuku for happy hour and to grab a quick shower at the hotel. It was our last night in Tokyo and we did not want to waste any of it.
We had not been to the Roppongi area yet but it is notorious for strip clubs and there were enough of them where we were, so we decided to head for Shibuya and a pub called The Aldgate. We actually found it very easily and they had a decent selection of beers except most of them were British, but there were a couple of local micro brews, which were pretty good.
There was a young single girl sitting next to me drinking a pint of Guinness and naturally I had to ask her how she acquired a taste for it, a friend had turned her on to it some years ago and she thought this place served one of the best pints. She visited a few times a week for the black nectar and the music. The bar had one of the best music collections I have ever seen, over 6,000 vinyl/CD albums, in between pulling pints they play any requests.
Well we could not leave Tokyo without a revisit to our new favorite pubs, Hazelburn and Mother’s, so back to Shinjuku we headed and made it to Hazelburn by midnight running the gauntlet of the African pimps.. After a few pints of Speckled Hen, some Haggis Bruchette and a few single malts, we went in search of Mother’s. In the labyrinth of small lanes none of could remember where it was. So after half an hour and finding ourselves standing out side our hotel, I gave up and retired for the night. Steve and Dave pressed on but Dave gave up ten minutes later and of course you know it, Steve found it around the next corner.
The next morning we checked out of the hotel at eleven and had three hours to kill until the train to the plane (Narita Express). First we went to visit the Takashimaya Department store which has an open roof garden and great views of the Tokyo skyline. Then it was off to find the little lunch place we had found the first day. After another successful meal we retired to the station and just sat outside on the plaza for a while which is something we should have been doing everyday, the people watching was incredible.
Now in all our travels up and down Japan on every kind of transport we had never once heard anyone talking on their cell phone. Everybody had them in their hands with their thumbs twitching away but no talking. Well we are on the Narita Express from Shinjuku and at Tokyo station a big guy gets on and I said to Dave “ spot the yank” and sure enough he sat down behind Steve, pulled out his cell and started talking to a friend, REALLY LOUD. Everyone in the car were putting their fingers to their lips but he took no notice and American’s wonder why nobody likes them when they travel!
At Narita we went our separate ways, Steve with his AA Platinum card was eager to try all the One World first class lounges. He had researched them on flyertalk.com and each one had different strengths, Cathy Pacific obviously for its food, I think British Airways for the drinks and I’m not sure if American had any, I might be wrong.
Dave and I were on a different concourse for Northwest, on a business class ticket i had access to their lounge and I tried to get Dave in, but too no avail.
Labels: Asia
Inaugural Asian Tour Pt.2
Sunday morning at 6:30am and the Nagoya subway is already more crowded than the New York City transit at mid-afternoon on a weekday. The platform at the Nagoya JR station was packed with race fans, but fortunately our first class rail passes came in handy again, we were in the front car of a very cool sightseeing train with a virtual all glass surround and huge comfy seats. Well Steve and I were, we could only get 2 first class seats and 1 in regular, very graciously the lads said I should take one of the first class seats as I had organized everything and they drew straws for the other, Dave lost.
As this was a special train and regular traffic had preference on the single track, a relatively short journey took over an hour, we got to Suzuka circuit around 8:30 which was fine with us as the race was not scheduled to start until 2pm. There was a tremendous carnival atmosphere about the place and it seemed virtually everyone had either Honda or Toyota colours on, and they were buying more by the armful. A barra bhoys (a London market trader) dream.
Our seats were located at the entrance to turn one, just at the end of the pit exit line, a superb spot and one of the best overtaking parts of the track. Naturally we had a celebratory beer to mark the occasion and then split up to explore the circuit.
A fantastic wave of aromas sweep over you as you wander around, small stalls everywhere offering tempting morsels of whose origin I had no idea, but what the hell, they were all 3 to 400 yen ($3.50-$4) so I tried everything. When I got back to the seats around noon I was totally full. Steve then starts telling me about an amazing dish he just had of noodles, veggies and fried egg but there was no way I could squeeze one in.
It was a very hot day, which was totally unexpected, fortunately I had brought a hat but Dave hadn’t and it was costing him dearly. When we split up to explore I told him to get a hat but he delayed and now his head looked like a volcano interior.
We were the only westerners in our grandstand, we had seen others while wandering around, but they must have all been sitting in the main stands, probably having bought their tickets through F1 Tours. I had purchased ours directly from the track, which had been quite a challenge, but now so worth it.
Everyone around us were so optimistic of a Japanese victory, what with Ralf Schumacher’s Toyota on pole, Jensen Button’s BAR- Honda second and local hero Takuma Sato’s BAR-Honda in fifth, but unfortunately it all started to unravel right from the get go. Ralf got off to a flyer but Sato was forced wide at the start in turn one and had to pit immediately, then on lap ten he forced Trulli’s Toyota off the track ending his day. Ralf got passed in the pits on lap 26 and finished eighth, Button could only manage fifth. Sato did finish last of the runners but was later disqualified for the incident with Trulli.
Although all the locals were very disappointed this was one of the greatest races ever and the high point happened right in front of us. Kimi Raikkonen pulled off the most astonishing win of his young career, starting from seventeenth on the grid, due to an engine change on Friday, and abysmal rain conditions during Saturday qualifying, he stormed through the field to overtake Giancarlo Fisichella going into turn one on the final lap to take the win and kept McLaren’s constructors title chances alive until the final race of the season, next week in Shanghai, which Dave and I were traveling on to. Steve was not joining us as the American Advantage miles program could not do the routing and the cost of an extra ticket between Tokyo and Shanghai was prohibitive.
We were unable to secure return tickets on a special train and therefore had to make a run for the station as soon as Kimi crossed the finish line. There was a long line when we got to the station but when the first train pulled out we were in position to make the second and luckily did so, Dave was about to pass out from sun-stroke. Unfortunately for Dave like the morning train this one also got stopped a lot and took over an hour to reach Nagoya.
When we got back to the hotel we were all pretty knackered, Dave was done for the day, I had to write my column for Home & Away and Steve was left to his own devices.
Around 9:30 I was almost finished my column and went out to the 711 to grab a snack and bumped into Steve at the traffic light, he was heading to an Aussie bar that someone had tipped him off about. So I joined him and it was a quiet last night in Nagoya.
For the next couple of days we had no set plans so we decided to make Osaka our base, it was only an hour away on the Shinkansen, from there we could visit Hakara, Hiroshima and Kyoto I had looked on the internet and there appeared to be plenty of hotels near Shin Osaka station so we hopped on the nine o’clock train, Dave was feeling a lot better and on the way to Osaka we decided to spend the rest of the day riding the rails after we found a hotel, we figured we could make it down to Hakara with a stop in Hiroshima and back in 8 hours but what we had not figured was that Monday was a national holiday and all the seats on the Shinkansen were reserved.
For once we came out the right side of the station and I spotted the New Osaka Hotel, it was right across the street and they had 3 rooms @ Y8,000 ($69) per night, pretty good for a walk up rate. Asiarooms.com had quoted $65 online.
So with all the south bound trains booked we decided to head for Kyoto as it was only fifteen minutes on the Shinkansen. At the tourist information booth we picked up a map and the agent outlined all the major shrines and temples, although there were signs pointing towards a sightseeing tour bus we were unable to find it, so we headed for the subway to figure out which sites were accessible. Kyoto Imperial Palace was only 3 stops and then Heian-Jingu shrine was a 15/20-minute walk from there, so off we went. Kyoto is a beautiful clean city as befits the ancient capital.
The Imperial Palace was very disappointing but the gardens at the Heian-Jingu shrine were a harmonious blend of stone and plant allotments, sculpted evergreen trees, all interwoven between Lilly ponds with stepping stones from bank to bank.
Upon our return to Osaka we headed downtown and decided to check out the local ex pat bars, first we looked for Murphy’s, but could not find it, so we went looking for the Pig & Whistle, which we found courtesy of a large Union Jack. After a few beers we consulted another pub guide and it showed Murphy’s on a better map, we had been right beside it but did not look-up high enough, it was on the seventh floor which is typical in Japanese cities. We decided to give it another shot and thank god we did as Michael the manager/bartender sent us to a great restaurant for dinner.
Michael was from Foxrock, south Dublin and had gone to Australia six years ago to visit his sister who is married to a Japanese man there. After a few months he decided to head home but wanted to go via Japan so naturally asked his new brother-in-law for some advice. Turns out his brother-in-law owns the bar and made Michael the manager, he has been there ever since.
We had noticed that every bar we had been in Japan so far had Guinness on draft, so we asked Michael about it and he said it was very good, but not until at least 4 or 5 pints had been pulled. Dave and I were up for it but Michael had only pulled 2 pints so far, it was a holiday Monday! Anyway we were getting hungry so we asked for some local recommendations and Michael sent us to his favorite place, at which he explained they spoke no English, hell we were getting used to that.
Well we found it easily enough and of course they wanted to take us downstairs to the traditional style room where you sit cross legged on tatami mats, I showed them that my leg did not bend and they took us back upstairs, everybody saving face. We ordered some sake and three different meat/noodles/broth dishes and they were superb and so cheap Y7800 about $67 for the lot.
After dinner we walked around to get a better look at downtown Osaka and then had to find a subway before they closed.
As this was a special train and regular traffic had preference on the single track, a relatively short journey took over an hour, we got to Suzuka circuit around 8:30 which was fine with us as the race was not scheduled to start until 2pm. There was a tremendous carnival atmosphere about the place and it seemed virtually everyone had either Honda or Toyota colours on, and they were buying more by the armful. A barra bhoys (a London market trader) dream.
Our seats were located at the entrance to turn one, just at the end of the pit exit line, a superb spot and one of the best overtaking parts of the track. Naturally we had a celebratory beer to mark the occasion and then split up to explore the circuit.
A fantastic wave of aromas sweep over you as you wander around, small stalls everywhere offering tempting morsels of whose origin I had no idea, but what the hell, they were all 3 to 400 yen ($3.50-$4) so I tried everything. When I got back to the seats around noon I was totally full. Steve then starts telling me about an amazing dish he just had of noodles, veggies and fried egg but there was no way I could squeeze one in.
It was a very hot day, which was totally unexpected, fortunately I had brought a hat but Dave hadn’t and it was costing him dearly. When we split up to explore I told him to get a hat but he delayed and now his head looked like a volcano interior.
We were the only westerners in our grandstand, we had seen others while wandering around, but they must have all been sitting in the main stands, probably having bought their tickets through F1 Tours. I had purchased ours directly from the track, which had been quite a challenge, but now so worth it.
Everyone around us were so optimistic of a Japanese victory, what with Ralf Schumacher’s Toyota on pole, Jensen Button’s BAR- Honda second and local hero Takuma Sato’s BAR-Honda in fifth, but unfortunately it all started to unravel right from the get go. Ralf got off to a flyer but Sato was forced wide at the start in turn one and had to pit immediately, then on lap ten he forced Trulli’s Toyota off the track ending his day. Ralf got passed in the pits on lap 26 and finished eighth, Button could only manage fifth. Sato did finish last of the runners but was later disqualified for the incident with Trulli.
Although all the locals were very disappointed this was one of the greatest races ever and the high point happened right in front of us. Kimi Raikkonen pulled off the most astonishing win of his young career, starting from seventeenth on the grid, due to an engine change on Friday, and abysmal rain conditions during Saturday qualifying, he stormed through the field to overtake Giancarlo Fisichella going into turn one on the final lap to take the win and kept McLaren’s constructors title chances alive until the final race of the season, next week in Shanghai, which Dave and I were traveling on to. Steve was not joining us as the American Advantage miles program could not do the routing and the cost of an extra ticket between Tokyo and Shanghai was prohibitive.
We were unable to secure return tickets on a special train and therefore had to make a run for the station as soon as Kimi crossed the finish line. There was a long line when we got to the station but when the first train pulled out we were in position to make the second and luckily did so, Dave was about to pass out from sun-stroke. Unfortunately for Dave like the morning train this one also got stopped a lot and took over an hour to reach Nagoya.
When we got back to the hotel we were all pretty knackered, Dave was done for the day, I had to write my column for Home & Away and Steve was left to his own devices.
Around 9:30 I was almost finished my column and went out to the 711 to grab a snack and bumped into Steve at the traffic light, he was heading to an Aussie bar that someone had tipped him off about. So I joined him and it was a quiet last night in Nagoya.
For the next couple of days we had no set plans so we decided to make Osaka our base, it was only an hour away on the Shinkansen, from there we could visit Hakara, Hiroshima and Kyoto I had looked on the internet and there appeared to be plenty of hotels near Shin Osaka station so we hopped on the nine o’clock train, Dave was feeling a lot better and on the way to Osaka we decided to spend the rest of the day riding the rails after we found a hotel, we figured we could make it down to Hakara with a stop in Hiroshima and back in 8 hours but what we had not figured was that Monday was a national holiday and all the seats on the Shinkansen were reserved.
For once we came out the right side of the station and I spotted the New Osaka Hotel, it was right across the street and they had 3 rooms @ Y8,000 ($69) per night, pretty good for a walk up rate. Asiarooms.com had quoted $65 online.
So with all the south bound trains booked we decided to head for Kyoto as it was only fifteen minutes on the Shinkansen. At the tourist information booth we picked up a map and the agent outlined all the major shrines and temples, although there were signs pointing towards a sightseeing tour bus we were unable to find it, so we headed for the subway to figure out which sites were accessible. Kyoto Imperial Palace was only 3 stops and then Heian-Jingu shrine was a 15/20-minute walk from there, so off we went. Kyoto is a beautiful clean city as befits the ancient capital.
The Imperial Palace was very disappointing but the gardens at the Heian-Jingu shrine were a harmonious blend of stone and plant allotments, sculpted evergreen trees, all interwoven between Lilly ponds with stepping stones from bank to bank.
Upon our return to Osaka we headed downtown and decided to check out the local ex pat bars, first we looked for Murphy’s, but could not find it, so we went looking for the Pig & Whistle, which we found courtesy of a large Union Jack. After a few beers we consulted another pub guide and it showed Murphy’s on a better map, we had been right beside it but did not look-up high enough, it was on the seventh floor which is typical in Japanese cities. We decided to give it another shot and thank god we did as Michael the manager/bartender sent us to a great restaurant for dinner.
Michael was from Foxrock, south Dublin and had gone to Australia six years ago to visit his sister who is married to a Japanese man there. After a few months he decided to head home but wanted to go via Japan so naturally asked his new brother-in-law for some advice. Turns out his brother-in-law owns the bar and made Michael the manager, he has been there ever since.
We had noticed that every bar we had been in Japan so far had Guinness on draft, so we asked Michael about it and he said it was very good, but not until at least 4 or 5 pints had been pulled. Dave and I were up for it but Michael had only pulled 2 pints so far, it was a holiday Monday! Anyway we were getting hungry so we asked for some local recommendations and Michael sent us to his favorite place, at which he explained they spoke no English, hell we were getting used to that.
Well we found it easily enough and of course they wanted to take us downstairs to the traditional style room where you sit cross legged on tatami mats, I showed them that my leg did not bend and they took us back upstairs, everybody saving face. We ordered some sake and three different meat/noodles/broth dishes and they were superb and so cheap Y7800 about $67 for the lot.
After dinner we walked around to get a better look at downtown Osaka and then had to find a subway before they closed.
Inaugural Asian Tour Pt.1
I have had a fascination with the Orient, particularly with Japan, since I was a child, but the distance and cost of getting there had always been a major roadblock in my plans. Added to that, were the stories of how expensive it is, not to mention finding someone with my same interests to travel with, so it is easy to see why it took fifty years to come to fruition.
Being a lover of Formula One racing since the early sixties, my friend Steven Whittle and I had been going to every race at The Indianapolis Speedway since they had brought racing back to the USA in 1999. After our successful mileage trip to Australia in 2002 to watch the World Cup, to which, Steve had flown via Japan, we decided it would be a great idea to go to the Japanese Grand Prix in Suzuka. At the time I was writing the Formula One column for a small sports orientated local newspaper, which I co-owned, called Home & Away, so I could write the trip off as a business expense.
Each year our group to Indianapolis got larger and by 2004 we were up to about ten guys, one of the newest members to our troupe, was a young Irishman, Dave Murray, who had only been in New York for a few years and not travelled much. When he heard of our plans, he asked if he could tag along, why not. We explained that we were doing this on our frequent flyer mileage and he said he had enough Delta miles to go in coach, I was using Delta miles for business class and Steve was using American Airlines miles for first class.
I volunteered to take care of the tickets and hotels once everyone confirmed they had secured flights, but when I looked at the race schedule for 2005, I discovered an anomaly in the calendar, usually races are staged 2 weeks apart to allow for travel, but the Chinese race was scheduled for the following Sunday. We could go to both on the same tickets; we would just use Tokyo as a stop-over to Shanghai. I proposed this to the guys and Dave was delighted but Steve could not get the extra time off work.
Tuesday Oct.4th 2005 dawned and it was a beautiful day, temperature in the sixties with nary a cloud in the sky, a great day to fly. I met up with Dave at La Guardia (LGA) airport to embark on the first leg of our trip, to Tokyo (Narita airport), Japan via Detroit.
Dave’s coach ticket and had originally been scheduled to fly direct from JFK to Narita but due to high fuel costs and low seat demand Northwest Airlines (Delta’s partner) had cancelled the flight just a few weeks prior to our departure and he been rebooked on my schedule. I was in Northwest Airlines First/Business and had always been scheduled to travel from LaGuardia via Detroit, for some reason they never gave me the choice of the direct flight.
As per usual for LGA the flight was delayed taking off and it would be touch and go if we would make the connection in Detroit. There were several passengers on board who had originally been scheduled for the direct flight out of JFK and we all made the staff aware of our plight. The Captain had originally informed us that we would be arriving at gate 28 and that the Narita flight was leaving from gate 70, a long hike. As we taxied along the terminal I spied gate 68 open and holy cow he pulled into it, the Captain had informed the tower of the large number of passengers connecting to the Japan flight, hence the new gate. Being in row A, I was first off the plane and ran to the next gate to inform them there were a lot of passengers making the connection. I waited to make sure Dave made it as he had been seated all the way in the back. He made it and with enough time for me to grab a quick glass of champers while he was questioned by Homeland Security, they somehow thought he was taking large sums of money out of the country!!
My seat-mate during the flight worked for XM radio and was being sent to Seoul, Korea, to investigate the possibilities of opening a station there. This was an incredible chalk and cheese situation, I would love if someone paid my freight, especially in First/Business class to go explore The Orient, whereas it was a massive inconvenience for him, he would not like the food, was not sure if he would be able to find a McDonalds and he was missing several important college football games. Needless to say he only ordered American cuisine on the flight, whereas I ordered everything I could not pronounce.
Upon our arrival in Narita, it was now Wednesday approx 5:30pm local time (4:30am NY), Steve was waiting outside customs, he had arrived an hour before us and promised to locate an ATM machine and the train to Tokyo, obviously he had been very bored for an hour as the Citibank ATM was approximately thirty feet away and the train was at the bottom of the escalator next to the ATM, we got some yen and caught the next Narita Express to Shinjuku, Tokyo.
Shinjuku, an area of Tokyo, which has a reputation as a red light district, is a warren of small streets and alleys with no names, but I had an idea where our hotel was, so long as we came out the northeast corner of the station. This said naturally we got on at the rear of the train and ended up at the southwest corner of the station. I should point out here that Shinjuku railway station is one of the largest and busiest in the world, not just Japan, handling over 2 million people a day.
Exiting Shinjuku station is a complete assault on all of your senses, your eyes try to comprehend all the huge video screens and endless rows of multi coloured neon lights, your ears are deafened by the cacophony of music coming from every direction, the enormous crowds stampede you and the smells are intoxicating, WOW Tokyo.
Although quite disorientated we eventually found the right end of the station and preceded in the direction of the hotel, which was supposed to be a 5 minutes walk, but we found it in 10 and only had to cut through a small section of the red light district. Thankfully The Vintage Hotel was set a few blocks away from all the chaos, across the street from a hospital and a baseball batting cage, a strange combination. The Vintage had the smallest rooms I have ever been in, they make Manhattan studio apartments look like mansions, but what do you expect for $75 a night in Tokyo. What really caught my eye was in the bathroom, there were all sorts of buttons and dials on the side of the toilet, this I had to try, when you sat down it flushed and when you are finished, it washes you with a stream of warm water and of course there is the option of front or back! No wonder they think western hygiene habits are barbaric.
It was now around 9pm and we quickly threw our bags in and headed out for a well deserved beer. Within a few minutes we came across a small Irish pub, The Angel, in the basement of a trendy boutique shopping plaza, gasping for repast we entered an sure enough it was a little bit of Ireland in Japan, people playing darts and watching football (soccer) on the television, they even had Guinness on draught, but we opted for the local brew and ordered 3 Asahi draughts.
After a few beers we set out to see what the neighborhood was like. We were right on the edge of the Red light district and there was neon everywhere, lots of massage parlours, clubs of every persuasion, shot bars (liquor only) and sake bars, but not much in the way of regular pubs. We eventually opted for another Irish pub, Dubliners, a theme chain which was terrible, one drink and we were out the door.
After wandering around for a little while longer and being badgered by African guys trying to persuade us to go into their clubs, we came across a Scottish bar called, Hazelburn, and so in we went. It was very dark and there were no westerners, which was a plus. Nobody spoke any English, but they made us very welcome at the bar and we ordered 3 Speckled Hens (English beer), they had no local beer. Upon looking at the menu we found everything was western, but what really caught our eye was the Haggis Brushetta! Well curiosity and hunger deemed we order some, with a couple of portions of fish n’ chips, it was all very good.
Being a Scottish bar they naturally had a great assortment of Scotch whiskies and it was brilliant to watch the bartender take about 10 minutes to mix a scotch and water. The whiskey was placed in the bottom of a large but narrow based glass, a large orb of ice was then placed above it but not actually touching the whiskey and the water was drizzled very slowly over the ice while it was constantly stirred. The whiskey never touches the ice until you take a sip, incredible attention to detail for such a basic drink.
We sampled a few single malts and the prices were very reasonable, I had heard that single malts cost a fortune in Japan but these were cheaper than New York and a few even cheaper than Edinburgh. It was now around midnight and I was feeling exhausted, so I left the boys there and headed back to the hotel fighting my way through the African pimps.
Wednesday morning I was up bright and early and decided to take a walk around the neighbourhood, it was incredibly, there were 10 McDonalds within a 6 block radius and about half a dozen Starbucks. I thought about my seat-mate from the flight and hoped he had found such a bounty in Seoul.
The lads arose at nine and we went to the station to activate our Japan Rail passes and book seats from Nagoya to the track in Suzuka. Unfortunately there were only a few remaining and we had to settle for the 7:16am which would make for a very long day at the track. The office to activate the passes did not open until 11am so we took a ride to Shibuya in search of an ex-pat bar that advertised they show English football. We could not find it so returned to Shinjuku station and got our rail passes. We had a listing for another footy bar one subway stop away at the other end of Shinjuku so we went looking for that and actually found it, but they did not open until 5pm. This was a very local area devoid of tourists so we decided to find someplace for lunch. We found a small place which had the New York Yankees vs California Angels, American League baseball play-off game on TV, but it was packed, so we settled for a little place around the corner. Three sushi lunch specials and two large beers was only 2400 yen which is about $23, who said Tokyo is expensive.
For the afternoon we decided to explore the JR over ground train system and see how to get to Tokyo station as we had early reservations on the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Nagoya. on Saturday morning. From the station it was a twenty minute walk to the Imperial Palace, but upon arrival we found it was closed, but the grounds open, we walked around for a while but totally missed the Japanese Gardens.
From the palace it was another twenty minute walk south to the Ginza area and a visit to Bic camera store, supposedly the largest in the world. They had some amazing stuff but I think J&R in New York, actually beat their prices. It was now well past beer time so we headed back to the footy pub which was open.
The place was owned by an Aussie from Melbourne and was an electrical firetrap, literally hundreds of wires all over the place plugged into extension cords. Anyway he had Asahi on draft and gave us directions to the other footy pub, Footniks, as the place was empty we stayed for a few.
Now the reason we were so emphatic about finding a footy bar was the following Wednesday night England were playing Poland in their final World Cup qualifier and it could be a crucial game depending on the result against Austria on Saturday.
On Saturday we were scheduled to be in Nagoya, I had found a pub through the internet and already e-mailed the manager, Tommo, to confirm the England vs Austria game was being shown, although now with a 7am train to the track we might have to forgo the match, which kicks off at 12:45am local time.
After a rest and shower we decided to go find Footniks which was actually in Ebisu one stop further than Shibuya. We had rough directions, out of the station 2 blocks and make a right except of course we came out the wrong station exit, again, anyway after wandering around without any luck for 20 minutes we decided upon a hip looking Japanese restaurant to eat. A selection of appetizers, 3 excellent main courses and 2 bottles of good sake a grand total of 8950 Yen which is about $78, fantastic.
After dinner we went in search of and found Footnik, it was actually a Liverpool supporters pub, but after chatting with the manager he assured us the England vs Poland game would be shown, on the 12th @ 3:45am.
By now it was getting rather late and we realized that the last train back to Shinjuku would be leaving soon so we hightailed it to the station and just made it. These are the trains you have seen on the television and in movies, with people getting packed in, I almost could not breath.
Anyway we made it back and went looking for the Scottish bar, Hazelburn, for a nightcap but none of us could remember exactly where it was and now the African boys were really setting their sights on us, which really annoyed me. Two of them were having a go at Steve & Dave when I spotted a sign for a rock n roll basement bar called “Mothers”, I signaled the lads to follow me and down the stairs we went, incredible! Heavy metal being played at full volume and only about 4 people sitting at the 8 stools with a salary man at the end of the bar with his date shouting “s*ck my c*ck” in time with the music.
After a couple of beers I was feeling knackered but Steve and Dave were loving the place, so I left them there. It is now one of Steve’s all-time world favorite bars.
We had agreed to meet up at 9am to take a trip to the mountain region of Hakone but Steve was looking a little worse for wear and cried off, (he had closed Mother’s at 4:30am.). So Dave and I headed off into the unknown.
Trying to enter Shinjuku station against the out pouring hoards during rush hour is a daunting task but we managed to battle our way in and grab some breakfast sandwiches and coffee before the 10am train to Odawara. The first class cars on these regional trains are excellent, it was a double decker with panoramic windows and reclining seats.
Upon our arrival in Odawara we could see it was very misty up in the mountains and we would probably not see Mount Fuji so we just bought a couple of bus passes and jumped on, not knowing where we were going, hey we were on an adventure. We sat in the back row to get the best possible views and an elderly couple who had been sitting across from us on the train sat down next to us again. The woman was eager to start a conversation as she was taking English lessons; she asked where we were from and why we were in Japan. She was fascinated when I told her we lived in Manhattan and asked if I had been to Greenwich Village. When I told her I lived there she was in awe, she had heard of all the jazz clubs, the Blue Note, the Vangaurd etc. They were going to visit their son who was a hotel manager up in the mountains and attend their grand children’s kindergarten sports day.
The bus trip took an hour up through spectacular scenery ending at Lake Ashi which has 2 replica junks for tours which we declined, as it was rather misty, likewise with the Ariel tramway from which you can glimpse Mt.Fuji.
Back in Odawara we decided to take the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) back to Tokyo as the local from Shinjuku had taken 90 minutes and this would only take 25 plus it was our chance to get one up on Steve. The first class seats on the Shinkansen are like airline first class and defiantly well worth the extra few bucks, kudo’s to Steve on this one. From Tokyo station we decided to take the JR Chuo line back to Shinjuku and it was much quicker than either the subway or the Narita Express.
Back at the hotel we met up with Steve who had spent a leisurely afternoon at the Meiji shrine in Yoyogi Park and even had a prayer said for somebody to please beat Chelsea!
At this point we had no set plans for Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday next week following the race but now decided we all definitely wanted to return to Tokyo for our last night, so we inquired about an extra night only to find the hotel was fully booked, but they did recommend The Kent, which was half way to the station, we got 3 rooms for $80 a piece. A beer was now definitely in order and there was a Hub around the corner. These are a chain of English style pubs but without the ex-pats. Happy hour was in progress and the clientele seemed to consist mostly of shop girls, very easy on the eyes. When happy hour ended a lot of them drifted off and the remaining ones were joined by their boyfriends so it was time to start thinking about dinner.
We took a train one express stop up to Ikebukuro, It was a bit of a damp drizzly evening and after wandering around for a bit we found a small Irish bar in a cellar that had a band advertised out front. The band did not look like much so after a couple of beers we went in search of food. We spotted this place a few minutes away that looked interesting so in we went. In side the door there was a menu with pictures of the food and a machine that you ordered from, you punched in the numbers, it gave you a total, you paid and it spat out some tickets which you gave to a waitress. Japan’s answer to fast food, except it was really good. Dinner including a beer was about 1200 Yen, approx $11, yeah Japan is really expensive!
We walked back to our hotel down some very dark allies but we never felt threatened, there were lots of little restaurants and bars with just a few seats in each and fantastic odors wafting out the doors. At the hotel we decided to have a nightcap at a little local place rather than run the gauntlet of the African lads. A couple of salary men at the bar got a great kick out of me trying to order sake and the barmaid was beside herself in laughter, One of the men spoke a little English and explained it was not a sake bar, I knew that but it didn’t hurt to ask, oh well it gave them a chuckle.
Saturday morning and we check out of the hotel at 8am in order to catch the 9:05am Shinkansen from Tokyo station to Nagoya. The plan was to get to Nagoya at 11:05 pop the bags into a locker and catch the 11:30 train to the track for qualifying. Well you know what happens to the best laid plans of mice and men, correct; we could not find any empty lockers! So we were forced to abandon qualifying and go looking for our hotel, another little adventure. This time when we exited the subway I had no clue which way it was even though I had a crude map which Japan Travel had faxed me. Dave took matters in hand and marched into a nearby 711 with the map and came back with directions, it was about 7 blocks away, sorted.
Before I left New York I had inquired on various websites looking for football bars and in Nagoya I had found Shooters, whom I had contacted and received a reply from the manager Tommo with directions from our hotel.
Upon our arrival at Shooters the place was packed as several World Cup qualifiers were already on the telly so we squeezed into a corner and ordered some beers. I inquired of the Aussie at the door where Tommo was and told him who I was, well a couple of minutes later a round of shooters (Kamikaze’s in Japan!) arrived and then mysteriously a great table with views of all the screens was offered to us. Naturally we had to accept and then Tommo made his appearance and thanked me profusely for coming all the way from New York. Now we were stuck, I should never have said a word. We would at least have to stay and eat something and all they had was traditional English/Australian pub fare, yuck! I had an auzzie meat pie and if I remember right Steve and Dave had fish n chips but there was no way we were staying for the England game at midnight with a 6am alarm for a seven o’clock train. I made my apologies to Tommo and we walked back to the hotel hoping to see at least another bar on the way for a nightcap but no such luck, a couple of beers from the 711 and an early night.
Being a lover of Formula One racing since the early sixties, my friend Steven Whittle and I had been going to every race at The Indianapolis Speedway since they had brought racing back to the USA in 1999. After our successful mileage trip to Australia in 2002 to watch the World Cup, to which, Steve had flown via Japan, we decided it would be a great idea to go to the Japanese Grand Prix in Suzuka. At the time I was writing the Formula One column for a small sports orientated local newspaper, which I co-owned, called Home & Away, so I could write the trip off as a business expense.
Each year our group to Indianapolis got larger and by 2004 we were up to about ten guys, one of the newest members to our troupe, was a young Irishman, Dave Murray, who had only been in New York for a few years and not travelled much. When he heard of our plans, he asked if he could tag along, why not. We explained that we were doing this on our frequent flyer mileage and he said he had enough Delta miles to go in coach, I was using Delta miles for business class and Steve was using American Airlines miles for first class.
I volunteered to take care of the tickets and hotels once everyone confirmed they had secured flights, but when I looked at the race schedule for 2005, I discovered an anomaly in the calendar, usually races are staged 2 weeks apart to allow for travel, but the Chinese race was scheduled for the following Sunday. We could go to both on the same tickets; we would just use Tokyo as a stop-over to Shanghai. I proposed this to the guys and Dave was delighted but Steve could not get the extra time off work.
Tuesday Oct.4th 2005 dawned and it was a beautiful day, temperature in the sixties with nary a cloud in the sky, a great day to fly. I met up with Dave at La Guardia (LGA) airport to embark on the first leg of our trip, to Tokyo (Narita airport), Japan via Detroit.
Dave’s coach ticket and had originally been scheduled to fly direct from JFK to Narita but due to high fuel costs and low seat demand Northwest Airlines (Delta’s partner) had cancelled the flight just a few weeks prior to our departure and he been rebooked on my schedule. I was in Northwest Airlines First/Business and had always been scheduled to travel from LaGuardia via Detroit, for some reason they never gave me the choice of the direct flight.
As per usual for LGA the flight was delayed taking off and it would be touch and go if we would make the connection in Detroit. There were several passengers on board who had originally been scheduled for the direct flight out of JFK and we all made the staff aware of our plight. The Captain had originally informed us that we would be arriving at gate 28 and that the Narita flight was leaving from gate 70, a long hike. As we taxied along the terminal I spied gate 68 open and holy cow he pulled into it, the Captain had informed the tower of the large number of passengers connecting to the Japan flight, hence the new gate. Being in row A, I was first off the plane and ran to the next gate to inform them there were a lot of passengers making the connection. I waited to make sure Dave made it as he had been seated all the way in the back. He made it and with enough time for me to grab a quick glass of champers while he was questioned by Homeland Security, they somehow thought he was taking large sums of money out of the country!!
My seat-mate during the flight worked for XM radio and was being sent to Seoul, Korea, to investigate the possibilities of opening a station there. This was an incredible chalk and cheese situation, I would love if someone paid my freight, especially in First/Business class to go explore The Orient, whereas it was a massive inconvenience for him, he would not like the food, was not sure if he would be able to find a McDonalds and he was missing several important college football games. Needless to say he only ordered American cuisine on the flight, whereas I ordered everything I could not pronounce.
Upon our arrival in Narita, it was now Wednesday approx 5:30pm local time (4:30am NY), Steve was waiting outside customs, he had arrived an hour before us and promised to locate an ATM machine and the train to Tokyo, obviously he had been very bored for an hour as the Citibank ATM was approximately thirty feet away and the train was at the bottom of the escalator next to the ATM, we got some yen and caught the next Narita Express to Shinjuku, Tokyo.
Shinjuku, an area of Tokyo, which has a reputation as a red light district, is a warren of small streets and alleys with no names, but I had an idea where our hotel was, so long as we came out the northeast corner of the station. This said naturally we got on at the rear of the train and ended up at the southwest corner of the station. I should point out here that Shinjuku railway station is one of the largest and busiest in the world, not just Japan, handling over 2 million people a day.
Exiting Shinjuku station is a complete assault on all of your senses, your eyes try to comprehend all the huge video screens and endless rows of multi coloured neon lights, your ears are deafened by the cacophony of music coming from every direction, the enormous crowds stampede you and the smells are intoxicating, WOW Tokyo.
Although quite disorientated we eventually found the right end of the station and preceded in the direction of the hotel, which was supposed to be a 5 minutes walk, but we found it in 10 and only had to cut through a small section of the red light district. Thankfully The Vintage Hotel was set a few blocks away from all the chaos, across the street from a hospital and a baseball batting cage, a strange combination. The Vintage had the smallest rooms I have ever been in, they make Manhattan studio apartments look like mansions, but what do you expect for $75 a night in Tokyo. What really caught my eye was in the bathroom, there were all sorts of buttons and dials on the side of the toilet, this I had to try, when you sat down it flushed and when you are finished, it washes you with a stream of warm water and of course there is the option of front or back! No wonder they think western hygiene habits are barbaric.
It was now around 9pm and we quickly threw our bags in and headed out for a well deserved beer. Within a few minutes we came across a small Irish pub, The Angel, in the basement of a trendy boutique shopping plaza, gasping for repast we entered an sure enough it was a little bit of Ireland in Japan, people playing darts and watching football (soccer) on the television, they even had Guinness on draught, but we opted for the local brew and ordered 3 Asahi draughts.
After a few beers we set out to see what the neighborhood was like. We were right on the edge of the Red light district and there was neon everywhere, lots of massage parlours, clubs of every persuasion, shot bars (liquor only) and sake bars, but not much in the way of regular pubs. We eventually opted for another Irish pub, Dubliners, a theme chain which was terrible, one drink and we were out the door.
After wandering around for a little while longer and being badgered by African guys trying to persuade us to go into their clubs, we came across a Scottish bar called, Hazelburn, and so in we went. It was very dark and there were no westerners, which was a plus. Nobody spoke any English, but they made us very welcome at the bar and we ordered 3 Speckled Hens (English beer), they had no local beer. Upon looking at the menu we found everything was western, but what really caught our eye was the Haggis Brushetta! Well curiosity and hunger deemed we order some, with a couple of portions of fish n’ chips, it was all very good.
Being a Scottish bar they naturally had a great assortment of Scotch whiskies and it was brilliant to watch the bartender take about 10 minutes to mix a scotch and water. The whiskey was placed in the bottom of a large but narrow based glass, a large orb of ice was then placed above it but not actually touching the whiskey and the water was drizzled very slowly over the ice while it was constantly stirred. The whiskey never touches the ice until you take a sip, incredible attention to detail for such a basic drink.
We sampled a few single malts and the prices were very reasonable, I had heard that single malts cost a fortune in Japan but these were cheaper than New York and a few even cheaper than Edinburgh. It was now around midnight and I was feeling exhausted, so I left the boys there and headed back to the hotel fighting my way through the African pimps.
Wednesday morning I was up bright and early and decided to take a walk around the neighbourhood, it was incredibly, there were 10 McDonalds within a 6 block radius and about half a dozen Starbucks. I thought about my seat-mate from the flight and hoped he had found such a bounty in Seoul.
The lads arose at nine and we went to the station to activate our Japan Rail passes and book seats from Nagoya to the track in Suzuka. Unfortunately there were only a few remaining and we had to settle for the 7:16am which would make for a very long day at the track. The office to activate the passes did not open until 11am so we took a ride to Shibuya in search of an ex-pat bar that advertised they show English football. We could not find it so returned to Shinjuku station and got our rail passes. We had a listing for another footy bar one subway stop away at the other end of Shinjuku so we went looking for that and actually found it, but they did not open until 5pm. This was a very local area devoid of tourists so we decided to find someplace for lunch. We found a small place which had the New York Yankees vs California Angels, American League baseball play-off game on TV, but it was packed, so we settled for a little place around the corner. Three sushi lunch specials and two large beers was only 2400 yen which is about $23, who said Tokyo is expensive.
For the afternoon we decided to explore the JR over ground train system and see how to get to Tokyo station as we had early reservations on the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Nagoya. on Saturday morning. From the station it was a twenty minute walk to the Imperial Palace, but upon arrival we found it was closed, but the grounds open, we walked around for a while but totally missed the Japanese Gardens.
From the palace it was another twenty minute walk south to the Ginza area and a visit to Bic camera store, supposedly the largest in the world. They had some amazing stuff but I think J&R in New York, actually beat their prices. It was now well past beer time so we headed back to the footy pub which was open.
The place was owned by an Aussie from Melbourne and was an electrical firetrap, literally hundreds of wires all over the place plugged into extension cords. Anyway he had Asahi on draft and gave us directions to the other footy pub, Footniks, as the place was empty we stayed for a few.
Now the reason we were so emphatic about finding a footy bar was the following Wednesday night England were playing Poland in their final World Cup qualifier and it could be a crucial game depending on the result against Austria on Saturday.
On Saturday we were scheduled to be in Nagoya, I had found a pub through the internet and already e-mailed the manager, Tommo, to confirm the England vs Austria game was being shown, although now with a 7am train to the track we might have to forgo the match, which kicks off at 12:45am local time.
After a rest and shower we decided to go find Footniks which was actually in Ebisu one stop further than Shibuya. We had rough directions, out of the station 2 blocks and make a right except of course we came out the wrong station exit, again, anyway after wandering around without any luck for 20 minutes we decided upon a hip looking Japanese restaurant to eat. A selection of appetizers, 3 excellent main courses and 2 bottles of good sake a grand total of 8950 Yen which is about $78, fantastic.
After dinner we went in search of and found Footnik, it was actually a Liverpool supporters pub, but after chatting with the manager he assured us the England vs Poland game would be shown, on the 12th @ 3:45am.
By now it was getting rather late and we realized that the last train back to Shinjuku would be leaving soon so we hightailed it to the station and just made it. These are the trains you have seen on the television and in movies, with people getting packed in, I almost could not breath.
Anyway we made it back and went looking for the Scottish bar, Hazelburn, for a nightcap but none of us could remember exactly where it was and now the African boys were really setting their sights on us, which really annoyed me. Two of them were having a go at Steve & Dave when I spotted a sign for a rock n roll basement bar called “Mothers”, I signaled the lads to follow me and down the stairs we went, incredible! Heavy metal being played at full volume and only about 4 people sitting at the 8 stools with a salary man at the end of the bar with his date shouting “s*ck my c*ck” in time with the music.
After a couple of beers I was feeling knackered but Steve and Dave were loving the place, so I left them there. It is now one of Steve’s all-time world favorite bars.
We had agreed to meet up at 9am to take a trip to the mountain region of Hakone but Steve was looking a little worse for wear and cried off, (he had closed Mother’s at 4:30am.). So Dave and I headed off into the unknown.
Trying to enter Shinjuku station against the out pouring hoards during rush hour is a daunting task but we managed to battle our way in and grab some breakfast sandwiches and coffee before the 10am train to Odawara. The first class cars on these regional trains are excellent, it was a double decker with panoramic windows and reclining seats.
Upon our arrival in Odawara we could see it was very misty up in the mountains and we would probably not see Mount Fuji so we just bought a couple of bus passes and jumped on, not knowing where we were going, hey we were on an adventure. We sat in the back row to get the best possible views and an elderly couple who had been sitting across from us on the train sat down next to us again. The woman was eager to start a conversation as she was taking English lessons; she asked where we were from and why we were in Japan. She was fascinated when I told her we lived in Manhattan and asked if I had been to Greenwich Village. When I told her I lived there she was in awe, she had heard of all the jazz clubs, the Blue Note, the Vangaurd etc. They were going to visit their son who was a hotel manager up in the mountains and attend their grand children’s kindergarten sports day.
The bus trip took an hour up through spectacular scenery ending at Lake Ashi which has 2 replica junks for tours which we declined, as it was rather misty, likewise with the Ariel tramway from which you can glimpse Mt.Fuji.
Back in Odawara we decided to take the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) back to Tokyo as the local from Shinjuku had taken 90 minutes and this would only take 25 plus it was our chance to get one up on Steve. The first class seats on the Shinkansen are like airline first class and defiantly well worth the extra few bucks, kudo’s to Steve on this one. From Tokyo station we decided to take the JR Chuo line back to Shinjuku and it was much quicker than either the subway or the Narita Express.
Back at the hotel we met up with Steve who had spent a leisurely afternoon at the Meiji shrine in Yoyogi Park and even had a prayer said for somebody to please beat Chelsea!
At this point we had no set plans for Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday next week following the race but now decided we all definitely wanted to return to Tokyo for our last night, so we inquired about an extra night only to find the hotel was fully booked, but they did recommend The Kent, which was half way to the station, we got 3 rooms for $80 a piece. A beer was now definitely in order and there was a Hub around the corner. These are a chain of English style pubs but without the ex-pats. Happy hour was in progress and the clientele seemed to consist mostly of shop girls, very easy on the eyes. When happy hour ended a lot of them drifted off and the remaining ones were joined by their boyfriends so it was time to start thinking about dinner.
We took a train one express stop up to Ikebukuro, It was a bit of a damp drizzly evening and after wandering around for a bit we found a small Irish bar in a cellar that had a band advertised out front. The band did not look like much so after a couple of beers we went in search of food. We spotted this place a few minutes away that looked interesting so in we went. In side the door there was a menu with pictures of the food and a machine that you ordered from, you punched in the numbers, it gave you a total, you paid and it spat out some tickets which you gave to a waitress. Japan’s answer to fast food, except it was really good. Dinner including a beer was about 1200 Yen, approx $11, yeah Japan is really expensive!
We walked back to our hotel down some very dark allies but we never felt threatened, there were lots of little restaurants and bars with just a few seats in each and fantastic odors wafting out the doors. At the hotel we decided to have a nightcap at a little local place rather than run the gauntlet of the African lads. A couple of salary men at the bar got a great kick out of me trying to order sake and the barmaid was beside herself in laughter, One of the men spoke a little English and explained it was not a sake bar, I knew that but it didn’t hurt to ask, oh well it gave them a chuckle.
Saturday morning and we check out of the hotel at 8am in order to catch the 9:05am Shinkansen from Tokyo station to Nagoya. The plan was to get to Nagoya at 11:05 pop the bags into a locker and catch the 11:30 train to the track for qualifying. Well you know what happens to the best laid plans of mice and men, correct; we could not find any empty lockers! So we were forced to abandon qualifying and go looking for our hotel, another little adventure. This time when we exited the subway I had no clue which way it was even though I had a crude map which Japan Travel had faxed me. Dave took matters in hand and marched into a nearby 711 with the map and came back with directions, it was about 7 blocks away, sorted.
Before I left New York I had inquired on various websites looking for football bars and in Nagoya I had found Shooters, whom I had contacted and received a reply from the manager Tommo with directions from our hotel.
Upon our arrival at Shooters the place was packed as several World Cup qualifiers were already on the telly so we squeezed into a corner and ordered some beers. I inquired of the Aussie at the door where Tommo was and told him who I was, well a couple of minutes later a round of shooters (Kamikaze’s in Japan!) arrived and then mysteriously a great table with views of all the screens was offered to us. Naturally we had to accept and then Tommo made his appearance and thanked me profusely for coming all the way from New York. Now we were stuck, I should never have said a word. We would at least have to stay and eat something and all they had was traditional English/Australian pub fare, yuck! I had an auzzie meat pie and if I remember right Steve and Dave had fish n chips but there was no way we were staying for the England game at midnight with a 6am alarm for a seven o’clock train. I made my apologies to Tommo and we walked back to the hotel hoping to see at least another bar on the way for a nightcap but no such luck, a couple of beers from the 711 and an early night.
Labels: Asia
