Unlike previous blog entries, this one represents opinions collected over many years of visiting. Many web sites have a great deal of information on sin city, this blog focuses on the favorite places of the authors.
Where to Stay:
With each hotel holding thousands of rooms, each one is almost a city in itself. Factors such as price and location influence where one stays. Generally, the use of vacation packages often brings significant discounts – by purchasing Vegas packages from Expedia.com, Travelocity.com or airlines such as Alaska you can get reasonable deal at many high quality resorts. For those that partake in significant gaming, special rates (and even free room/food/beverage) are available – but generally big players already know where they are going to stay, where they get freebies. The major casinos have websites often advertising “the best rates” but prices may not include tax which is considerable in Vegas – so buyer beware. For tourists that pre-pay for a package you can’t take advantage of “comps” earned from playing – so if you plan to gamble a lot, it probably is a good idea of booking a reservation directly from the hotel. In general the good luxury hotels on the strip require you to play several (4) hours a day with a minimum $25 bet at each table game to qualify for gambler’s rate (~$60/night) and minimum $100 bet for free room/food/beverages.
Having stayed at most of the luxury hotels on the strip over the years (with the exception of the Wynn), the most luxurious “basic” rooms we’ve seen are at “The Hotel at Mandalay Bay.” Our most recent excursion to Vegas included a stay at this brand new all suite hotel built at the site of Mandalay Bay in the South Strip (booked in a discount package thru Expedia.com) – The suites included a nice sitting room with 42” plasma TV, wet bar, and an additional bathroom. Bedrooms were large, elegantly decorated and included a large flat screen TV. Master bath with its own LCD TV was also tastefully assembled. In general, once you leave the Mandalay Bay hotel and enter the connected lobby of the “The Hotel” it is like entering a different world – none of the noise and bustle of Vegas casinos. If you want a luxurious oasis to take a vacation from Vegas but remain on the strip, consider “The Hotel.”
The next best hotel on our list is the Venetian – Venice in Las Vegas complete with indoor canals and gondolas, and elegant artwork. The Venetian is another all suites hotel – although the suites are somewhat less elegant than “The Hotel” – they have a bedroom area, luxurious bathroom and a sitting area with its own TV. The Venetian also has a location on the North side of the strip which may be more convenient for many people rather than The Hotel’s extreme southern location.
Best of the rest – In general, the major hotels all provide a clean, smartly furnished room and comfortable bed. For many, it is a waste to have an overly luxurious hotel room when you’ll be spending as much time as possible away from it. If you are visiting Vegas during the warm season (Mid spring to October) you may want to stay at either Mandalay Bay or MGM due to the great water park/pool facilities. Mandalay Bay has an artificial beach complete with wave making machine allowing body surfing. Both the MGM and Mandalay have great pools and artificial rivers allowing lazy people the chance to “swim” – sitting on an inner tube enjoying a beverage. Beware that even during off peak times, people wake up to place “dibs” on the limited deck and beach chairs so if you snooze much past pool opening time you really lose. Note that Caesar’s Palace has great pools as a recent Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue showed.
A completely unscientific and arbitrary rating of the strip hotels we have stayed at (not including the Wynn) would put The Hotel on Top, followed by Venetian, Mandalay Bay (when the beach is open), Bellagio, MGM (with the water park open), Mirage, New York New York, Caesar’s Palace, Mandalay Bay (when the beach is closed), Treasure Island, MGM (when the water park is closed), Luxor and Excaliber. Remember that it is a long way from Mandalay Bay to Stratosphere and even with the new monorail for transportation it may be important to stay near the attractions you will want to see the most.
Which Shows to See:
Las Vegas is famous for shows you can’t see anywhere else in the world. The most widely recognized show (after the unfortunate demise of Siegfried & Roy’s show) is the Bellagio’s O – one of the many cirque du solei shows now found on the strip. A combination of incredible human stunts, music, artistry and a high tech pool/stage which showcases the performer talents made critics call a ticket to see O worth a trip to Vegas by itself. Ray’s personal favorite cirque du solei show is Mystere (at Treasure Island). It was the first Cirque du Solei show on the strip and remains a special treat – the incredible human stunts provide a glaring contrast to today’s special effects enhanced entertainment. The music and costumes also enhance the artistry of the show. Another highly rated cirque du solei show is Ka – now at the MGM. The LA times called Ka “the most lavish production in the history of western theatre.” It doesn’t showcase human stunts like the other two shows, but nearly overwhelms all of the audience’s senses.
Other great shows we recommend include Danny Gans (at the Mirage) – just outstanding musical and comedy entertainment. Danny combines surprisingly clean and non-offensive (unless you’re Michael Jackson, Dean Martin, or William Hung of American Idol) humor with fine imitation of famous musical artists from Tom Jones to Elvis to Five for Fighting. Celine Dion has a great show at Caesar’s Palace showcasing her unique musical abilities in a Vegas musical extravaganza.
Shows that didn’t make our recommended list include Blue Man Group (although they must be doing something right being “promoted” from Luxor to Venetian) and Zumanity (at New York New York) which seemed like a PG-13 cirque du solei show without the color, pageantry or special effects of the other shows. Note we haven’t seen “La Reve,” another cirque du solei show at the Wynn.
Where to eat:
Detailed reviews and menus of individual restaurants are available at multiple websites such as Zagat.com so this blog won’t focus on food. Even the buffets are hard to rate because the “best” ones may have a bunch of food you don’t want to eat. The Carnival World Buffet at the Rio is often mentioned as a top buffet because of the wide variety of food available. The separate Rio Seafood Buffet is also a local favorite. On our most recent trip we ate at Cravings (the Mirage Buffet) and found it to be extremely good with high quality and good variety (although the desserts were somewhat limited). Vegas had been a place famous for cheap surf and turf, but this has become increasingly rare. According to several travel sites, the Gambler’s Special (available, but not advertised on menu at the Hard Rock Café’s Mr. Lucky 24/7) for 7.77 is the best of the cheap eats (Steak, shrimp and fries or mashed potatoes).
What to Do:
A listing of activities we enjoyed during visits to Vegas –
1. Ride a helicopter to the Grand Canyon. In the space of one morning you can get picked up at your hotel, ride a helicopter to the Grand Canyon – land at the bottom of the canyon, enjoy a nice breakfast, and fly back from this national treasure. A most efficient way to see this national treasure! In addition to viewing the Grand Canyon, you get a nice view of Hoover Dam and Celine Dion’s Lakefront Estate.
2. See the Fountains of Bellagio – as seen in the movie Oceans 11, the water show powered by many powerful underwater jets is a can’t miss – and its free! Shown every 30 minutes during the afternoons and every 15 minutes after dusk to rotating choreographed music, it’s a real treat! Warning – the show is cancelled when it is windy.
3. Ride the New York New York Roller Coaster – Consistently rated in the top 10 of America’s top coasters, it’s a smooth and fast coaster with 360 degree loops, corkscrews and thrilling drops. For those with a car and extra time, you can ride one of the tallest roller coasters in the world which reaches 80 miles per hour at Buffalo Bill’s in Primm Valley 40 mile south of Vegas.
4. Enjoy the Grand Canal Shoppes at the Venetian and ride a gondola. It is amazing how many high end boutiques populate locations very close to each other on the strip (Venetian, Bellagio and Caesars Palace all have amazing high end shopping malls – just don’t look for any blue light specials). How many shopping malls can you tour from a gondola traveling along indoor canals and piloted by a singing gondolier?
5. Pretend you went to Paris instead of Vegas by buying a ticket to the top of a 50% scale model of the Eiffel Tower – You get a great view of the fountains of Bellagio and the strip, especially at night.
6. Visit the Stratosphere tower – The 1,149 foot tower has a 869 foot observation level with a spectacular view of the Vegas strip. The tallest freestanding observation tower in the US also has a collection of thrill rides exploiting the height of the tower – a ride on the big shot is an absolute blast, without equal anywhere!
7. Voyage to worlds far away at Star Trek – The Experience. Fans of the TV/movie series have a collection of exhibits, museum and virtual reality rides.
8. Watch the volcano erupt in front of the Mirage at night (8pm-midnight every 30 minutes) – a somewhat dated attraction but one worth seeing. While you are in the area, catch the Sirens of TI outdoor free show (5:30pm, 7, 8:30 and 10pm nightly), and have an ice cream sundae across the street at Ghirardelli’s (located at Harrah’s).
9. Enjoy the Carnivale in the Sky at the Rio – After enjoying a great buffet meal, plan to watch the airborne Mardi Gras parade happening at the Rio every afternoon/evening (3pm, 4, 5, 6:30, 7:30, 8:30 and 9:30). For a fee, you can get into costume and ride in an aerial parade float.
10. Ride the Monorail: The expanded monorail now travels the entire strip starting at a station adjacent to the MGM grand and ending at the Sahara hotel with the nearby Stratosphere tower. You can buy single ride tickets for $3, a book of 10 tickets for $20, or all day passes.
11. For art lovers, three collections are found on the strip – Bellagio’s Gallery of fine art, Venetian’s Guggenheim Hermitage Museum, and the Wynn Collection display many treasures.
12. Visit the Las Vegas Mini Gran Prix – a fun place for adults and kids including three styles of miniature race cars. It’s located off the strip but is a fun place – you can race head to head in sprint karts or for those 16 years of age, run a time trial in gran prix cars.
13. Experience Fremont Street – “Downtown Vegas” has a 1400 foot canopy 90 feet above Fremont streets on which every few minutes a light show celebrating the classic icons of Vegas is seen on a rotating basis nightly. You can also stop at one of the downtown casinos for low limit gaming while you are downtown. Unfortunately, the Vegas monorail does not travel to downtown yet.
14. Visit Hoover Dam – building began in 1930 on one of the 20th century’s great construction achievements and remains a great tourist attraction – 725 feet of concrete on the Colorado River.
15. Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas at Primm Valley (40 miles south of Vegas). While several shopping areas populate the city including an “outlet” mall called the Las Vegas Premium Outlets, you need to travel to Primm Valley to find typical “outlet” discounts.
16. Visit King Tut’s Tomb – for those that missed the US tour of King Tut’s riches, you can see a replication of the burial chamber and artifacts at the Luxor.
17. Skydive Indoors – at Flyaway Indoor Skydiving (near the Hilton/Convention Center) you can fly on top of a wind tunnel simulating skydiving. I'm not convinced it is a good representation of sky diving but it is a unique experience.
18. Love fast flash cars? – visit the Las Vegas Ferrari-Maserati showroom at the Wynn.
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
A weekend in sunny San Diego
Traci and I headed to San Diego to catch the weekend interleague series between the Padres and the Mariners at brand new Petco Park. We took the early morning Alaska direct flight, unhappy to find out after we arrived that our pre-reserved seats in the middle of the plane had been mysteriously changed to the back of our 100% full plane. Fortunately, we enjoyed a tasty cinnamon scone on the plane and arrived on time in San Diego.
Upon arriving in San Diego – the airport is located 2 blocks from the ocean in the center of town – a short taxi ride took us to the brand new Omni hotel which is physically connected via skybridge with the baseball stadium. After checking in, we walked past the San Diego convention center toward the giant USS Midway aircraft carrier which serves as a quite interesting museum. Included in the $15 entrance fee is a small digital audio recorder which contains a plethora of tidbits on aircraft, ships and history. Wandering around the various decks of the carrier during the self guided tour was quite fascinating – while the carriers are quite large, it seems so cramped inside given the huge number of sailors and aircraft previously inhabiting the ship. Even the flight deck with its runways and catapult seemed so small given its role of landing and launching jet fighters. After leaving the Midway, we went to San Diego’s Seaport village for a nice lunch at a village café. Traci enjoyed a tasty wrap while Ray liked his Chicken Caesar Salad Sandwich. From the café, we took a ride on a San Diego “Seal.” Both Seattle and Boston have “Duck Tours” featuring old World War II amphibious landing vehicles that take tourists around downtown and into the water. San Diego has “Seals” which are more modern open air hybrid busses/boats which tour the city and head out onto the North Bay where we saw marine life as well as many ships and landmarks. Our tour director was quite good – she had all sorts of interesting facts about San Diego and its history. On the ocean we saw the USS Ronald Reagan (America’s newest aircraft carrier and found a whole bunch of Sea Lions sunning themselves on barges.
After a long first day in San Diego, we headed back to the Omni hotel and crossed the skybridge to Petco Park. We got prime seats using the ticket broker stubhub.com -- 2nd row behind first base for the Friday night game -- so we spent the whole game in our seats. Gil Meche didn’t have his best game and the Mariners fell behind early – but mounted a nice rally and ended up winning in a 14-5 blowout (the only victory of the weekend). The San Diego fans were quite dedicated – it was amazing how many stayed to the end despite the lopsided victory. After the great victory we headed toward the “Gaslamp Quarter” which is San Diego’s nightlife area for dinner. After checking out several restaurants, we ended up at an Italian place called La Bocca – both of us had seafood pasta dishes which were quite good. Because of the baseball game, dinner was quite late and we didn’t get back to the Omni until well after midnight.
On Saturday, we planned on taking a break from baseball and headed to San Diego’s famous Balboa Park – a collection of 13 museums plus the San Diego Zoo. Because of the limited time for this trip, we passed up seeing the zoo (as well as Seaworld) and saw several of San Diego’s museums in the park – Japanese Friendship Garden, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego Hall of Champions Sports museum, the Railroad museum, the Museum of Man and the Natural History museum. Ray thought the Sports museum was the most impressive despite having an obvious focus on San Diego teams and athletes – Seattle needs one! Traci was impressed with the Graham Flint Gigapxl photography exhibit at the Museum of Photographic Arts. The huge, wall-sized photos were taken with a custom built camera at 1000 to 4000 megapixels producing incredible resolution. Most of the other museums had some interesting exhibits, but they clearly aren’t the Smithsonians. Having checked out all of the food places in the park we settled on eating at the Art Museum (Traci had a nice soup and salad combo, Ray had a chicken Caesar salad). From Balboa park we took a taxi back to the Omni and went to the hotel pool/gym – the pool area was way too small for the number of people hanging around the pool after the afternoon baseball game concluded (we missed the Mariners 8-5 loss). The gym was small but well equipped with brand new machines. From the Omni we headed to Horton Center Plaza which is San Diego’s downtown shopping center located next to the Gaslamp Quarter – the shopping mall was an unimpressive open air collection of the usual suspects including Nordstrom and Macy’s. After a disappointing shopping expedition we headed back to the Omni to enjoy a scrumptious dinner at McCormicks & Schmicks. The chain has a location in Seattle famous for its happy hour – Traci and Ray had a great dinner at the location located in the Omni. Traci had a nice Mahi-Mahi entrée and Ray had what he described as the best $19.95 Top Sirloin steak he ever had. You would normally expect to pay extraordinary high prices at a restaurant located in the lobby of a hotel across the street from a ballpark, but the prices were quite reasonable. We noticed that other steak places including Flemings (located 2 blocks from the Omni) seemed to have significantly lower prices than Seattle. We decided to have dessert at the San Diego Ghiradelli, also located at the Gaslamp Quarter. Ray loves the sundaes at Ghiradelli’s and stops there whenever visiting San Francisco, Las Vegas, Chicago and now San Diego. After another busy day it was back to the Omni.
On our last day in San Diego, we started the day at a nice breakfast spot called Cafe 222 located 3 blocks from the Omni. It was an extremely busy breakfast spot, Traci enjoyed a delicious waffle while Ray had a ham and cheese omelette with tasty crispy potatoes. From breakfast we went to Petco Park for the Sunday afternoon game. We purchased regular outfield tickets from the Padres and spent time wandering around the stadium during the game – Petco Park is a most impressive stadium for family enjoyment of baseball. Behind center field is a large Park area accessible during the game which contains a whiffle ball diamond hosting organized kids play during the Padres game. A large grass lined hill permits viewing of the Padres game from a picnic blanket. Even a large scoreboard screen faces outward from the Park so the picnic crowd won’t miss any of the action. Petco also has a rich assortment of electronic video game kiosks and both a batting cage and a fast pitch contest. A worker actually creates custom baseball bats for fans while you wait($70). The actual architecture of the stadium reminds me of Seahawks stadium – somewhat plain but with good sight lines in the seating areas. I think the biggest problem with the stadium is my perceived unfairness of the bullpens – The Padres get a nice fenced bullpen in left center field while the Mariners were placed along the 1st base line without protection from the field (and the fans). I don’t know if any other ballparks treat teams so differently but it does seem unfair. I think Petco Park is the most family friendly baseball stadium I’ve seen so far. I do believe SBC park in San Francisco is the best park for non-baseball fans and of course, Safeco field is the best park for baseball fans.
Our visit to San Diego concluded by traveling to the airport via taxi. The only major problem with the whole trip occurred when the friendly Alaska Airlines people told us that our flight had already left despite us being 90 minutes early for our ticketed flight. We learned that Alaska had cancelled our flight and rescheduled us for the earlier flight (but neither of us were notified). So we had to endure a 4 hour wait for the final flight of the night (which was delayed an additional hour) bringing us back to Seattle at 1 AM. I guess the moral of this story is in the age of ever changing airline schedules be sure and check your flights the day before you leave home on the internet!
Upon arriving in San Diego – the airport is located 2 blocks from the ocean in the center of town – a short taxi ride took us to the brand new Omni hotel which is physically connected via skybridge with the baseball stadium. After checking in, we walked past the San Diego convention center toward the giant USS Midway aircraft carrier which serves as a quite interesting museum. Included in the $15 entrance fee is a small digital audio recorder which contains a plethora of tidbits on aircraft, ships and history. Wandering around the various decks of the carrier during the self guided tour was quite fascinating – while the carriers are quite large, it seems so cramped inside given the huge number of sailors and aircraft previously inhabiting the ship. Even the flight deck with its runways and catapult seemed so small given its role of landing and launching jet fighters. After leaving the Midway, we went to San Diego’s Seaport village for a nice lunch at a village café. Traci enjoyed a tasty wrap while Ray liked his Chicken Caesar Salad Sandwich. From the café, we took a ride on a San Diego “Seal.” Both Seattle and Boston have “Duck Tours” featuring old World War II amphibious landing vehicles that take tourists around downtown and into the water. San Diego has “Seals” which are more modern open air hybrid busses/boats which tour the city and head out onto the North Bay where we saw marine life as well as many ships and landmarks. Our tour director was quite good – she had all sorts of interesting facts about San Diego and its history. On the ocean we saw the USS Ronald Reagan (America’s newest aircraft carrier and found a whole bunch of Sea Lions sunning themselves on barges.
After a long first day in San Diego, we headed back to the Omni hotel and crossed the skybridge to Petco Park. We got prime seats using the ticket broker stubhub.com -- 2nd row behind first base for the Friday night game -- so we spent the whole game in our seats. Gil Meche didn’t have his best game and the Mariners fell behind early – but mounted a nice rally and ended up winning in a 14-5 blowout (the only victory of the weekend). The San Diego fans were quite dedicated – it was amazing how many stayed to the end despite the lopsided victory. After the great victory we headed toward the “Gaslamp Quarter” which is San Diego’s nightlife area for dinner. After checking out several restaurants, we ended up at an Italian place called La Bocca – both of us had seafood pasta dishes which were quite good. Because of the baseball game, dinner was quite late and we didn’t get back to the Omni until well after midnight.
On Saturday, we planned on taking a break from baseball and headed to San Diego’s famous Balboa Park – a collection of 13 museums plus the San Diego Zoo. Because of the limited time for this trip, we passed up seeing the zoo (as well as Seaworld) and saw several of San Diego’s museums in the park – Japanese Friendship Garden, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego Hall of Champions Sports museum, the Railroad museum, the Museum of Man and the Natural History museum. Ray thought the Sports museum was the most impressive despite having an obvious focus on San Diego teams and athletes – Seattle needs one! Traci was impressed with the Graham Flint Gigapxl photography exhibit at the Museum of Photographic Arts. The huge, wall-sized photos were taken with a custom built camera at 1000 to 4000 megapixels producing incredible resolution. Most of the other museums had some interesting exhibits, but they clearly aren’t the Smithsonians. Having checked out all of the food places in the park we settled on eating at the Art Museum (Traci had a nice soup and salad combo, Ray had a chicken Caesar salad). From Balboa park we took a taxi back to the Omni and went to the hotel pool/gym – the pool area was way too small for the number of people hanging around the pool after the afternoon baseball game concluded (we missed the Mariners 8-5 loss). The gym was small but well equipped with brand new machines. From the Omni we headed to Horton Center Plaza which is San Diego’s downtown shopping center located next to the Gaslamp Quarter – the shopping mall was an unimpressive open air collection of the usual suspects including Nordstrom and Macy’s. After a disappointing shopping expedition we headed back to the Omni to enjoy a scrumptious dinner at McCormicks & Schmicks. The chain has a location in Seattle famous for its happy hour – Traci and Ray had a great dinner at the location located in the Omni. Traci had a nice Mahi-Mahi entrée and Ray had what he described as the best $19.95 Top Sirloin steak he ever had. You would normally expect to pay extraordinary high prices at a restaurant located in the lobby of a hotel across the street from a ballpark, but the prices were quite reasonable. We noticed that other steak places including Flemings (located 2 blocks from the Omni) seemed to have significantly lower prices than Seattle. We decided to have dessert at the San Diego Ghiradelli, also located at the Gaslamp Quarter. Ray loves the sundaes at Ghiradelli’s and stops there whenever visiting San Francisco, Las Vegas, Chicago and now San Diego. After another busy day it was back to the Omni.
On our last day in San Diego, we started the day at a nice breakfast spot called Cafe 222 located 3 blocks from the Omni. It was an extremely busy breakfast spot, Traci enjoyed a delicious waffle while Ray had a ham and cheese omelette with tasty crispy potatoes. From breakfast we went to Petco Park for the Sunday afternoon game. We purchased regular outfield tickets from the Padres and spent time wandering around the stadium during the game – Petco Park is a most impressive stadium for family enjoyment of baseball. Behind center field is a large Park area accessible during the game which contains a whiffle ball diamond hosting organized kids play during the Padres game. A large grass lined hill permits viewing of the Padres game from a picnic blanket. Even a large scoreboard screen faces outward from the Park so the picnic crowd won’t miss any of the action. Petco also has a rich assortment of electronic video game kiosks and both a batting cage and a fast pitch contest. A worker actually creates custom baseball bats for fans while you wait($70). The actual architecture of the stadium reminds me of Seahawks stadium – somewhat plain but with good sight lines in the seating areas. I think the biggest problem with the stadium is my perceived unfairness of the bullpens – The Padres get a nice fenced bullpen in left center field while the Mariners were placed along the 1st base line without protection from the field (and the fans). I don’t know if any other ballparks treat teams so differently but it does seem unfair. I think Petco Park is the most family friendly baseball stadium I’ve seen so far. I do believe SBC park in San Francisco is the best park for non-baseball fans and of course, Safeco field is the best park for baseball fans.
Our visit to San Diego concluded by traveling to the airport via taxi. The only major problem with the whole trip occurred when the friendly Alaska Airlines people told us that our flight had already left despite us being 90 minutes early for our ticketed flight. We learned that Alaska had cancelled our flight and rescheduled us for the earlier flight (but neither of us were notified). So we had to endure a 4 hour wait for the final flight of the night (which was delayed an additional hour) bringing us back to Seattle at 1 AM. I guess the moral of this story is in the age of ever changing airline schedules be sure and check your flights the day before you leave home on the internet!
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Visit to Chicago
Ray and Traci’s Adventures in the Windy City
After realizing his work schedule prevented Ray from attending his 15th class reunion in April, Ray decided to plan a trip in May to introduce Traci to his former home during medical school – Chicago!
The voyage had a rocky start early Saturday morning – as soon as our fully loaded Alaska Airlines airplane reached its departure time, the pilot informed us that a key video monitor in the cockpit needed to be replaced. A 20 minute delay turned into 30, and then we were informed we would need to get on a different plane. After departing the first plane and loading the second, we were informed that the new plane needed an exterior part to be replaced. We had to wait on the plane and ended up leaving over 2 hours late. Fortunately our flight to Chicago was uneventful once we were airborne.
When traveling to places like New York or Chicago, arranging a “car service” transportation in advance is often the most economical way to transfer. I used an internet site called 1800limo.com and received a discounted flat rate in advance. Other than a mild delay from looking for the wrong make of car, our transfer to downtown Chicago went smoothly. It was notable that traffic even on a Saturday afternoon was moving slowly, especially leaving the city. Seattle is not the only city with major traffic problems! Our driver brought us to the Hyatt Regency Hotel on the Chicago River, where we checked in having booked a special advance rate using hotels.com. A travel tip – while booking from the hotels site (hyatt.com) usually finds discount room rates, you usually have to pay taxes on top of them (but you do get airline frequent flyer points) – Using hotels.com, expedia.com, or pleasantholidays.com often finds cheap rates with taxes and fees included – but no frequent flyer miles.
After unpacking, we walked over to Navy Pier which is a typical “boardwalk” facility – Food, fun, rides (very limited), and shopping abound. Navy Pier is surprisingly long, has boarding areas for many daytime sight seeing cruises as well as nighttime dinner cruises and boasts one of the largest stained glass museums in the country. Most of the stained glass exhibits came off of churches from long ago, but a few modern exhibits were dispalyed including a Chicago Bulls collage. We also walked by Lake Point Tower which borders Navy Pier – Slamming Sammy Sosa has his huge condo which covers half of an entire floor of the luxury tower for sale (asking $7 million if your interested in making an offer….)
From Navy Pier we walked to the Chicago Nordstrom at Grand and Michigan avenues. Traci noted that the Chicago Nordstrom has the largest womens shoe department – an area that looked even larger when it was basically empty. The interior is very nice – I thought it was interesting that the signage reported the store closed at 8pm (we entered at 7:55pm) but no one announced the store was closing and we wandered around with many other shoppers for at least 30 minutes. After looking around Traci’s favorite store, we walked down Ontario Avenue to get pizza. Gino’s East is one of Chicago’s most celebrated deep dish pizza parlors, and one of the things Ray misses the most after leaving Chicago. On the way we walked past a huge two story McDonald that looked like some sort of space port. Upon arriving at Gino’s East we were pleasantly surprised by the relative short 15 minute wait to get seated. We enjoyed a salad followed by a wonderful Chicago style deep dish pizza with pepperoni, Canadian bacon and sausage. Chicago pizza is a treat not to be missed – other places such as Delfinos in Seattle’s University Village make reasonable facsimiles of Chicago pizza but certainly not as good as the original. We walked backed to the Hyatt stuffed with stuffed pizza and ready to turn in for the evening. One comment about the Hyatt – from our 21st story rooms you can hear the “L” trains rush by underground – light sleepers be warned about staying there!
On Sunday, we started our day by eating at a place called “Corner Bakery.” It turns out that there are several of these downtown – they serve (both dine-in and take out) all sorts of fruits, juices, muffins, sandwiches and salads. Since it was packed we took our food and walked down the street to Chicago’s famed Millenium park. The park was built over a rail yard and is a large expanse of grass, stainless steel fixtures/buildings and a garden. An ice rink which only operates in the winter is currently a fenced in concrete area serving as a dining area for private functions. Much of the grass areas are off limits – and a plethora of security guards riding Segway personal mobility devices patrol the park. A lengthy stainless steel pedestrian bridge designed by Frank Geary spans the East end of the park. Two large obelisks like objects out of the movie 2001 act as fountains (especially popular in the summer) – the two sides which face each other are video light displays and the face of Jerry Seinfeld (or someone who looks awfully like him) smiles, blinks and generally watches you. The park must be an ideal spot for outdoor concerts as a large amphitheatre adorns the middle grassy area. We were told the faces on the obelisk change regularly and water from the fountains is “spit” out thru the mouths.
The next stop after Millenium Park was the much revered Wrigley Park. We hopped on the “L’ and took the 10 minute ride to the home of the Cubs. Fortunately we picked a beautiful May Sunday to attend an afternoon game between the Phillies and Cubs. First, it was amazing to see two teams play so quickly – the whole 8 ½ inning game was done in 2 hours. Second, Wrigley may have history over Safeco field, but in terms of amenities it lags far behind. Even the field looked like a plain lawn compared to Safeco’s carefully engineered and maintained grass (most expensive lawn in the world!). It is funny to see all the “bleachers’ set up on rooftops around the stadium to watch the Cubs without paying the Tribune company (owners of the Cubs.) Some bleachers are quite large and must give enterprising landlords some extra income. For Sunday’s Phillies game most of the bleachers outside the stadium were fairly empty although the stadium itself was sold out. We stopped at a couple of Cubs merchandise stores before riding the “L” back into the city.
After a brief respite, we had reservations for the famous Chicago Chop House to enjoy Midwest steaks. Traci ordered a Filet, Ray had a T-bone. Both were excellent – the tender, high quality meat was very enjoyable although Ray felt his steak lacked the spicy “kick” that made Daniel’s broiler in Seattle his all time favorite steakhouse. We ended the evening with a trip to a combination 24 hour Dunkin Donuts/Baskin & Robbins. While the condition of the store and the poor staffing had much to be desired, ice cream tastes delicious no matter how it’s scooped out of the container.
On Monday, clouds covered the city and news reports cautioned against possible thundershowers. Our planned touring of the city on a double decker bus was put on hold and we decided to tour the shopping areas instead. We headed to Water Tower Place on Chicago’s miracle mile – on our way to the store we wandered around Northwestern’s Chicago campus (where Ray went to medical school) and Ray was astonished with all the changes (tearing down old buildings and replacing them with huge high skyscrapers). His old home at the Northwestern dorm is sadly being closed after this academic year. At Water Tower place, we mainly enjoyed looking at the wide variety of stores displaying overpriced designer goods. Most of the stores were the same names you would find in Bellevue Square. The mall itself is amazingly luxurious – you are greeted with entry escalators separated by running water fountains cascading downward, marble all around, a central open area going from lower floors to top floors with a glass elevator enclosed. We ate lunch at the Grand Lux Café on Michigan Avenue (a very large restaurant found in places like Las Vegas) and wandered around at several other Chicago shopping attractions – Niketown where Ray commented on the extremely inefficient use of floor space, the bloomingdale’s shopping mall across from Water tower with what appeared to be the leftover tenants that couldn’t get into the Water Tower.
After our shopping tour we went to a river cruise recommended by the hotel concierge – we got on this large boat with clouds threatening and wind howling but actually had a great architectural introduction to the city of skyscrapers. Many famous architects were based in Chicago and helped develop the city into the metropolis it is today. Chicago’s history is quite interesting including (like Seattle) a major fire in the 1870s that wiped everything else, severe pollution problems ultimately resulting in the great engineering feat of reversing the flow of the Chicago river and many architectural advancements such as the first steel framed construction allowing high rises. Something interesting that I didn’t quite understand was the huge numbers of buildings with “Condo for sale” signs out front – I don’t think Chicago is undergoing explosive growth like Las Vegas so I’m not sure where all the buyers are coming from. Is traffic so bad they have to sell their homes to move closer to work? We ate dinner at Cosi’s the soup/sandwich/pizza restaurant that recently opened in Seattle. Afterwards, we took a taxi to Second City which is Chicago’s famous comedy troup that’s been around for 45 years and boasts alumni such as John Belushi and Bill Murray. If you’re ever in Chicago, I highly recommend attending the show – the tickets are only $12 (so book on the internet VERY EARLY) and show up early – first to arrive get the best seats. It’s actually a small venue so there aren’t any bad seats. They put on a 2 act show much like Saturday night live with some hilarious well planned skits and others put together on the fly by audience suggestions. It’s a mostly clean show, PG at most and don’t worry, no one in the audience gets humiliated. I actually don’t know why tickets are relatively inexpensive (taxi ride from downtown costs almost as much as the ticket! Parking costs more than the tickets if you drive!) as the show is mostly sold out. They finished the night with a special 3rd act that most of the audience stayed for (it getting very late on a weeknight) that was all improvised. Ray liked the prepared skits the best – some were “roll on the ground and die of laughter funny,” but the improvised ones really showcase their comedy talents. After the 2 ½ hour show Traci stopped into the next door Starbucks (Open 24 hours a day! And was quite busy at 11:30pm on Monday night) before we caught a cab back to the Hyatt.
Tuesday – we awoke to a beautiful, sunny Chicago day which reached 80 degrees. After a breakfast at the corner bakery, we hopped on one of the tour busses. The company we used operated both trolleys and double decker busses. Our first ride was on a trolley with a driver trying to be a tour guide at the same time and basically called out the names of the stores as we passed Michigan avenue giving useless tidbits like “if you want an iPod you can buy them at that Apple store.” We got off at the Sears Tower and bought $12 dollar tickets (you can get 50% off a second admission with the Marshall Field’s coupons found in the tourist brochure racks), to see Chicago from the 103rd floor of the United States’ tallest building (World’s #3) as of 2005. The view was quite spectacular although it would have been nicer if you could actually go outside. We got to take a few pictures, go thru the obligatory gift shops and wait for a bus at the tour stop. Fortunately, the next vehicle to come along was a true double decker bus with a separate guide who was quite funny and informative. We got to see the new Soldiers Field (the Bear’s new stadium is quite an upgrade – you have the columns left over from the old stadium with brand new futuristic looking seating areas.) We passed the Buckingham Fountain which is seen on the opening of Fox’s old TV series “Married with Children.” Our new guide was much better at giving interesting facts like the Sheraton Hotel penthouse was designed by the Secret Service to be the President’s home while visiting Chicago. I was quite impressed with the large park areas complete with ball fields and amenities like amphitheatres in the city – the planning is well done and the areas are very well maintained (maybe we in Seattle could learn something).
We got off the double decker bus at the Water Tower and stopped at Ray’s favorite Ice Cream place – Gharidelli’s (it wasn’t there when he went to school!). Traci and Ray were going to share an ice cream sundae but Ray liked it so much he made Traci mad by eating it all. After not getting any ice cream, Traci got some popcorn at Garrett’s Popcorn (a famous Chicago fixture with lines outside the small shop at times). We continued walking up Michigan avenue to the Jamba Juice across from the Millenium Park. Still having extra time on our hands, we walked to the Hilton Palmer House and looked around the very ornate lobby areas. The Palmer is very elegant, more elegant (we thought) than New York’s famed Plaza Hotel but it’s kind of far away from most of the fun places. We finished out Chicago adventure at the State Street flagship Marshall Field’s store where Traci looked at many handbags, one which she will eventually purchase using her employee discount back at Seattle’s Nordstrom. We walked from Field’s back to the Hyatt to claim our checked baggage. It’s a 5 block walk from Hyatt to the Blue Line L train, one that made us wish we brought wheeled bags for. The L is a convenient way to get to O’Hare – you don’t have to worry about traffic, it’s generally on time, and you can’t beat the $1.75 per person price but you have to lug your bags around. Fortunately our trip back to Seattle was uneventful, thus concluding this latest adventure of Traci and Ray.
After realizing his work schedule prevented Ray from attending his 15th class reunion in April, Ray decided to plan a trip in May to introduce Traci to his former home during medical school – Chicago!
The voyage had a rocky start early Saturday morning – as soon as our fully loaded Alaska Airlines airplane reached its departure time, the pilot informed us that a key video monitor in the cockpit needed to be replaced. A 20 minute delay turned into 30, and then we were informed we would need to get on a different plane. After departing the first plane and loading the second, we were informed that the new plane needed an exterior part to be replaced. We had to wait on the plane and ended up leaving over 2 hours late. Fortunately our flight to Chicago was uneventful once we were airborne.
When traveling to places like New York or Chicago, arranging a “car service” transportation in advance is often the most economical way to transfer. I used an internet site called 1800limo.com and received a discounted flat rate in advance. Other than a mild delay from looking for the wrong make of car, our transfer to downtown Chicago went smoothly. It was notable that traffic even on a Saturday afternoon was moving slowly, especially leaving the city. Seattle is not the only city with major traffic problems! Our driver brought us to the Hyatt Regency Hotel on the Chicago River, where we checked in having booked a special advance rate using hotels.com. A travel tip – while booking from the hotels site (hyatt.com) usually finds discount room rates, you usually have to pay taxes on top of them (but you do get airline frequent flyer points) – Using hotels.com, expedia.com, or pleasantholidays.com often finds cheap rates with taxes and fees included – but no frequent flyer miles.
After unpacking, we walked over to Navy Pier which is a typical “boardwalk” facility – Food, fun, rides (very limited), and shopping abound. Navy Pier is surprisingly long, has boarding areas for many daytime sight seeing cruises as well as nighttime dinner cruises and boasts one of the largest stained glass museums in the country. Most of the stained glass exhibits came off of churches from long ago, but a few modern exhibits were dispalyed including a Chicago Bulls collage. We also walked by Lake Point Tower which borders Navy Pier – Slamming Sammy Sosa has his huge condo which covers half of an entire floor of the luxury tower for sale (asking $7 million if your interested in making an offer….)
From Navy Pier we walked to the Chicago Nordstrom at Grand and Michigan avenues. Traci noted that the Chicago Nordstrom has the largest womens shoe department – an area that looked even larger when it was basically empty. The interior is very nice – I thought it was interesting that the signage reported the store closed at 8pm (we entered at 7:55pm) but no one announced the store was closing and we wandered around with many other shoppers for at least 30 minutes. After looking around Traci’s favorite store, we walked down Ontario Avenue to get pizza. Gino’s East is one of Chicago’s most celebrated deep dish pizza parlors, and one of the things Ray misses the most after leaving Chicago. On the way we walked past a huge two story McDonald that looked like some sort of space port. Upon arriving at Gino’s East we were pleasantly surprised by the relative short 15 minute wait to get seated. We enjoyed a salad followed by a wonderful Chicago style deep dish pizza with pepperoni, Canadian bacon and sausage. Chicago pizza is a treat not to be missed – other places such as Delfinos in Seattle’s University Village make reasonable facsimiles of Chicago pizza but certainly not as good as the original. We walked backed to the Hyatt stuffed with stuffed pizza and ready to turn in for the evening. One comment about the Hyatt – from our 21st story rooms you can hear the “L” trains rush by underground – light sleepers be warned about staying there!
On Sunday, we started our day by eating at a place called “Corner Bakery.” It turns out that there are several of these downtown – they serve (both dine-in and take out) all sorts of fruits, juices, muffins, sandwiches and salads. Since it was packed we took our food and walked down the street to Chicago’s famed Millenium park. The park was built over a rail yard and is a large expanse of grass, stainless steel fixtures/buildings and a garden. An ice rink which only operates in the winter is currently a fenced in concrete area serving as a dining area for private functions. Much of the grass areas are off limits – and a plethora of security guards riding Segway personal mobility devices patrol the park. A lengthy stainless steel pedestrian bridge designed by Frank Geary spans the East end of the park. Two large obelisks like objects out of the movie 2001 act as fountains (especially popular in the summer) – the two sides which face each other are video light displays and the face of Jerry Seinfeld (or someone who looks awfully like him) smiles, blinks and generally watches you. The park must be an ideal spot for outdoor concerts as a large amphitheatre adorns the middle grassy area. We were told the faces on the obelisk change regularly and water from the fountains is “spit” out thru the mouths.
The next stop after Millenium Park was the much revered Wrigley Park. We hopped on the “L’ and took the 10 minute ride to the home of the Cubs. Fortunately we picked a beautiful May Sunday to attend an afternoon game between the Phillies and Cubs. First, it was amazing to see two teams play so quickly – the whole 8 ½ inning game was done in 2 hours. Second, Wrigley may have history over Safeco field, but in terms of amenities it lags far behind. Even the field looked like a plain lawn compared to Safeco’s carefully engineered and maintained grass (most expensive lawn in the world!). It is funny to see all the “bleachers’ set up on rooftops around the stadium to watch the Cubs without paying the Tribune company (owners of the Cubs.) Some bleachers are quite large and must give enterprising landlords some extra income. For Sunday’s Phillies game most of the bleachers outside the stadium were fairly empty although the stadium itself was sold out. We stopped at a couple of Cubs merchandise stores before riding the “L” back into the city.
After a brief respite, we had reservations for the famous Chicago Chop House to enjoy Midwest steaks. Traci ordered a Filet, Ray had a T-bone. Both were excellent – the tender, high quality meat was very enjoyable although Ray felt his steak lacked the spicy “kick” that made Daniel’s broiler in Seattle his all time favorite steakhouse. We ended the evening with a trip to a combination 24 hour Dunkin Donuts/Baskin & Robbins. While the condition of the store and the poor staffing had much to be desired, ice cream tastes delicious no matter how it’s scooped out of the container.
On Monday, clouds covered the city and news reports cautioned against possible thundershowers. Our planned touring of the city on a double decker bus was put on hold and we decided to tour the shopping areas instead. We headed to Water Tower Place on Chicago’s miracle mile – on our way to the store we wandered around Northwestern’s Chicago campus (where Ray went to medical school) and Ray was astonished with all the changes (tearing down old buildings and replacing them with huge high skyscrapers). His old home at the Northwestern dorm is sadly being closed after this academic year. At Water Tower place, we mainly enjoyed looking at the wide variety of stores displaying overpriced designer goods. Most of the stores were the same names you would find in Bellevue Square. The mall itself is amazingly luxurious – you are greeted with entry escalators separated by running water fountains cascading downward, marble all around, a central open area going from lower floors to top floors with a glass elevator enclosed. We ate lunch at the Grand Lux Café on Michigan Avenue (a very large restaurant found in places like Las Vegas) and wandered around at several other Chicago shopping attractions – Niketown where Ray commented on the extremely inefficient use of floor space, the bloomingdale’s shopping mall across from Water tower with what appeared to be the leftover tenants that couldn’t get into the Water Tower.
After our shopping tour we went to a river cruise recommended by the hotel concierge – we got on this large boat with clouds threatening and wind howling but actually had a great architectural introduction to the city of skyscrapers. Many famous architects were based in Chicago and helped develop the city into the metropolis it is today. Chicago’s history is quite interesting including (like Seattle) a major fire in the 1870s that wiped everything else, severe pollution problems ultimately resulting in the great engineering feat of reversing the flow of the Chicago river and many architectural advancements such as the first steel framed construction allowing high rises. Something interesting that I didn’t quite understand was the huge numbers of buildings with “Condo for sale” signs out front – I don’t think Chicago is undergoing explosive growth like Las Vegas so I’m not sure where all the buyers are coming from. Is traffic so bad they have to sell their homes to move closer to work? We ate dinner at Cosi’s the soup/sandwich/pizza restaurant that recently opened in Seattle. Afterwards, we took a taxi to Second City which is Chicago’s famous comedy troup that’s been around for 45 years and boasts alumni such as John Belushi and Bill Murray. If you’re ever in Chicago, I highly recommend attending the show – the tickets are only $12 (so book on the internet VERY EARLY) and show up early – first to arrive get the best seats. It’s actually a small venue so there aren’t any bad seats. They put on a 2 act show much like Saturday night live with some hilarious well planned skits and others put together on the fly by audience suggestions. It’s a mostly clean show, PG at most and don’t worry, no one in the audience gets humiliated. I actually don’t know why tickets are relatively inexpensive (taxi ride from downtown costs almost as much as the ticket! Parking costs more than the tickets if you drive!) as the show is mostly sold out. They finished the night with a special 3rd act that most of the audience stayed for (it getting very late on a weeknight) that was all improvised. Ray liked the prepared skits the best – some were “roll on the ground and die of laughter funny,” but the improvised ones really showcase their comedy talents. After the 2 ½ hour show Traci stopped into the next door Starbucks (Open 24 hours a day! And was quite busy at 11:30pm on Monday night) before we caught a cab back to the Hyatt.
Tuesday – we awoke to a beautiful, sunny Chicago day which reached 80 degrees. After a breakfast at the corner bakery, we hopped on one of the tour busses. The company we used operated both trolleys and double decker busses. Our first ride was on a trolley with a driver trying to be a tour guide at the same time and basically called out the names of the stores as we passed Michigan avenue giving useless tidbits like “if you want an iPod you can buy them at that Apple store.” We got off at the Sears Tower and bought $12 dollar tickets (you can get 50% off a second admission with the Marshall Field’s coupons found in the tourist brochure racks), to see Chicago from the 103rd floor of the United States’ tallest building (World’s #3) as of 2005. The view was quite spectacular although it would have been nicer if you could actually go outside. We got to take a few pictures, go thru the obligatory gift shops and wait for a bus at the tour stop. Fortunately, the next vehicle to come along was a true double decker bus with a separate guide who was quite funny and informative. We got to see the new Soldiers Field (the Bear’s new stadium is quite an upgrade – you have the columns left over from the old stadium with brand new futuristic looking seating areas.) We passed the Buckingham Fountain which is seen on the opening of Fox’s old TV series “Married with Children.” Our new guide was much better at giving interesting facts like the Sheraton Hotel penthouse was designed by the Secret Service to be the President’s home while visiting Chicago. I was quite impressed with the large park areas complete with ball fields and amenities like amphitheatres in the city – the planning is well done and the areas are very well maintained (maybe we in Seattle could learn something).
We got off the double decker bus at the Water Tower and stopped at Ray’s favorite Ice Cream place – Gharidelli’s (it wasn’t there when he went to school!). Traci and Ray were going to share an ice cream sundae but Ray liked it so much he made Traci mad by eating it all. After not getting any ice cream, Traci got some popcorn at Garrett’s Popcorn (a famous Chicago fixture with lines outside the small shop at times). We continued walking up Michigan avenue to the Jamba Juice across from the Millenium Park. Still having extra time on our hands, we walked to the Hilton Palmer House and looked around the very ornate lobby areas. The Palmer is very elegant, more elegant (we thought) than New York’s famed Plaza Hotel but it’s kind of far away from most of the fun places. We finished out Chicago adventure at the State Street flagship Marshall Field’s store where Traci looked at many handbags, one which she will eventually purchase using her employee discount back at Seattle’s Nordstrom. We walked from Field’s back to the Hyatt to claim our checked baggage. It’s a 5 block walk from Hyatt to the Blue Line L train, one that made us wish we brought wheeled bags for. The L is a convenient way to get to O’Hare – you don’t have to worry about traffic, it’s generally on time, and you can’t beat the $1.75 per person price but you have to lug your bags around. Fortunately our trip back to Seattle was uneventful, thus concluding this latest adventure of Traci and Ray.
Sunday, January 16, 2005
A Big Kid's Journey to Disneyworld (conclusion)
On Tuesday, we planned to split the day between Animal Kingdom and MGM-Disney Studios. First we went to the Animal Kingdom on a bus from our hotel. You should see the Animal Kingdom when it opens in the morning, and make the first ride be the Kilimanjaro Safari – you get on little safari busses and go out into Disney’s wildlife preserve. Animals such as giraffes, gazelles, elephants, hippos and lions roam around and they tend to be more active in the morning. The only other must see attraction at the Animal Kingdom is the Tarzan Rocks show – it's held periodically during the day and is unique as it has a live rock band providing Tarzan soundtrack music with entertainers putting on a cirque du solei type show. It's definitely worth seeing. We skipped the Kali River Rapids because you don’t just get wet, you get soaked! Primeval Whirl is a very rough roller coaster that seems to inflict more pain then provides thrills. Dinosaur is an entertaining ride which simulates time travel. It didn’t take very long to see most of the Animal Kingdom but even though we went first thing to the Safari, the longest wait we had during our whole trip was at the Safari (about 30 minutes). Disney is building a large roller coaster on a “Mount Everest” look alike and it should be impressive when it opens in 2006.
We took a bus from the Animal Kingdom to MGM-Disney Studios next. I thought the studios were the most enjoyable park for rides. In my opinion the best rides in all of Disneyworld are the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror and the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster – The Tower is a vertical drop ride in a quintessential Disney package – The creepy looking and sounding staff load you into a library where Rod Sterling appears on the screen and puts you in the Twilight zone frame of mind. More creepy staff load you into the ride itself and you see all sorts of visual displays not knowing when what’s going to happen. It is a truly thrilling experience but I strongly recommend riding it once but only once – I believe that 75% of the thrill in this type of ride is the uncertainty, and once you ride it you know what to expect. The Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster is a nice coaster, smooth, loops upside down – again packaged as only Disney does with Aerosmith videos and music. It doesn’t have any significant drops and is way too short but certainly deserves to be called a thrill ride. I found the Disney-MGM Backlot tour to be very uninspiring as was the Great Movie Ride. I enjoyed and recommend seeing the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular, another scheduled show put on at various times during the day – it’s not especially unique but it is entertaining. Finally we saw the Fantasmic night time show at park closing – A few comments: it’s the only night time finale show that requires you to sit in a special amphitheater. Our park was so empty that we had nearly a 0 wait to get on the Rock ‘n’ roller Coaster and the Tower of Terror but the amphitheater was nearly filled before the show started. If you want to see it go early (it opens 2 hours before show time). The show is a combination of fireworks, water displays, videos projected on a screen made of water spray (unique!) and lighted floats with Disney characters. It’s worth seeing but it seemed quite scary for young kids, and I got to think it’s very difficult to get seating when the park is busy. You can get reserved seating if you have dinner at the Brown Derby but even at that you have to show up 30 minutes ahead of time. It’s also a pain to get out of the amphitheater. We hopped on a ferry after park closing that took us back to the Swan (we didn’t figure out it was much faster to walk yet.) We ended up eating dinner at the Swan Hotel Garden Grove Café – They actually have reasonably priced standard café fare (Traci had a salad, I had a pizza) but also have the bonus of Disney characters roaming around (Pluto followed by Goofy). They come to each table and take pictures with you (and sign autograph books for the kids). Many hotels and restaurants in the park advertise characters in attendance during meals – the more popular ones requiring getting on a priority seating list (sort of like an unconfirmed reservation) in advance – sometimes far in advance (month+).
Wednesday – we took a day off from the parks, and rented a car (National Car Rental at the Dolphin Hotel) to venture to the Kennedy Space Center. Many “experts” recommend taking a break from the parks after 2 days, we ended up doing this because I wanted to go to Kennedy on this specific day as they were launching a rocket shortly before 2 pm. The drive from the Swan/Dolphin to Kennedy was fairly routine, its about 65 miles so plan on a 90 minute drive – It’s a toll road and we ended up paying $4 in tolls (total) each way. Kennedy was abnormally busy for the time of the year because of launch. I made reservations in advance to get their “Up close” tour which is the standard tour plus some extra stops. I’ve been to KSC before but it was a first time for Traci and she really enjoyed it. You get to walk around old rockets, get into a mockup full scale model of both the space shuttle and the international space station. On that particular day we also got to see the launch of a rocket that is going to deliver a probe into a comet in deep space. The center was interesting to visit, Traci enjoyed the learning experience quite a bit. I don’t know if the up close tour offered that much more than the regular tour, however. Check their website for the schedule – the tours shut down during Shuttle launches which are scheduled to resume in May.
We drove back to Disney, making a stop at downtown Disney to buy souvenirs. The best place to get souvenirs for Disney is probably at Downtown Disney – between two stores, World of Disney “largest character store on the planet” and Team Mickey (Logoed Sports equipment and apparel) you can find about everything imaginable in these two neighboring stores. After returning the car to the Dolphin we had a special dinner planned – at Shula’s (One of America’s 10 favorite steak houses according to the American airline magazine). Fortunately our concierge was able to get us in (we didn’t get a reservation until that night) and Traci and I split a 24 oz porterhouse steak which was excellent. Prices were a bit lower then what Daniels Broiler or the Met in Seattle would charge – It was definitely a great meal, although I’d say the flavor was a bit below what I expect at Daniels Broiler (still what I consider to be the best steak anywhere). I enjoyed the Steakhouse immensely, although Traci learned from other reviews that the Disney Yacht Club steakhouse was higher rated.
Thursday – I made a mistake by forgetting our park tickets as we decided to walk to MGM-Studios in the morning. This turned out to be a great mistake for three reasons: First, by having to walk back to our room and then walking back to MGM-Studios we happened to be under the big Mickey Hat just as the time Mickey Mouse showed up to do pictures. Usually there are long lines of people wanting to take pictures with Mickey and other characters (and at this time of the year, there were some lines with many adults but no kids in them!). Anyway, Traci and I got a picture with Mickey which is the holy grail of character stalking! Second, the only reason we went back to the studios (we already saw most of the park) was I wanted to get tickets to see the filming of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.” Usually the studio park has an attraction where a large audience plays a simulated game for prizes, but this week Meredith Viera was in town playing the real game and taping for TV sweeps month (May). Because we were late, we didn’t get tickets for the first show and we ended up being waitlisted for the 3rd show of the day and because of that got to sit in the 2nd row right behind Meredith! Look for us on the show May 26th! I was surprised there is so much lead time between taping and showing on TV. Finally, since we didn’t get into the early show of Millionaire, we decided to go back to Epcot on the bus to get breakfast. We arrived at the Norway exhibit quite late and despite having no “preferred seating” reservations, we got into the Princesses Buffet Breakfast (which I understand is another coup, especially for those with young daughters). While I was most interested in just getting fed, Traci got pictures with all the Disney Princesses. I’m told if you want to attend this breakfast you have to get on the preferred seating list weeks if not months in advance. After getting fed, we went to see some of the Epcot exhibits. In general I was kind of disappointed Epcot is the park that is in need of renovation/additions. I guess the #1 attractions are Test Track (where you are in a car acting like a test dummy as it speeds thru obstacles) and Mission: Space which is a virtual reality ride that simulates a trip to Mars. Both are good and worth seeing (although at least for me, virtual reality rides always make me sick even though roller coasters and other thrill rides never do), but neither are superb. After cruising around Epcot we went back to MGM-Disney studios to watch the taping of Who Wants to be a Millionaire which was quite exciting (I’ve never been to a real game show taping before). Before leaving we went to the Magic of Disney Animation exhibit – it’s about animators and their craft and I thought it was quite funny although most of the young kids didn’t get the humor during the presentation. Before leaving we got pictures with characters from the movie “the Incredibles.” We walked back to the Swan Hotel, rested, and then walked back to Epcot to watch the fireworks show – IllumiNations. Disney again put on a great show – it's best seen from around the USA exhibit area at the top of the lake. You want to find a place with an unobstructed view of the lake – it’s a combination fireworks, a big floating globe, and water fountain sprays (like Las Vegas’s Belligio) set to music. It’s the best show at Epcot, but I’d give a clear advantage to the newer Wishes fireworks show.
If you go at a off season time and plan very carefully (along with having an great amount of energy) you could see the highlights of the 4 parks in 2 days assuming you see the 7pm Fantasmic show and walk immediately to Epcot to see the 9pm Illuminations show. Staying at a Disney resort and taking advantage of the early admission program along with the extra 3 hour after closing program would also help. I don’t recommend it though, its very tiring bouncing around park to park. In retrospect though, I would have planned to do a 7pm Fantasmic show and 9pm IllumiNations show on the same night and see the Spectromagic parade and Wishes firework shows twice.
Friday: Our beautiful 80 degree weather left us and we awoke to a thunderstorm and deluge of rainfall. Fortunately, we really didn’t have very much planned prior to our 3:30 departure by car service to the airport. After packing and checking our luggage with the bellman, we hopped on the Disney Bus to the Magic Kingdom. We rode the monorail again from the Magic Kingdom to the main café at the Grand Floridian, this time to enjoy Mickey Mouse waffles. Despite being a hotel café in Disney’s highest end resort, the pricing was quite reasonable and the food was quite good (as before). In general, Disney does a good job at keeping prices relatively reasonable whether at hotel restaurants or hot dog vendors in the park. You won’t find any bargains, but $2 for a bottle of coke which costs $3.50 at Safeco Field is quite good. Eating at Shula’s was more inexpensive than a similar meal at the Metropolitan Grill in Seattle. Even T-shirts and sweatshirts are cheaper in Disney than at Seahawks stadium. Fortunately the rain became quite light as we finished breakfast.
After enjoying Breakfast at the Grand Floridian, we returned to the Magic Kingdom and went on some more rides – Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan, and Snow White. While certain not thrill rides, it brings up an important thing about Disneyworld – the company is willing to invest quite a bit making a high quality ride with beautiful artwork based on characters well known to everyone – and yet make it gentle enough for even the youngest park visitor to ride. To finish up the day we took the Monorail to the Transit and Transfer station, and got on another monorail taking us to Epcot where we took the Mexico boat tour and saw the films from the China and France exhibits.
Finally, we made the walk from the International gate at Epcot to our hotel and found our car service driver waiting to take us away from the happiest place on earth. Alaska Air's non-stop flight from Orlando flew us in just over 6 hours back to the Pacific Northwest.
We took a bus from the Animal Kingdom to MGM-Disney Studios next. I thought the studios were the most enjoyable park for rides. In my opinion the best rides in all of Disneyworld are the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror and the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster – The Tower is a vertical drop ride in a quintessential Disney package – The creepy looking and sounding staff load you into a library where Rod Sterling appears on the screen and puts you in the Twilight zone frame of mind. More creepy staff load you into the ride itself and you see all sorts of visual displays not knowing when what’s going to happen. It is a truly thrilling experience but I strongly recommend riding it once but only once – I believe that 75% of the thrill in this type of ride is the uncertainty, and once you ride it you know what to expect. The Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster is a nice coaster, smooth, loops upside down – again packaged as only Disney does with Aerosmith videos and music. It doesn’t have any significant drops and is way too short but certainly deserves to be called a thrill ride. I found the Disney-MGM Backlot tour to be very uninspiring as was the Great Movie Ride. I enjoyed and recommend seeing the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular, another scheduled show put on at various times during the day – it’s not especially unique but it is entertaining. Finally we saw the Fantasmic night time show at park closing – A few comments: it’s the only night time finale show that requires you to sit in a special amphitheater. Our park was so empty that we had nearly a 0 wait to get on the Rock ‘n’ roller Coaster and the Tower of Terror but the amphitheater was nearly filled before the show started. If you want to see it go early (it opens 2 hours before show time). The show is a combination of fireworks, water displays, videos projected on a screen made of water spray (unique!) and lighted floats with Disney characters. It’s worth seeing but it seemed quite scary for young kids, and I got to think it’s very difficult to get seating when the park is busy. You can get reserved seating if you have dinner at the Brown Derby but even at that you have to show up 30 minutes ahead of time. It’s also a pain to get out of the amphitheater. We hopped on a ferry after park closing that took us back to the Swan (we didn’t figure out it was much faster to walk yet.) We ended up eating dinner at the Swan Hotel Garden Grove Café – They actually have reasonably priced standard café fare (Traci had a salad, I had a pizza) but also have the bonus of Disney characters roaming around (Pluto followed by Goofy). They come to each table and take pictures with you (and sign autograph books for the kids). Many hotels and restaurants in the park advertise characters in attendance during meals – the more popular ones requiring getting on a priority seating list (sort of like an unconfirmed reservation) in advance – sometimes far in advance (month+).
Wednesday – we took a day off from the parks, and rented a car (National Car Rental at the Dolphin Hotel) to venture to the Kennedy Space Center. Many “experts” recommend taking a break from the parks after 2 days, we ended up doing this because I wanted to go to Kennedy on this specific day as they were launching a rocket shortly before 2 pm. The drive from the Swan/Dolphin to Kennedy was fairly routine, its about 65 miles so plan on a 90 minute drive – It’s a toll road and we ended up paying $4 in tolls (total) each way. Kennedy was abnormally busy for the time of the year because of launch. I made reservations in advance to get their “Up close” tour which is the standard tour plus some extra stops. I’ve been to KSC before but it was a first time for Traci and she really enjoyed it. You get to walk around old rockets, get into a mockup full scale model of both the space shuttle and the international space station. On that particular day we also got to see the launch of a rocket that is going to deliver a probe into a comet in deep space. The center was interesting to visit, Traci enjoyed the learning experience quite a bit. I don’t know if the up close tour offered that much more than the regular tour, however. Check their website for the schedule – the tours shut down during Shuttle launches which are scheduled to resume in May.
We drove back to Disney, making a stop at downtown Disney to buy souvenirs. The best place to get souvenirs for Disney is probably at Downtown Disney – between two stores, World of Disney “largest character store on the planet” and Team Mickey (Logoed Sports equipment and apparel) you can find about everything imaginable in these two neighboring stores. After returning the car to the Dolphin we had a special dinner planned – at Shula’s (One of America’s 10 favorite steak houses according to the American airline magazine). Fortunately our concierge was able to get us in (we didn’t get a reservation until that night) and Traci and I split a 24 oz porterhouse steak which was excellent. Prices were a bit lower then what Daniels Broiler or the Met in Seattle would charge – It was definitely a great meal, although I’d say the flavor was a bit below what I expect at Daniels Broiler (still what I consider to be the best steak anywhere). I enjoyed the Steakhouse immensely, although Traci learned from other reviews that the Disney Yacht Club steakhouse was higher rated.
Thursday – I made a mistake by forgetting our park tickets as we decided to walk to MGM-Studios in the morning. This turned out to be a great mistake for three reasons: First, by having to walk back to our room and then walking back to MGM-Studios we happened to be under the big Mickey Hat just as the time Mickey Mouse showed up to do pictures. Usually there are long lines of people wanting to take pictures with Mickey and other characters (and at this time of the year, there were some lines with many adults but no kids in them!). Anyway, Traci and I got a picture with Mickey which is the holy grail of character stalking! Second, the only reason we went back to the studios (we already saw most of the park) was I wanted to get tickets to see the filming of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.” Usually the studio park has an attraction where a large audience plays a simulated game for prizes, but this week Meredith Viera was in town playing the real game and taping for TV sweeps month (May). Because we were late, we didn’t get tickets for the first show and we ended up being waitlisted for the 3rd show of the day and because of that got to sit in the 2nd row right behind Meredith! Look for us on the show May 26th! I was surprised there is so much lead time between taping and showing on TV. Finally, since we didn’t get into the early show of Millionaire, we decided to go back to Epcot on the bus to get breakfast. We arrived at the Norway exhibit quite late and despite having no “preferred seating” reservations, we got into the Princesses Buffet Breakfast (which I understand is another coup, especially for those with young daughters). While I was most interested in just getting fed, Traci got pictures with all the Disney Princesses. I’m told if you want to attend this breakfast you have to get on the preferred seating list weeks if not months in advance. After getting fed, we went to see some of the Epcot exhibits. In general I was kind of disappointed Epcot is the park that is in need of renovation/additions. I guess the #1 attractions are Test Track (where you are in a car acting like a test dummy as it speeds thru obstacles) and Mission: Space which is a virtual reality ride that simulates a trip to Mars. Both are good and worth seeing (although at least for me, virtual reality rides always make me sick even though roller coasters and other thrill rides never do), but neither are superb. After cruising around Epcot we went back to MGM-Disney studios to watch the taping of Who Wants to be a Millionaire which was quite exciting (I’ve never been to a real game show taping before). Before leaving we went to the Magic of Disney Animation exhibit – it’s about animators and their craft and I thought it was quite funny although most of the young kids didn’t get the humor during the presentation. Before leaving we got pictures with characters from the movie “the Incredibles.” We walked back to the Swan Hotel, rested, and then walked back to Epcot to watch the fireworks show – IllumiNations. Disney again put on a great show – it's best seen from around the USA exhibit area at the top of the lake. You want to find a place with an unobstructed view of the lake – it’s a combination fireworks, a big floating globe, and water fountain sprays (like Las Vegas’s Belligio) set to music. It’s the best show at Epcot, but I’d give a clear advantage to the newer Wishes fireworks show.
If you go at a off season time and plan very carefully (along with having an great amount of energy) you could see the highlights of the 4 parks in 2 days assuming you see the 7pm Fantasmic show and walk immediately to Epcot to see the 9pm Illuminations show. Staying at a Disney resort and taking advantage of the early admission program along with the extra 3 hour after closing program would also help. I don’t recommend it though, its very tiring bouncing around park to park. In retrospect though, I would have planned to do a 7pm Fantasmic show and 9pm IllumiNations show on the same night and see the Spectromagic parade and Wishes firework shows twice.
Friday: Our beautiful 80 degree weather left us and we awoke to a thunderstorm and deluge of rainfall. Fortunately, we really didn’t have very much planned prior to our 3:30 departure by car service to the airport. After packing and checking our luggage with the bellman, we hopped on the Disney Bus to the Magic Kingdom. We rode the monorail again from the Magic Kingdom to the main café at the Grand Floridian, this time to enjoy Mickey Mouse waffles. Despite being a hotel café in Disney’s highest end resort, the pricing was quite reasonable and the food was quite good (as before). In general, Disney does a good job at keeping prices relatively reasonable whether at hotel restaurants or hot dog vendors in the park. You won’t find any bargains, but $2 for a bottle of coke which costs $3.50 at Safeco Field is quite good. Eating at Shula’s was more inexpensive than a similar meal at the Metropolitan Grill in Seattle. Even T-shirts and sweatshirts are cheaper in Disney than at Seahawks stadium. Fortunately the rain became quite light as we finished breakfast.
After enjoying Breakfast at the Grand Floridian, we returned to the Magic Kingdom and went on some more rides – Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan, and Snow White. While certain not thrill rides, it brings up an important thing about Disneyworld – the company is willing to invest quite a bit making a high quality ride with beautiful artwork based on characters well known to everyone – and yet make it gentle enough for even the youngest park visitor to ride. To finish up the day we took the Monorail to the Transit and Transfer station, and got on another monorail taking us to Epcot where we took the Mexico boat tour and saw the films from the China and France exhibits.
Finally, we made the walk from the International gate at Epcot to our hotel and found our car service driver waiting to take us away from the happiest place on earth. Alaska Air's non-stop flight from Orlando flew us in just over 6 hours back to the Pacific Northwest.
A Big Kid's Journey to Disneyworld - part 1
Traci and I recently visited Disneyworld and I thought I’d pass along some observations to help those “older kids” particularily ones without younger kids, plan a trip to this destination. Since Disney guides are all over the web and in bookstores I won’t go into nearly as much detail as I did with my Tokyo travel blog but I’ll make my observations which may help you in the future…
I believe, the most important factor in enjoying Disneyworld is to pick a good time to go – meaning off season. While some of the rides were quite fun, I don’t think anything there is worth standing in line for much more than a half hour. We picked a time (1 ½ weeks after Christmas break ended), hoping the crowds would be smaller (and they were). Orlando attracts all sorts of people escaping the cold during January, but we figured the best way to minimize standing in line at Disneyworld was to focus on a time when kids were least likely to come – right after major holidays. While you're packing for your trip, either make sure you have a suitcase big enough so its half empty or (as I did) bring a light weight large duffel bag and throw it in your suitcase as you will likely find various souvenirs to bring home!
We flew into Orlando, and I booked a car service ahead of time on the Internet (American Luxury Transportation Services) – they charged $85 round trip (with a $5 off coupon on the internet) and had a driver waiting to pick us up at the baggage claim. It takes about 35 minutes or so to get to the Disneyworld complex from the airport. You can save both money and time by booking a ride in advance. I’d also strongly advise against renting a car unless you plan to leave the area a lot – For $50 a day you can rent a car just for the day from various rental agencies who have offices in the hotels (National Car Rental was in the Dolphin). With parking charges, valet tips and the general hassle – its not worth having a car especially when Disneyworld is covered with monorails, busses and ferries (all free!).
We decided to stay at the Swan Hotel in Orlando. We wanted to pick a nice hotel, decided to be closer to the Disney-MGM studios/Epcot complex rather than Magic Kingdom and liked to get Starwood points as the Swan/Dolphin hotel complex is actually operated by Westin hotels (but there is no Westin logo anywhere!) Their signature “Heavenly” beds are in the rooms and the hotel is very nice – they share a nice water complex. The whole area between Epcot and MGM contains the Disney Boardwalk (a collection of shops and restaurants), the Disney Resorts Yacht Club and Beach Club, and of course the Swan/Dolphin complex. It also offers a great place to jog during you vacation. Epcot is at one end of a giant man made lake/canal and the MGM-Disney Studio is at the other. The Dolphin/Swan complex is somewhere in the middle of the 1.4 mile body of water with the Boardwalk area closer to Epcot than the studios. Where ever you stay, make it a point to study the transportation routes to and from your hotel and figure out how far it is to walk – we figured out fairly late in our trip that the easiest and fastest way between our hotel and Epcot and MGM was to walk. We were out jogging one night and played “beat the boat” – the ferry moves very slow! The next day we walked and found out with the two intermediate stops made by the ferry, we could easily walk and beat the ferry.
Upon arriving at the Swan, we watched the disappointing last half of the Seahawks playoff loss to St. Louis, then ventured to Disney’s “Downtown” shopping/restaurant area – its easy from the Swan or Dolphin to hop on one of several Disney busses which depart every 15 minutes or so to different destinations such as the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom, Disney-MGM studios, the water parks and downtown Disney. We got onto the bus and went to Disney Downtown to eat. We ended up at one of Wolfgang Puck’s ubiquitous cafes and enjoyed a good dinner. After finishing dinner, I insisted on eating dessert at one of my all time favorite ice cream shops, Ghiradelli, where I enjoyed one of their classic hot fudge sundaes.
After satisfying our appetites, we walked to Disney’s Pleasure Island (also part of the downtown complex), bought $16 admission tickets and enjoyed the entertainment – first we stopped at the comedy club where several stand up comics work with the audience to put on a funny show. Next we checked out the nightclub 8 Trax and found the dance floor full of people, some dressed in 70s get ups enjoying music like Prince’s 1999. After leaving 8 Trax we went to the BET Soundstage club to see what was going on in hip-hop land. Nobody was on the large dance floor, and they had several TVs tuned to the second NFL playoff game with a handful of people in the club (Despite being Saturday night at 10 pm, it was off season…). We then stopped in on Disney’s Adventurer’s Club and found it quite busy although I’m not exactly sure what the attraction was all about. It was kind of a cigar bar with an 1900s British Explorer theme. Not finding it interesting, our last stop was at Mannequins Dance Palace where I was amazed at the unbelievable lighting/laser/sound system – it was truly impressive. Unfortunately only one person was dancing alone, and just a handful of people were admiring the visual display accompanying the techno-pop music. The Pleasure Island Jazz company was closed during this slow period so we just hopped on a Disney Bus and returned to the Swan.
On Sunday, Disney held their annual marathon and half marathons - I tried to enter but found it sold out almost 6 months in advance - if you want to run, enter early! Afterwards we saw people walking around with Mickey Mouse shaped finisher medals around their necks.
We decided to start the day by trying out one of Disney’s Waterparks, Blizzard Beach (again by taking the Disney bus from the Swan Hotel). Actually, the other Waterpark, Typhoon Lagoon was closed (they usually keep only 1 water park open during slow periods). It was a warm, sunny day and I wanted to avoid the 4 major themeparks during weekends to minimize lines. Blizzard beach was a fun park, I rode all of the rides except one – the 55 foot nearly straight down water slide from hell. Supposedly you get to 55 miles an hour all on the seat of your bathing trunks. I enjoyed several of the innertube rides the best – it is so smooth to glide along inside the tracks sitting on an inner tube. The white water rafting ride was also fun. I did ride the little brother to the 55 foot monster slide (nearly as tall but 2 landings interrupt the straight drop). All I can say is it’s quite thrilling but wear goggles if you wear contacts or you don’t want water splashing in your face as you rapidly slide to earth. For the water parks, rent a locker (you can also rent towels if you want) and leave everything in the locker – take only the key and “water shoes” or go barefoot. The whole park is basically a swimming pool, and you can walk barefoot everywhere – although the concrete gets really hot in the summer. The second piece of advice is if you want to use one of Disney’s deck loungers/chairs, get there first thing and call dibs on it because even though our park was probably only 25% of capacity – very few chairs/loungers were left and none were to be had on the artificial beach.
After leaving Blizzard beach, we returned to the Swan and walked to the Boardwalk complex which is right next to the Swan/Dolphin. We ate at a nice restaurant called Spoodles followed by desert at the Dolphin hotel ice cream shop before retiring for the evening.
Monday – our first adventure in a theme park. First, a few observations about Disneyworld parks: 1) Know what rides you want to go on before arriving at the park. I’m not going to list all the rides but I’ll suggest two web sites that rate the rides: http://www.mbsc.com/best-of-disney.htm and http://www.guide2wdw.com/. Even if the park was completely empty, there are rides/attractions that you would want to avoid (lousy ride, make you sick, gets you soaking wet). 2) If your staying at a Disney resort (or the Swan/Dolphin) you enter a park an hour early and stay 3 hours after closing by taking advantage of Disney’s policy – they rotate it so only one park is open early and one is open late and it changes daily. Also, only certain rides are available (usually the most crowded ones). 3) Especially if you are going at a busy time, you must understand the fast pass system – basically it lets you make an advance reservation on one ride during a set time. Ideally you use it to wait for one ride and get on two. This is especially handy on close together very popular rides such as Splash Mountain / Big Thunder Mountain at the Magic Kingdom, and Tower of Terror / Rock ‘n Roller coaster at MGM-Disney studios. 4) Its nice to get park hopper passes so you can go in and out of parks at will – on some days we went in and out of 5 parks in a single day. Certain big attractions like the parades and firework shows require you to leave and come back so that you can ride all the attractions you want to.
Anyway, we did ride some of the “oldies but goodies” Disney rides such as the Haunted Mansion, Jungle Cruise, Pirates of the Carribean. We also left the park mid-day to tour a very nice Disney resort, the Grand Floridian and enjoy lunch there. You can jump on the Disney monorail and get to several hotels in a few minutes. I thought the best attractions at the Magic Kingdom are: 1) The Wishes Firework show which occurs each night at closing – it was simply the best choreographed, best organized and most beautiful fireworks show I’ve ever seen. It’s is something you must not miss! You can see the fireworks from most of the park, you just need to make sure you are in front of the Disney Castle as that’s where they launch the fireworks. We watched it from the bridge to Tomorrowland and had a great view. 2) The Spectromagic parade – Even though we had very light crowds, the parade route was COMPLETELY filled up an hour before parade time. This parade, which replaced the old Electric Light Parade, was amazing -- filled with lighted multi-color floats staffed by Disney characters. 3) As far as the best rides at the Magic Kingdom, its all about the Mountains (Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain and Space Mountain). I thought that Space Mountain is getting quite dated, its become almost a C grade roller coaster in the dark. Big Thunder Mountain is a mild to moderate roller coaster with beautiful views and Splash Mountain is a nice log ride with colorful characters along the way. You don’t go to the Magic Kingdom for the world’s best thrill rides, but it still has its charm. After viewing the amazing Wishes fireworks show we returned to our hotel and walked down the Boardwalk to the ESPN club to enjoy a nice dinner of regular bar and grill type food.
Continued
I believe, the most important factor in enjoying Disneyworld is to pick a good time to go – meaning off season. While some of the rides were quite fun, I don’t think anything there is worth standing in line for much more than a half hour. We picked a time (1 ½ weeks after Christmas break ended), hoping the crowds would be smaller (and they were). Orlando attracts all sorts of people escaping the cold during January, but we figured the best way to minimize standing in line at Disneyworld was to focus on a time when kids were least likely to come – right after major holidays. While you're packing for your trip, either make sure you have a suitcase big enough so its half empty or (as I did) bring a light weight large duffel bag and throw it in your suitcase as you will likely find various souvenirs to bring home!
We flew into Orlando, and I booked a car service ahead of time on the Internet (American Luxury Transportation Services) – they charged $85 round trip (with a $5 off coupon on the internet) and had a driver waiting to pick us up at the baggage claim. It takes about 35 minutes or so to get to the Disneyworld complex from the airport. You can save both money and time by booking a ride in advance. I’d also strongly advise against renting a car unless you plan to leave the area a lot – For $50 a day you can rent a car just for the day from various rental agencies who have offices in the hotels (National Car Rental was in the Dolphin). With parking charges, valet tips and the general hassle – its not worth having a car especially when Disneyworld is covered with monorails, busses and ferries (all free!).
We decided to stay at the Swan Hotel in Orlando. We wanted to pick a nice hotel, decided to be closer to the Disney-MGM studios/Epcot complex rather than Magic Kingdom and liked to get Starwood points as the Swan/Dolphin hotel complex is actually operated by Westin hotels (but there is no Westin logo anywhere!) Their signature “Heavenly” beds are in the rooms and the hotel is very nice – they share a nice water complex. The whole area between Epcot and MGM contains the Disney Boardwalk (a collection of shops and restaurants), the Disney Resorts Yacht Club and Beach Club, and of course the Swan/Dolphin complex. It also offers a great place to jog during you vacation. Epcot is at one end of a giant man made lake/canal and the MGM-Disney Studio is at the other. The Dolphin/Swan complex is somewhere in the middle of the 1.4 mile body of water with the Boardwalk area closer to Epcot than the studios. Where ever you stay, make it a point to study the transportation routes to and from your hotel and figure out how far it is to walk – we figured out fairly late in our trip that the easiest and fastest way between our hotel and Epcot and MGM was to walk. We were out jogging one night and played “beat the boat” – the ferry moves very slow! The next day we walked and found out with the two intermediate stops made by the ferry, we could easily walk and beat the ferry.
Upon arriving at the Swan, we watched the disappointing last half of the Seahawks playoff loss to St. Louis, then ventured to Disney’s “Downtown” shopping/restaurant area – its easy from the Swan or Dolphin to hop on one of several Disney busses which depart every 15 minutes or so to different destinations such as the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom, Disney-MGM studios, the water parks and downtown Disney. We got onto the bus and went to Disney Downtown to eat. We ended up at one of Wolfgang Puck’s ubiquitous cafes and enjoyed a good dinner. After finishing dinner, I insisted on eating dessert at one of my all time favorite ice cream shops, Ghiradelli, where I enjoyed one of their classic hot fudge sundaes.
After satisfying our appetites, we walked to Disney’s Pleasure Island (also part of the downtown complex), bought $16 admission tickets and enjoyed the entertainment – first we stopped at the comedy club where several stand up comics work with the audience to put on a funny show. Next we checked out the nightclub 8 Trax and found the dance floor full of people, some dressed in 70s get ups enjoying music like Prince’s 1999. After leaving 8 Trax we went to the BET Soundstage club to see what was going on in hip-hop land. Nobody was on the large dance floor, and they had several TVs tuned to the second NFL playoff game with a handful of people in the club (Despite being Saturday night at 10 pm, it was off season…). We then stopped in on Disney’s Adventurer’s Club and found it quite busy although I’m not exactly sure what the attraction was all about. It was kind of a cigar bar with an 1900s British Explorer theme. Not finding it interesting, our last stop was at Mannequins Dance Palace where I was amazed at the unbelievable lighting/laser/sound system – it was truly impressive. Unfortunately only one person was dancing alone, and just a handful of people were admiring the visual display accompanying the techno-pop music. The Pleasure Island Jazz company was closed during this slow period so we just hopped on a Disney Bus and returned to the Swan.
On Sunday, Disney held their annual marathon and half marathons - I tried to enter but found it sold out almost 6 months in advance - if you want to run, enter early! Afterwards we saw people walking around with Mickey Mouse shaped finisher medals around their necks.
We decided to start the day by trying out one of Disney’s Waterparks, Blizzard Beach (again by taking the Disney bus from the Swan Hotel). Actually, the other Waterpark, Typhoon Lagoon was closed (they usually keep only 1 water park open during slow periods). It was a warm, sunny day and I wanted to avoid the 4 major themeparks during weekends to minimize lines. Blizzard beach was a fun park, I rode all of the rides except one – the 55 foot nearly straight down water slide from hell. Supposedly you get to 55 miles an hour all on the seat of your bathing trunks. I enjoyed several of the innertube rides the best – it is so smooth to glide along inside the tracks sitting on an inner tube. The white water rafting ride was also fun. I did ride the little brother to the 55 foot monster slide (nearly as tall but 2 landings interrupt the straight drop). All I can say is it’s quite thrilling but wear goggles if you wear contacts or you don’t want water splashing in your face as you rapidly slide to earth. For the water parks, rent a locker (you can also rent towels if you want) and leave everything in the locker – take only the key and “water shoes” or go barefoot. The whole park is basically a swimming pool, and you can walk barefoot everywhere – although the concrete gets really hot in the summer. The second piece of advice is if you want to use one of Disney’s deck loungers/chairs, get there first thing and call dibs on it because even though our park was probably only 25% of capacity – very few chairs/loungers were left and none were to be had on the artificial beach.
After leaving Blizzard beach, we returned to the Swan and walked to the Boardwalk complex which is right next to the Swan/Dolphin. We ate at a nice restaurant called Spoodles followed by desert at the Dolphin hotel ice cream shop before retiring for the evening.
Monday – our first adventure in a theme park. First, a few observations about Disneyworld parks: 1) Know what rides you want to go on before arriving at the park. I’m not going to list all the rides but I’ll suggest two web sites that rate the rides: http://www.mbsc.com/best-of-disney.htm and http://www.guide2wdw.com/. Even if the park was completely empty, there are rides/attractions that you would want to avoid (lousy ride, make you sick, gets you soaking wet). 2) If your staying at a Disney resort (or the Swan/Dolphin) you enter a park an hour early and stay 3 hours after closing by taking advantage of Disney’s policy – they rotate it so only one park is open early and one is open late and it changes daily. Also, only certain rides are available (usually the most crowded ones). 3) Especially if you are going at a busy time, you must understand the fast pass system – basically it lets you make an advance reservation on one ride during a set time. Ideally you use it to wait for one ride and get on two. This is especially handy on close together very popular rides such as Splash Mountain / Big Thunder Mountain at the Magic Kingdom, and Tower of Terror / Rock ‘n Roller coaster at MGM-Disney studios. 4) Its nice to get park hopper passes so you can go in and out of parks at will – on some days we went in and out of 5 parks in a single day. Certain big attractions like the parades and firework shows require you to leave and come back so that you can ride all the attractions you want to.
Anyway, we did ride some of the “oldies but goodies” Disney rides such as the Haunted Mansion, Jungle Cruise, Pirates of the Carribean. We also left the park mid-day to tour a very nice Disney resort, the Grand Floridian and enjoy lunch there. You can jump on the Disney monorail and get to several hotels in a few minutes. I thought the best attractions at the Magic Kingdom are: 1) The Wishes Firework show which occurs each night at closing – it was simply the best choreographed, best organized and most beautiful fireworks show I’ve ever seen. It’s is something you must not miss! You can see the fireworks from most of the park, you just need to make sure you are in front of the Disney Castle as that’s where they launch the fireworks. We watched it from the bridge to Tomorrowland and had a great view. 2) The Spectromagic parade – Even though we had very light crowds, the parade route was COMPLETELY filled up an hour before parade time. This parade, which replaced the old Electric Light Parade, was amazing -- filled with lighted multi-color floats staffed by Disney characters. 3) As far as the best rides at the Magic Kingdom, its all about the Mountains (Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain and Space Mountain). I thought that Space Mountain is getting quite dated, its become almost a C grade roller coaster in the dark. Big Thunder Mountain is a mild to moderate roller coaster with beautiful views and Splash Mountain is a nice log ride with colorful characters along the way. You don’t go to the Magic Kingdom for the world’s best thrill rides, but it still has its charm. After viewing the amazing Wishes fireworks show we returned to our hotel and walked down the Boardwalk to the ESPN club to enjoy a nice dinner of regular bar and grill type food.
Continued
Adventures in Tokyo part 4 (conclusion)
Day 6 – Friday – Date with Mickey.
The day starts off bad as its raining fairly hard. We enjoy a hearty breakfast and I study the internet weather forecasts – accuweather.com says it’s going to rain all day but the Japanese internet weather services tend to be a little more optimistic. Since we postponed our Disney adventure on Thursday due to rain (it ended up not raining after the early morning), we decide to take a chance and go. We ride the JR train to the main Tokyo station and follow all the kids who must be cutting school (or do Japanese kids get a Spring Break?) to the JR train which goes to Disney. It’s actually a rather short trip to Disneyland once you get to the Tokyo station ~ 10 minutes. We get off the train and walk to the ticket line – despite it being 10 o’clock (the park opens at 8AM) there are lines in front of each of the ticket windows (maybe 14 different lines). We stand in a barely moving line for about an hour! Finally we get our tickets and enter the park. We noted that Disneyland is sold out of the multiday passports for the coming weekend although Disneysea does have tickets available. We looked at the Disneysea map and decided most of those attractions were for younger kids so we went to Disneyland. We got in and rode on Pirates of the Carribean after a 20 minute wait – not so bad. But then we went over to the big Thunder mountain rollercoaster and saw a long line just to get an advance ticket (fastpass) to ride it! You would have to wait 20-30 minutes just to get a timed pass to get on the ride 4 hours later! Alternatively you could wait in the standby line for amere 120 minutes and get on. Needless to say we left to see what kind of line there was at Space Mountain. Imagine the Anaheim Disneyland in the middle of Christmas break and that is Tokyo Disneyland on a Friday. The lines were so long especially for the headline attractions. We ended up going to one 3-D show and seeing It’s a Small World, and the Pirates (about 25-30 minutewaits for each). So don’t go to Tokyo Disneyland if you want to go on the rides. We then had lunch at the Tomorrowland Pizza establishment – I had 2 slices of Sausage/Mushrooms and Traci had some sort of specialty pizza value meal – I actually was quite happy with our $20 (total) meal and because I needed a pizza fix I was happy we made it to Disney despite the long lines. Before leaving we went shopping – I was quite surprised that Tokyo Disneyland doesn’t sell more Tokyo branded merchandise – There seems to be a relatively large percentage of foreign visitors to the park. It, however, was unusual to find Disney souvenir shirts or jackets with Tokyo on them. I purchased some Tokyo Disney jackets for my nephews but couldn’t even find a T-shirt or Sweatshirt for myself. As we shopped more and more thru Tokyo is was also very difficult to find Tokyo souvenir items. There are so many American T-shirts – its easier to find an Allen Iverson jersey than it is to find any Tokyo souvenir T-shirts or even aT-shirt of a Japanese Team. Later and later in the trip I became more motivated to look for T-shirts with Japanese ties and never found any. At the shops you can find T-shirts with all sorts of offensive English slogans, even Swastikas! –Point of information, apparently, the Swastika symbol was co-opted by Hitler from Japan – You see all sorts of Swastikas on the samurai armor/uniforms inHiroshima and Osaka castles. One of the guides said they were an asian symbol of good luck. After arriving home from Disney we decided to get some ice cream at a Tokyo Haagen Dazs. Although there is a large Haagen Dazs café at Shibuya, wearen’t sure we would be able to find it so we decide to go for the sure thing – a small Haagen Dazs in the Ikebukuro station on the JR line. Once we get there we both order Strawberry sundaes for about $6 each – they give you very small scoops of ice cream but they are very good. Appetites satisfied, we return home.
Day 7 Saturday – We start the day in by going to Shinjuku, to see the best (and free!) view of Tokyo from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Towers. It’s a beautiful clear day and after the JR train drops us off at Shinjuku we head forthe tall twin towers that house Tokyo’s government. On the way I found a rarityin Japan – Regular pepsi in a vending machine. I try the Pepsi and see why it is rare – it tastes like some generic cola – dilute and not very sweet. Stick with Coke – it’s not as good as the US but its OK. Vending machines dominate Japan –they are found in the middle of alleys, on corners and in places we usuallyexpect to see them in the US (train stations). Cigarettes are sold thru vending machines (Marlboros – 300 yen per pack!) I guess kids are on the honor system –supposedly you have to be 20 to buy cigarettes (same for alcohol). We arrive atthe twin towers - there are several tour groups in line, but we don’t have to wait very long before getting on the elevator up. The view is spectacular – weare on 45th floor and can get a feel for how big Tokyo really is by the 360 viewing angle showing city as far as the eye can see. Mount Fuji is visible inthe background. Looking at the city, you see a lot of helicopter pads on the top of many buildings. Many rooftops also have patios some with Astroturf for recreation. Once in a while you see a couple of tennis courts – Tennis court time is very hard to come by, it’s like riding Space Mountain in Disneyland – an all day event. We take a lot of things for granted in the US. I can’t imagine what its like to get a tee time on a real golf course. After taking advantage ofthe photo op, we descend downward and head for Shinjuku National Garden. The park is gated like a subway station and you have to pay 200 yen for a ticket toget in. Like central park in New York it’s an oasis in a vast urban sea. Lots of space, something I am beginning to long for in this claustrophobic society. The Cherry Blossoms (Sakura) are coming in season and there are literally hundreds of people some with some very serious looking photographic equipment taking pictures. Some travel in packs, with a leader pointing to good picture opportunities. Many others bring sketch books and make Sakura portraits. Despite the expansive space there are just so many people roaming around, I doubt you could find enough space to say play Frisbee or just throw a baseball around. Some families are camped out on the grass and eat KFC chicken. We don’t see any dogs, I assume pets aren’t allowed thru the gates. The park is open every day ofthe week during Cherry Blossom season – like most tourist and fun things, the park is closed on Mondays. You have to be careful sightseeing on Monday (or Tuesday if Monday is a national holiday) as many things are closed – even the Government observation floor (but I presume the government isn’t shut down for 3 day weekends every week!). After leaving the park we ride the JR train for a couple of stops to Harajuku, a neighborhood when a lot of the young people hang out (kind of like Seattle’s Capitol Hill). There are large department stores, some exclusive boutiques as well as whole pedestrian street malls lined withshops selling second hand clothing, all sorts of odds and ends and various foods. While there are many colorful hairstyles and even more varied clothing styles, it’s a pretty mellow place. We spot a Shakey’s Pizza (a chain that is now defunct in the Seattle area). I hear it’s quite the lunch spot – all you can eat pizza buffet for 750 yen! I continue my unsuccessful quest to look for Tokyo souvenir T-shirts, now I’m broadening my search to include T shirts of Japanese teams – At stores like Adidas though, you find NBA stars, British soccer stars jerseys, even European Rugby team jerseys but no Japanese ones. Disappointed, we take the short train ride to Shibuya where we marvel at the large number of Saturday shoppers. We cross the street to a huge two story Starbucks overlooking the train station where Traci buys a green tea (macha) frappuccino which cost about $3.75 and takes a picture to documenting her international patronage of Starbucks. After wandering around thru several stores and Traci posing for a picture in front of the world famous Shibuya Dog statue, we return back to Ebisu and have a late lunch in a sandwich shop in the shopping complex adjacent to our train station – Traci has a chicken sandwich while I have a smoked salmon sandwich, both cost about $10. Since they want 550 yen for a coke, I pass on that. Before returning to the Westin, we stop at the Sapporo beer museum – all the exhibits and videos are in Japanese so they are of no value. Traci tries some of the free beer and I finally get a T-shirt – a Sapporo beer shirt for$12. I decide to try some outdoor running so I get a jogging map from the Westin Concierge and run around the Ebisu neighborhood. I notice that there are an inordinate amount of very expensive cars on the streets and expressways – I’m told that cars cost so much to buy and operate in Japan, those who can afford one buy really expensive ones. I don’t see any Lexuses or Infinitis but I do see Ferraris, Porsches, Rolls Royces and a few of those Mercedes G500 tanks. The sidewalks are very narrow and it is late afternoon so I spend much of my time dodging people. The population density is really getting to me this late in the trip. The other thing you have to keep in mind is that Japanese drivers don’t stop at crosswalks so you have to make sure the street is clear before you cross! After my run we enjoy the lounge’s free drinks and get caught up on our e-mail. We stop at the Ebisu Mitsukoshi department store basement and picked up some take out rice balls for dinner for $1.50 each. – Traci found out earlier in the day that we didn’t have to go to the food areas in Shibuya or Shinjuku –most of the take out Japanese food we had been buying is available right in Yebisu garden place. Since all I have to show for our great adventure is one Sapporo beer T-shirt, I “sell-out” and we take the short subway ride to Roppongi where I buy a souvenir T-shirt and sweat shirt from that ultimate Japanese cultural icon – the Hard Rook Café Tokyo. On the way back we stop off at McDonald’s in Ebisu for the first time to buy vanilla ice cream cones. Soft ice cream is quite popular in Tokyo. We still haven’t tried hamburgers in Japan but I’m very curious as the prices are so low – The equivalent of 80 cents US for a regular hamburger to about $2.50 for a Big Mac (and this is at a very high rent shopping mall in the middle of a tourist destination!)
Day 8 – Sunday – Take me out to the ball game.
Unfortunately neither the Yankees nor the Devil Rays chose to “Buy American” and stay at the Westin. Thanks to my cousin Scott, we had tickets arranged to see the Devil Rays play the Hanshin Tigers (from Osaka) – Hanshin thinks of themselves vs the Yomuri Giants much like the Boston Red Sox think they are to the Yankees. We take our beloved JR Yamanote train to Yoyogi, and transfer to the Soba JR train which takes us tothe Suidobashi station, right next to the Tokyo Dome. Before meeting Scott in front of Japan’s “Mister Donuts” I do some souvenir shopping and get a souvenir program as well as a souvenir T-shirt of the MLB opening series. Unfortunately both of those were priced like you’d expect at Safeco field - $35 for both. We then meet Scott and his girlfriend Kaori (hope I’m spelling that right). We enter the Toyko dome which wasn’t at capacity. The place reminds me of the Kingdome except it has a white roof (not concrete) and the ceiling doesn’t look as high. The chairs also were narrower. It was refreshing in that all the PA announcements (which batter, change of pitchers etc…) were done in English. The crowd in the outfield would do group chants and sing to support their team. Some fans dressed up in tiger costumes – it was all very interesting. They were very polite to the Devil Rays, they would clap after Devil Ray home runs. We got to see our old friend Hideki Irabu (remember the Fat Toad of the Yankees?) pitch – the Tigers had a 7-2 lead but blew it in the late innings and the game actually ended up tied 7-7 (No extra innings as the dome had to be cleaned and readied for the Yankees – Giants exhibition that evening). We did a 7th inning stretch with the singing of "take me out to the ball game" but most of the natives didn’t know what we were doing. The other thing different about Japanese baseball is the beer girls – cute women wearing costumes like cheerleaders would race around with a tank of beer strapped to their bank and serve beer to the crowd – the beer prices were about the same as American ball parks. After seeing a good game, we got back on the JR Soba train and rode it farther east until Ueno. Scott wanted to show us Ueno park – a free park with cherry blossoms. We got to the park and saw absolutely mind boggling numbers of people – Imagine Safeco field after the game when everybody is trying to leave a sold out stadium – and trying to weave in the middle of the crowd. There were so many people!!! Somepeople were taking pictures of the cherry blossoms, others were standing in line to use the bathrooms. Large groups of people were sitting around drinking beer and telling tales. Scott told me that it’s common on weekdays for companies to have picnics at the park and they would send out "go-fors" first think in the morning to stand around and reserve space for the afternoon festivities. There aren’t open liquor laws and very little social taboo against public drunkenness. After trying to move in the overwhelming crowd, we went to a restaurant called Who’s Food in Ueno – a scrumptious dinner including smoked duck (supposedly cooked, but I think just enough so the duck would stop quacking), two pasta dishes, a Thai shrimp soup (Tom Yum Gai), fried rice and some other entrees and three beers was only 7800 yen. What a deal!!! After dinner, we went to the main shopping alley in Ueno where Scott knew of a store called the Japan store which actually did sell souvenirs. I managed to get two T-shirts for a rather expensive 1800 Yen ($18) each, even more expensive when we passed a vendor camped out in the street selling the exact same shirts for $8 each…..That is Japan for you, more shopping than you could ever believe there could be, but never selling the item you are really looking for. After saying goodbye to Scott and Kaori, we returned on the JR circle train to Ebisu and enjoyed some very good Gelato at the Mitsokishi department store.
Day 9 – Bon Voyage! We started the day by getting up at 4:45 AM to see theTsukiji Fish Market – we decided to do it the last day to begin getting used to Pacific Time again (and waited for the JR passes to expire since they aren’t any good on this subway.) We took the subway from Ebisu past Roppongi and Ginza to the Tsukiji subway stop. A short 5 minute walk and we are at the famous market. As we walked to the market we saw people enjoying a great breakfast – Beer and cigarettes, but people in this business probably started so early that 5AM was lunch time. Everywhere you looked you saw workers drive around forklift like devices, successfully avoiding hitting me. There were areas where huge 100 pound fish were lying on the floor and an auctioneer trying to sell the fish to the assembled crowd. There are other areas where the strangest sea animals were lying in trays to be sold to whoever came by. Some were gutting fish, otherswere boiling lobsters. In all, a fascinating look at where dinner comes from. After leaving Tsukiji we went back to Ebisu. I went for a final run around our hotel area and then we enjoyed a full breakfast. We took the 12:30 airport bus from the Westin to terminal 1 and had another quite nice flight home on the17:10 – it took 8 ½ hours. Traci was able to sleep some on the flight, I just watched videos. United again serviced some good food – Teriyaki chicken or baron of Beef. They also served Egg McMuffins look-alikes for breakfast the next morning before we arrived at 8:40 AM Seattle Time. First thing we did was make reservations for Daniel’s Broiler (Seattle’s beststeaks) for that evening…..I also went for a run on a beautiful Seattle day 78 degrees and sunny!– Having all the open space in Myrtle Edwards park looking at the Cascade Mountains and Puget sound and not constantly bumping into people. Tokyo is the most interesting place I’ve visited but no place can compare to the Seattle waterfront on a sunny day!
Ray’s Favorite things to see in Japan
1. The Shinkansen – anywhere!
2. Sony Building in Ginza
3. Shinjuki Goen Park
4. Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima
5. Tsukiji Fish Market
Traci’s Favorite things to see in Japan
1. The Shinkansens
2. View from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building
3. Downtown Osaka (Umeda) including Hep Five Shopping Mall/Ferris Wheel
4. Ueno Park
5. Osaka Castle
6. Food bazaars in department store basements
The day starts off bad as its raining fairly hard. We enjoy a hearty breakfast and I study the internet weather forecasts – accuweather.com says it’s going to rain all day but the Japanese internet weather services tend to be a little more optimistic. Since we postponed our Disney adventure on Thursday due to rain (it ended up not raining after the early morning), we decide to take a chance and go. We ride the JR train to the main Tokyo station and follow all the kids who must be cutting school (or do Japanese kids get a Spring Break?) to the JR train which goes to Disney. It’s actually a rather short trip to Disneyland once you get to the Tokyo station ~ 10 minutes. We get off the train and walk to the ticket line – despite it being 10 o’clock (the park opens at 8AM) there are lines in front of each of the ticket windows (maybe 14 different lines). We stand in a barely moving line for about an hour! Finally we get our tickets and enter the park. We noted that Disneyland is sold out of the multiday passports for the coming weekend although Disneysea does have tickets available. We looked at the Disneysea map and decided most of those attractions were for younger kids so we went to Disneyland. We got in and rode on Pirates of the Carribean after a 20 minute wait – not so bad. But then we went over to the big Thunder mountain rollercoaster and saw a long line just to get an advance ticket (fastpass) to ride it! You would have to wait 20-30 minutes just to get a timed pass to get on the ride 4 hours later! Alternatively you could wait in the standby line for amere 120 minutes and get on. Needless to say we left to see what kind of line there was at Space Mountain. Imagine the Anaheim Disneyland in the middle of Christmas break and that is Tokyo Disneyland on a Friday. The lines were so long especially for the headline attractions. We ended up going to one 3-D show and seeing It’s a Small World, and the Pirates (about 25-30 minutewaits for each). So don’t go to Tokyo Disneyland if you want to go on the rides. We then had lunch at the Tomorrowland Pizza establishment – I had 2 slices of Sausage/Mushrooms and Traci had some sort of specialty pizza value meal – I actually was quite happy with our $20 (total) meal and because I needed a pizza fix I was happy we made it to Disney despite the long lines. Before leaving we went shopping – I was quite surprised that Tokyo Disneyland doesn’t sell more Tokyo branded merchandise – There seems to be a relatively large percentage of foreign visitors to the park. It, however, was unusual to find Disney souvenir shirts or jackets with Tokyo on them. I purchased some Tokyo Disney jackets for my nephews but couldn’t even find a T-shirt or Sweatshirt for myself. As we shopped more and more thru Tokyo is was also very difficult to find Tokyo souvenir items. There are so many American T-shirts – its easier to find an Allen Iverson jersey than it is to find any Tokyo souvenir T-shirts or even aT-shirt of a Japanese Team. Later and later in the trip I became more motivated to look for T-shirts with Japanese ties and never found any. At the shops you can find T-shirts with all sorts of offensive English slogans, even Swastikas! –Point of information, apparently, the Swastika symbol was co-opted by Hitler from Japan – You see all sorts of Swastikas on the samurai armor/uniforms inHiroshima and Osaka castles. One of the guides said they were an asian symbol of good luck. After arriving home from Disney we decided to get some ice cream at a Tokyo Haagen Dazs. Although there is a large Haagen Dazs café at Shibuya, wearen’t sure we would be able to find it so we decide to go for the sure thing – a small Haagen Dazs in the Ikebukuro station on the JR line. Once we get there we both order Strawberry sundaes for about $6 each – they give you very small scoops of ice cream but they are very good. Appetites satisfied, we return home.
Day 7 Saturday – We start the day in by going to Shinjuku, to see the best (and free!) view of Tokyo from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Towers. It’s a beautiful clear day and after the JR train drops us off at Shinjuku we head forthe tall twin towers that house Tokyo’s government. On the way I found a rarityin Japan – Regular pepsi in a vending machine. I try the Pepsi and see why it is rare – it tastes like some generic cola – dilute and not very sweet. Stick with Coke – it’s not as good as the US but its OK. Vending machines dominate Japan –they are found in the middle of alleys, on corners and in places we usuallyexpect to see them in the US (train stations). Cigarettes are sold thru vending machines (Marlboros – 300 yen per pack!) I guess kids are on the honor system –supposedly you have to be 20 to buy cigarettes (same for alcohol). We arrive atthe twin towers - there are several tour groups in line, but we don’t have to wait very long before getting on the elevator up. The view is spectacular – weare on 45th floor and can get a feel for how big Tokyo really is by the 360 viewing angle showing city as far as the eye can see. Mount Fuji is visible inthe background. Looking at the city, you see a lot of helicopter pads on the top of many buildings. Many rooftops also have patios some with Astroturf for recreation. Once in a while you see a couple of tennis courts – Tennis court time is very hard to come by, it’s like riding Space Mountain in Disneyland – an all day event. We take a lot of things for granted in the US. I can’t imagine what its like to get a tee time on a real golf course. After taking advantage ofthe photo op, we descend downward and head for Shinjuku National Garden. The park is gated like a subway station and you have to pay 200 yen for a ticket toget in. Like central park in New York it’s an oasis in a vast urban sea. Lots of space, something I am beginning to long for in this claustrophobic society. The Cherry Blossoms (Sakura) are coming in season and there are literally hundreds of people some with some very serious looking photographic equipment taking pictures. Some travel in packs, with a leader pointing to good picture opportunities. Many others bring sketch books and make Sakura portraits. Despite the expansive space there are just so many people roaming around, I doubt you could find enough space to say play Frisbee or just throw a baseball around. Some families are camped out on the grass and eat KFC chicken. We don’t see any dogs, I assume pets aren’t allowed thru the gates. The park is open every day ofthe week during Cherry Blossom season – like most tourist and fun things, the park is closed on Mondays. You have to be careful sightseeing on Monday (or Tuesday if Monday is a national holiday) as many things are closed – even the Government observation floor (but I presume the government isn’t shut down for 3 day weekends every week!). After leaving the park we ride the JR train for a couple of stops to Harajuku, a neighborhood when a lot of the young people hang out (kind of like Seattle’s Capitol Hill). There are large department stores, some exclusive boutiques as well as whole pedestrian street malls lined withshops selling second hand clothing, all sorts of odds and ends and various foods. While there are many colorful hairstyles and even more varied clothing styles, it’s a pretty mellow place. We spot a Shakey’s Pizza (a chain that is now defunct in the Seattle area). I hear it’s quite the lunch spot – all you can eat pizza buffet for 750 yen! I continue my unsuccessful quest to look for Tokyo souvenir T-shirts, now I’m broadening my search to include T shirts of Japanese teams – At stores like Adidas though, you find NBA stars, British soccer stars jerseys, even European Rugby team jerseys but no Japanese ones. Disappointed, we take the short train ride to Shibuya where we marvel at the large number of Saturday shoppers. We cross the street to a huge two story Starbucks overlooking the train station where Traci buys a green tea (macha) frappuccino which cost about $3.75 and takes a picture to documenting her international patronage of Starbucks. After wandering around thru several stores and Traci posing for a picture in front of the world famous Shibuya Dog statue, we return back to Ebisu and have a late lunch in a sandwich shop in the shopping complex adjacent to our train station – Traci has a chicken sandwich while I have a smoked salmon sandwich, both cost about $10. Since they want 550 yen for a coke, I pass on that. Before returning to the Westin, we stop at the Sapporo beer museum – all the exhibits and videos are in Japanese so they are of no value. Traci tries some of the free beer and I finally get a T-shirt – a Sapporo beer shirt for$12. I decide to try some outdoor running so I get a jogging map from the Westin Concierge and run around the Ebisu neighborhood. I notice that there are an inordinate amount of very expensive cars on the streets and expressways – I’m told that cars cost so much to buy and operate in Japan, those who can afford one buy really expensive ones. I don’t see any Lexuses or Infinitis but I do see Ferraris, Porsches, Rolls Royces and a few of those Mercedes G500 tanks. The sidewalks are very narrow and it is late afternoon so I spend much of my time dodging people. The population density is really getting to me this late in the trip. The other thing you have to keep in mind is that Japanese drivers don’t stop at crosswalks so you have to make sure the street is clear before you cross! After my run we enjoy the lounge’s free drinks and get caught up on our e-mail. We stop at the Ebisu Mitsukoshi department store basement and picked up some take out rice balls for dinner for $1.50 each. – Traci found out earlier in the day that we didn’t have to go to the food areas in Shibuya or Shinjuku –most of the take out Japanese food we had been buying is available right in Yebisu garden place. Since all I have to show for our great adventure is one Sapporo beer T-shirt, I “sell-out” and we take the short subway ride to Roppongi where I buy a souvenir T-shirt and sweat shirt from that ultimate Japanese cultural icon – the Hard Rook Café Tokyo. On the way back we stop off at McDonald’s in Ebisu for the first time to buy vanilla ice cream cones. Soft ice cream is quite popular in Tokyo. We still haven’t tried hamburgers in Japan but I’m very curious as the prices are so low – The equivalent of 80 cents US for a regular hamburger to about $2.50 for a Big Mac (and this is at a very high rent shopping mall in the middle of a tourist destination!)
Day 8 – Sunday – Take me out to the ball game.
Unfortunately neither the Yankees nor the Devil Rays chose to “Buy American” and stay at the Westin. Thanks to my cousin Scott, we had tickets arranged to see the Devil Rays play the Hanshin Tigers (from Osaka) – Hanshin thinks of themselves vs the Yomuri Giants much like the Boston Red Sox think they are to the Yankees. We take our beloved JR Yamanote train to Yoyogi, and transfer to the Soba JR train which takes us tothe Suidobashi station, right next to the Tokyo Dome. Before meeting Scott in front of Japan’s “Mister Donuts” I do some souvenir shopping and get a souvenir program as well as a souvenir T-shirt of the MLB opening series. Unfortunately both of those were priced like you’d expect at Safeco field - $35 for both. We then meet Scott and his girlfriend Kaori (hope I’m spelling that right). We enter the Toyko dome which wasn’t at capacity. The place reminds me of the Kingdome except it has a white roof (not concrete) and the ceiling doesn’t look as high. The chairs also were narrower. It was refreshing in that all the PA announcements (which batter, change of pitchers etc…) were done in English. The crowd in the outfield would do group chants and sing to support their team. Some fans dressed up in tiger costumes – it was all very interesting. They were very polite to the Devil Rays, they would clap after Devil Ray home runs. We got to see our old friend Hideki Irabu (remember the Fat Toad of the Yankees?) pitch – the Tigers had a 7-2 lead but blew it in the late innings and the game actually ended up tied 7-7 (No extra innings as the dome had to be cleaned and readied for the Yankees – Giants exhibition that evening). We did a 7th inning stretch with the singing of "take me out to the ball game" but most of the natives didn’t know what we were doing. The other thing different about Japanese baseball is the beer girls – cute women wearing costumes like cheerleaders would race around with a tank of beer strapped to their bank and serve beer to the crowd – the beer prices were about the same as American ball parks. After seeing a good game, we got back on the JR Soba train and rode it farther east until Ueno. Scott wanted to show us Ueno park – a free park with cherry blossoms. We got to the park and saw absolutely mind boggling numbers of people – Imagine Safeco field after the game when everybody is trying to leave a sold out stadium – and trying to weave in the middle of the crowd. There were so many people!!! Somepeople were taking pictures of the cherry blossoms, others were standing in line to use the bathrooms. Large groups of people were sitting around drinking beer and telling tales. Scott told me that it’s common on weekdays for companies to have picnics at the park and they would send out "go-fors" first think in the morning to stand around and reserve space for the afternoon festivities. There aren’t open liquor laws and very little social taboo against public drunkenness. After trying to move in the overwhelming crowd, we went to a restaurant called Who’s Food in Ueno – a scrumptious dinner including smoked duck (supposedly cooked, but I think just enough so the duck would stop quacking), two pasta dishes, a Thai shrimp soup (Tom Yum Gai), fried rice and some other entrees and three beers was only 7800 yen. What a deal!!! After dinner, we went to the main shopping alley in Ueno where Scott knew of a store called the Japan store which actually did sell souvenirs. I managed to get two T-shirts for a rather expensive 1800 Yen ($18) each, even more expensive when we passed a vendor camped out in the street selling the exact same shirts for $8 each…..That is Japan for you, more shopping than you could ever believe there could be, but never selling the item you are really looking for. After saying goodbye to Scott and Kaori, we returned on the JR circle train to Ebisu and enjoyed some very good Gelato at the Mitsokishi department store.
Day 9 – Bon Voyage! We started the day by getting up at 4:45 AM to see theTsukiji Fish Market – we decided to do it the last day to begin getting used to Pacific Time again (and waited for the JR passes to expire since they aren’t any good on this subway.) We took the subway from Ebisu past Roppongi and Ginza to the Tsukiji subway stop. A short 5 minute walk and we are at the famous market. As we walked to the market we saw people enjoying a great breakfast – Beer and cigarettes, but people in this business probably started so early that 5AM was lunch time. Everywhere you looked you saw workers drive around forklift like devices, successfully avoiding hitting me. There were areas where huge 100 pound fish were lying on the floor and an auctioneer trying to sell the fish to the assembled crowd. There are other areas where the strangest sea animals were lying in trays to be sold to whoever came by. Some were gutting fish, otherswere boiling lobsters. In all, a fascinating look at where dinner comes from. After leaving Tsukiji we went back to Ebisu. I went for a final run around our hotel area and then we enjoyed a full breakfast. We took the 12:30 airport bus from the Westin to terminal 1 and had another quite nice flight home on the17:10 – it took 8 ½ hours. Traci was able to sleep some on the flight, I just watched videos. United again serviced some good food – Teriyaki chicken or baron of Beef. They also served Egg McMuffins look-alikes for breakfast the next morning before we arrived at 8:40 AM Seattle Time. First thing we did was make reservations for Daniel’s Broiler (Seattle’s beststeaks) for that evening…..I also went for a run on a beautiful Seattle day 78 degrees and sunny!– Having all the open space in Myrtle Edwards park looking at the Cascade Mountains and Puget sound and not constantly bumping into people. Tokyo is the most interesting place I’ve visited but no place can compare to the Seattle waterfront on a sunny day!
Ray’s Favorite things to see in Japan
1. The Shinkansen – anywhere!
2. Sony Building in Ginza
3. Shinjuki Goen Park
4. Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima
5. Tsukiji Fish Market
Traci’s Favorite things to see in Japan
1. The Shinkansens
2. View from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building
3. Downtown Osaka (Umeda) including Hep Five Shopping Mall/Ferris Wheel
4. Ueno Park
5. Osaka Castle
6. Food bazaars in department store basements
Adventures in Tokyo part 3
Day 5 – Thursday. After a restful night at the Westin, we awoke to find Tokyo under siege by rain. Its funny waking up in Tokyo as 7AM local time is 2PM the prior day in Seattle and we see the evening news shows on CNN and closing stock prices. Unfortunately the Westin’s biggest shortcoming is the lack of AmericanTV channels – we only get CNN, CNBC and Bloomberg. (Oh no, we won’t know who got fired on the Apprentice until we get home!) We originally planned on going toTokyo Disneyland but after studying the internet weather forecasts we decided to postpone seeing Mickey. This proved to be a mistake as the weather improved andwe had a dry afternoon. We started with a huge and filling breakfast at the freebuffet and decided to venture to Roppongi. By reviewing the subway map (which the concierge gave us in English) we found a direct subway line which could take us from our home at Ebisu to Roppongi, then Ginza and also the Tsukiji fish market on another day. Unfortunately the JR passes don’t work on the subway. We ventured out into the drizzle, to the subway station. In Japan, people generally are in a hurry – waiters, concierges, and people just trying to get to the subway – they scoot along in a race walk. Maybe that’s why there are no panhandlers – nobody would give panhandlers time to make their pitch. While most of the time people walk on the left there are many exceptions especially at thesubways in the crowd – sometimes the stairs are marked with arrows although people ignore them. When on escalators and moving walkways you are supposed to stand on the left and walk on the right. Anyway, no matter what rules you are playing by there are always near collisions. You also have to get used to getting pushed and bumped all the time in the crowds. Japan has a reputation of being orderly and polite (people wear surgical type face masks when they have colds!) but it can get a little rough on the subway. At least in New York people have to be careful who they bump! But in Japan people are more the same size (and don’t have guns). It must be frightening for the very old – you see them try to navigate the crowds which is difficult. In the US there are buses and handicapped zones but in Japan everybody is at the mercy of public transportation. While there are priority seating and special areas for the elderly to wait, its still great distances in the stations often without the benefit of elevators. A second observation I’d make is even though we stayed in an American branded hotel in an area known for foreign tourists, it is rare to see non-asians (It would really be tough for Al-Qaida to move to Japan!) We headed for the subway for a one stop trip to Roppongi, a neighborhood known forforeigners – most of the embassies are located in that area as well as many nightclubs. There is a massive new development called Roppongi Hills that was featured on the Discovery channel – it’s a huge office complex with an adjoiningshopping/restaurant area and twin housing skyscrapers along with a sports arena, movie complex and museums. It is also the headquarters of TV Asahi. Despite the clouds and mist we made it to Roppongi and went to the top of the main tower and paid the $20 each sky view and museum admission – The view from the roof was kind of disappointing due to the clouds, what was interesting was all thesecurity guys guarding the roof. After completing this tourist task we went to the Crossing Roppongi modern art exhibit at the main museum – it was basically collections of modern art from the interesting to the repugnant to the silly and stupid. War protest, Andy Warhol rip offs, some modern stuff that could only be described as silly and some pornography all stimulated the senses. There were some neat exhibits though – all the patrons got ballots and we voted on our favorite exhibits – I voted for the collection of war protest T-shirts that someone put together and Traci voted for a room exhibit that was a neo-classical collection representing everyman’s living room. Anyway, on the floor below the Crossing Roppongi exhibit, there was another show of an artist who liked using polka dots liberally. Having completed our art fix, we then wandered around the quite impressive complex which includes a nice little park complete with emerging Sakura (Cherry Blossoms). We then found the subway again and headed forthe holy grail of shopping – Ginza!
Ginza is one of the most famous shopping areas in the world – like 5th Avenue in New York or Rodeo drive in Beverly Hills. We bought another 160 yen subway ticket from the vending machines and took the same subway farther east fromRoppongi to Ginza station. When you actually pay to use the subway you buy a ticket based on the distance from your starting point, then put the ticket in a scanner before boarding the subway. Your ticket is scanned again as you leave and if you don’t have enough money the subway locks up and all the people behind you give you angry looks as you schlep over to the ticket machine to add value. We exited the station and found ourselves in front of the Sony Tower. Sony hasan amazing 7 floor showroom with many of their latest gadgets. They have a great 60” flat screen TV with a beautiful picture for a mere $15,000 US. (Imagine how much that would cost to ship on the airplane!). The next generation of digital video cameras that record on memory cards not tapes are very small, about thesize of a package of Top Ramen. I played ball with the digital robot dogs – it’s pretty sad that there are so few dogs in Tokyo. Once in a while you do see a big dog, but the majority of dogs, rare that they are, are small. It is good there is no dog poop to step in, however. Sony has a new professional line of digital camera – it’s about 1 inch wide, ½ inch thick and 4 inches long with interchangeable lenses and takes beautiful photos (they had several blown up and they do look professional). It costs a mere $4000 for a set including several lenses. There is a duty free section where presumably they have goods for sale with English directions and use 120 volt power – but good deals were hard to come by. BMW, for whatever reason, has a showroom on one of the floors at Sony and are showing a nice large convertible, the 635. The final floor of Sony has playstation games (in Japanese). We play some strange game where you are a boulder picking up trash from the city. More fun is a“cockpit” of a race car where you can play one of the new racing games. I’ve seen these cockpits at other stores – race cars or space ships for about $1000 and they are cool….After Sony, we enter a store called Wako and Traci finds a pink purse that matches her pink i-pod mini. She decides not to buy it even though it’s a mere $80 US. Of course at Wako there are $500 purses as well along with $300 T-shirts (but designer labels of course). We decide to leave Wako with wallets intact and head further down the Ginza. You see the things you’d expect to find – lots of designer boutiques, fancy jewelry stores, cafes with $10 coffee and $20 pastries. There are also 7-11s, vending machines with $1.50 cokes and Starbucks look-alikes with $2 lattes. I actually think shopping is better at other neighborhoods we visited with 4 + major department stores are lined up. Ginza is fun to look. Shopping is an interesting concept in Japan – there are sales, but infrequent. Regular items aren’t cheap but they aren’t really expensive either. My thoughts are that the Japanese seek value – their homes are very small, they have to use public transportation to get things home, and they don’t use credit cards – all of these things cut down on consumerism that is found throughout America. You don’t have to pay $285 for special Levis on the Ginza – there are plenty of moderately priced stuff available. There are a slew of 100 Yen stores (the equivalent of our dollar stores) in many areas including some department stores – so American marketing is having an impact. I knowCostco has at least a few Japan stores, I don’t know about Walmart – but I’d be surprised if either becomes widespread successes since the Japanese can’t/won’t buy lots and lots of stuff and are willing to pay extra for value rather than just finding cheap goods. Farther down the Ginza we find a new famous fixture, Apple Computer’s showroom. As you would expect there are all the latest laptops and desktops on display, plus a very large store where you can buy whatever you need – software, computer equipment, even i-pods. Although they have dozens and dozens of I-pods, they do not have any i-pod minis. Apple does have a free internet café and we do a little surfing before leaving the store. Having gotten our window shopping fix, we find the subway station we started at and buy another ticket. Now we spent 160 yen to get from Ebisu to Roppongi, 160 yen to get from Roppongi to Ginza but am uncertain how much it costs to get back to Ebisu. The list of stations and their fares is all in Japanese. I find some friendly looking woman and say Ebisu and point to the list. Fortunately she points to 190 yen and we are on our way. Traci noted that people tend to not stop and help obviously lost souls although this may reflect the fact that everyone is in a hurry all the time. When you ask people though they tend to be very interested in trying but sometimes give directions of dubious value. When we get back to the Westin we decide to get a workout at the “Club at Yebisu.” You don’t see very many health clubs in Japan, also you don’t see a lot of fat people either. Since I’m quite sure they aren’t all on the Atkins diet given the price of beef, I assume it must be a healthier diet including fish, and also avoidance of one of America’s scurges – soft drinks. Coke is readily available but it seems to be a minor purchase often relegated to the side of 7-11 fridges and occupying a minor place in most vending machines. I was interested to see what someone gets in a Japanese health club – I was kind of disappointed, even though we got in for free, thanks to the Westin. The most popular activity seemsto be hitting golf balls into a net. Their weight room was only marginally better than most business hotels. The cardio machines were fine and not in particular demand even during the busy after work time. Its funny to run on metric treadmills – although runners are familiar with metric distances – 5K,10K, etc…the speeds are quite different – 10 kilometers per hour is only 6.1 miles per hour. Most of the people at the health club aren’t in very good shape, such a contrast to our usual workout locale – the Seattle Club. I’m sure the busy Japanese life has something to do with that, plus the $2000 initiation fee/ $200 per month dues. You don’t get a whole lot for that money, although the pool is quite nice – long but somewhat narrow (6 lanes). Some people are doing some sort of Yoga or Tai-chi in the pool, others are walking down the lanes. Few, like Traci are actually swimming laps. The locker room is interesting as ladies clean the mens locker room as men dress and shower. After the workout, we go down to the Westin lounge for happy hour. Drinks in Japan tend to be very expensive, at “hostess bars” where businessmen drink and converse with a female attendant who serves drinks it is not unusually to rack up at $1600 bill in just a couple of hours. At the Westin two drinks will set you back $30. Even cokes cost $6.50. Fortunately the Westin gives us free drinks from 5-7 pm each night, a treat not to be missed. The lounge has a wireless network and we do all of our e-mailing from my laptop each evening. After the happy hour, we head to Shibuyato get food. It is about a 10 minute walk (all within the covered Yebisu complex) from our hotel to the JR station, so it’s a bit of a pain but we are hungry. In Shibuya we go to a department store and get some takeout food – I buy some salmon rice balls for about $1.80 each. We also want to go to a place called Beard Papas which is supposed to have the best cream puffs in the world. They recently opened one up in New York. Even though we know its location we spend several minutes racing around the south entrance of the station looking for the small food stand. We find the place and I get 4 of the $2 cream puffs to go. We go back to the Westin to enjoy our food (the problem with department store purchases is although they are cheap, there is no readily available place to eat them). Some restaurants actually give you a 30% discount for take out over their dining in menu. The food is good, and I like the cream puffs but wouldn’t say they are the best I’ve ever tasted. Once back in the Westin, we think about making a reservation and splurging on a weekend dinner at theTeppanyaki restaurant (where the chef cooks food at a community table on a grill and entertains patrons with fancy knife tricks) on the top of our hotel. However, checking out the menu – it would be about $220 per person for the multi-course dinner salad, fish, beef, etc and all you get is 5 oz of beef! Kobe beef may be very good, but only 5 oz??? I don’t know if the Japanese ban on US beef has affected the prices, but they seem rather excessive since we could eat 4 times at Seattle’s best steak place for that price – so we pass on that chance. As long as you don’t order anything with beef in it the prices a pretty comparable especially when you take into account that tax and tip are included in listed menu prices. But 22,000 yen for 1/3 the steak you get at a US steakhouse is crazy. No wonder all Japanese tourists want to do is eat at steak houses in the US.
Continued
Ginza is one of the most famous shopping areas in the world – like 5th Avenue in New York or Rodeo drive in Beverly Hills. We bought another 160 yen subway ticket from the vending machines and took the same subway farther east fromRoppongi to Ginza station. When you actually pay to use the subway you buy a ticket based on the distance from your starting point, then put the ticket in a scanner before boarding the subway. Your ticket is scanned again as you leave and if you don’t have enough money the subway locks up and all the people behind you give you angry looks as you schlep over to the ticket machine to add value. We exited the station and found ourselves in front of the Sony Tower. Sony hasan amazing 7 floor showroom with many of their latest gadgets. They have a great 60” flat screen TV with a beautiful picture for a mere $15,000 US. (Imagine how much that would cost to ship on the airplane!). The next generation of digital video cameras that record on memory cards not tapes are very small, about thesize of a package of Top Ramen. I played ball with the digital robot dogs – it’s pretty sad that there are so few dogs in Tokyo. Once in a while you do see a big dog, but the majority of dogs, rare that they are, are small. It is good there is no dog poop to step in, however. Sony has a new professional line of digital camera – it’s about 1 inch wide, ½ inch thick and 4 inches long with interchangeable lenses and takes beautiful photos (they had several blown up and they do look professional). It costs a mere $4000 for a set including several lenses. There is a duty free section where presumably they have goods for sale with English directions and use 120 volt power – but good deals were hard to come by. BMW, for whatever reason, has a showroom on one of the floors at Sony and are showing a nice large convertible, the 635. The final floor of Sony has playstation games (in Japanese). We play some strange game where you are a boulder picking up trash from the city. More fun is a“cockpit” of a race car where you can play one of the new racing games. I’ve seen these cockpits at other stores – race cars or space ships for about $1000 and they are cool….After Sony, we enter a store called Wako and Traci finds a pink purse that matches her pink i-pod mini. She decides not to buy it even though it’s a mere $80 US. Of course at Wako there are $500 purses as well along with $300 T-shirts (but designer labels of course). We decide to leave Wako with wallets intact and head further down the Ginza. You see the things you’d expect to find – lots of designer boutiques, fancy jewelry stores, cafes with $10 coffee and $20 pastries. There are also 7-11s, vending machines with $1.50 cokes and Starbucks look-alikes with $2 lattes. I actually think shopping is better at other neighborhoods we visited with 4 + major department stores are lined up. Ginza is fun to look. Shopping is an interesting concept in Japan – there are sales, but infrequent. Regular items aren’t cheap but they aren’t really expensive either. My thoughts are that the Japanese seek value – their homes are very small, they have to use public transportation to get things home, and they don’t use credit cards – all of these things cut down on consumerism that is found throughout America. You don’t have to pay $285 for special Levis on the Ginza – there are plenty of moderately priced stuff available. There are a slew of 100 Yen stores (the equivalent of our dollar stores) in many areas including some department stores – so American marketing is having an impact. I knowCostco has at least a few Japan stores, I don’t know about Walmart – but I’d be surprised if either becomes widespread successes since the Japanese can’t/won’t buy lots and lots of stuff and are willing to pay extra for value rather than just finding cheap goods. Farther down the Ginza we find a new famous fixture, Apple Computer’s showroom. As you would expect there are all the latest laptops and desktops on display, plus a very large store where you can buy whatever you need – software, computer equipment, even i-pods. Although they have dozens and dozens of I-pods, they do not have any i-pod minis. Apple does have a free internet café and we do a little surfing before leaving the store. Having gotten our window shopping fix, we find the subway station we started at and buy another ticket. Now we spent 160 yen to get from Ebisu to Roppongi, 160 yen to get from Roppongi to Ginza but am uncertain how much it costs to get back to Ebisu. The list of stations and their fares is all in Japanese. I find some friendly looking woman and say Ebisu and point to the list. Fortunately she points to 190 yen and we are on our way. Traci noted that people tend to not stop and help obviously lost souls although this may reflect the fact that everyone is in a hurry all the time. When you ask people though they tend to be very interested in trying but sometimes give directions of dubious value. When we get back to the Westin we decide to get a workout at the “Club at Yebisu.” You don’t see very many health clubs in Japan, also you don’t see a lot of fat people either. Since I’m quite sure they aren’t all on the Atkins diet given the price of beef, I assume it must be a healthier diet including fish, and also avoidance of one of America’s scurges – soft drinks. Coke is readily available but it seems to be a minor purchase often relegated to the side of 7-11 fridges and occupying a minor place in most vending machines. I was interested to see what someone gets in a Japanese health club – I was kind of disappointed, even though we got in for free, thanks to the Westin. The most popular activity seemsto be hitting golf balls into a net. Their weight room was only marginally better than most business hotels. The cardio machines were fine and not in particular demand even during the busy after work time. Its funny to run on metric treadmills – although runners are familiar with metric distances – 5K,10K, etc…the speeds are quite different – 10 kilometers per hour is only 6.1 miles per hour. Most of the people at the health club aren’t in very good shape, such a contrast to our usual workout locale – the Seattle Club. I’m sure the busy Japanese life has something to do with that, plus the $2000 initiation fee/ $200 per month dues. You don’t get a whole lot for that money, although the pool is quite nice – long but somewhat narrow (6 lanes). Some people are doing some sort of Yoga or Tai-chi in the pool, others are walking down the lanes. Few, like Traci are actually swimming laps. The locker room is interesting as ladies clean the mens locker room as men dress and shower. After the workout, we go down to the Westin lounge for happy hour. Drinks in Japan tend to be very expensive, at “hostess bars” where businessmen drink and converse with a female attendant who serves drinks it is not unusually to rack up at $1600 bill in just a couple of hours. At the Westin two drinks will set you back $30. Even cokes cost $6.50. Fortunately the Westin gives us free drinks from 5-7 pm each night, a treat not to be missed. The lounge has a wireless network and we do all of our e-mailing from my laptop each evening. After the happy hour, we head to Shibuyato get food. It is about a 10 minute walk (all within the covered Yebisu complex) from our hotel to the JR station, so it’s a bit of a pain but we are hungry. In Shibuya we go to a department store and get some takeout food – I buy some salmon rice balls for about $1.80 each. We also want to go to a place called Beard Papas which is supposed to have the best cream puffs in the world. They recently opened one up in New York. Even though we know its location we spend several minutes racing around the south entrance of the station looking for the small food stand. We find the place and I get 4 of the $2 cream puffs to go. We go back to the Westin to enjoy our food (the problem with department store purchases is although they are cheap, there is no readily available place to eat them). Some restaurants actually give you a 30% discount for take out over their dining in menu. The food is good, and I like the cream puffs but wouldn’t say they are the best I’ve ever tasted. Once back in the Westin, we think about making a reservation and splurging on a weekend dinner at theTeppanyaki restaurant (where the chef cooks food at a community table on a grill and entertains patrons with fancy knife tricks) on the top of our hotel. However, checking out the menu – it would be about $220 per person for the multi-course dinner salad, fish, beef, etc and all you get is 5 oz of beef! Kobe beef may be very good, but only 5 oz??? I don’t know if the Japanese ban on US beef has affected the prices, but they seem rather excessive since we could eat 4 times at Seattle’s best steak place for that price – so we pass on that chance. As long as you don’t order anything with beef in it the prices a pretty comparable especially when you take into account that tax and tip are included in listed menu prices. But 22,000 yen for 1/3 the steak you get at a US steakhouse is crazy. No wonder all Japanese tourists want to do is eat at steak houses in the US.
Continued
Adventures in Tokyo part 2
Wednesday Day 4 – We go back to downtown Osaka on a direct subway and roam around until we find Osaka Castle. It’s a little difficult to find historical landmarks because there are so many large buildings developed around them. The Osaka castle is breathtaking – imagine a square the size of two football fields with a 20 foot high stone wall built behind big and deep moats. It’s amazing that this 16th century castle could ever be constructed. We tour the inside of the castle (reconstructed of course to meet modern building standards) and see many of the same artifacts like suits of armor that we saw in Hiroshima’s castle. From Osaka we wanted to go to Kyoto to meet Miye for lunch. We could take the 1 hour subway trip, but instead decide to go on the Shinkansen (an awfully expensive luxury afforded by the fact we get unlimited use of the Shinkansen with JR rail passes). We take the bus to Osaka’s train station and a JR train to Shin-Osaka (New Osaka station where the Shinkansen stops) We then take the Shinkansen to the next stop, Kyoto a 15 minute journey. We didn’t save all that much time but it’s much cooler to ride the Shinkansen. While making connections on Japanese subways can be painful because of navigation thru stations, the trains run so frequently – every 2-10 minutes typically, you never have to wait long. Once we were at the Kyoto station we could lock our overnight bags up in a locker – banks of them are found in every train station. We were tired from carrying them around Osaka castle and were happy to dispose of them.
In Kyoto, we wanted to see the Sanjusangendo temple. We walked for a while and reached a religious appearing structure but found it to be a different temple (the opposite direction that we were supposed to go – there are a lot of temples in Kyoto, many with big corporate sponsors like Hitachi). Rather than make another long walk, we tried a taxi – many of which were lined up at the temple. In Kyoto, a taxi is about $7 minimum and after a mile or so the meter starts increasing. Taxis rides are expensive but then again, gas is about $4 a gallon. After the short $9 cab ride (but you don’t tip drivers!), we got off and visited the temple. This particular temple had rows and rows of golden statues along with larger statues from Buddhist history. You can buy candles for $10, write your requests on the candle and have them burned in the temple. Traci didn’t think a 2004 World Series for Seattle was an appropriate request so I passed on the opportunity to enhance our chances for a pennant. We again hopped on a cab and called Miye and met her downtown. We found a nice hole in the wall restaurant Miye knew about where I ordered a $14 Shrimp Yakisoba. I met a traveler from Idaho who was visiting his wife’s relatives and we shared our impressions of this country – 2 x the size of Idaho with 120 times the population! After lunch, we wandered around downtown and went to a shop that sold crepes. I had a crepe with a banana split in it – I basically at the inside and left the crepe outside until we finally found a garbage can (they are hard to find outside in Japan). I realize its considered impolite to walk outside eating something but I don’t quite get why there are so many shops that serve ready to eat food and have no seating area inside, and then to have no garbage cans to dispose of the containers.
After saying goodbye to our Kyoto host, Miye, we took a cab to the Shinkansen station. We had a minor problem in that the locker wouldn’t open when I put the key in. I figured out that you pay in advance 200 yen (about $2) but after two hours you have to pay an additional 100 yen per hour to get your stuff back. We had some time to wander around the shops before our Shinkansen left (They run every half hour, but some go straight to the Tokyo Station and some stop at Shinagawa which is much closer to our hotel, so given it will be rush hour in Tokyo when we arrive I wanted to wait for a Shinagawa Shinkansen). Another lesson to pass along – no matter how much planning you do, you always end up rushing around to catch the train as the stations are so massive that window shopping inevitably leads to you disorientation as to where you need to go to get on your train – Always give yourself time so you are waiting at the gate for the trains. The Shinkansen trains ALWAYS leave on time, so you better not be late! We got on the 3:40pm train and reached Tokyo at 6pm. Rush hour in the Shinagawa was interesting – lots of people milling around but fortunately we only had a couple of stops before reaching Ebisu and the Westin. After re-checking in and having our stored baggage brought up I went to the Club at Yebisu to see what their health clubs are like (more on this later) and we finished the long day by finding department store takeout food nearby.
Continued
In Kyoto, we wanted to see the Sanjusangendo temple. We walked for a while and reached a religious appearing structure but found it to be a different temple (the opposite direction that we were supposed to go – there are a lot of temples in Kyoto, many with big corporate sponsors like Hitachi). Rather than make another long walk, we tried a taxi – many of which were lined up at the temple. In Kyoto, a taxi is about $7 minimum and after a mile or so the meter starts increasing. Taxis rides are expensive but then again, gas is about $4 a gallon. After the short $9 cab ride (but you don’t tip drivers!), we got off and visited the temple. This particular temple had rows and rows of golden statues along with larger statues from Buddhist history. You can buy candles for $10, write your requests on the candle and have them burned in the temple. Traci didn’t think a 2004 World Series for Seattle was an appropriate request so I passed on the opportunity to enhance our chances for a pennant. We again hopped on a cab and called Miye and met her downtown. We found a nice hole in the wall restaurant Miye knew about where I ordered a $14 Shrimp Yakisoba. I met a traveler from Idaho who was visiting his wife’s relatives and we shared our impressions of this country – 2 x the size of Idaho with 120 times the population! After lunch, we wandered around downtown and went to a shop that sold crepes. I had a crepe with a banana split in it – I basically at the inside and left the crepe outside until we finally found a garbage can (they are hard to find outside in Japan). I realize its considered impolite to walk outside eating something but I don’t quite get why there are so many shops that serve ready to eat food and have no seating area inside, and then to have no garbage cans to dispose of the containers.
After saying goodbye to our Kyoto host, Miye, we took a cab to the Shinkansen station. We had a minor problem in that the locker wouldn’t open when I put the key in. I figured out that you pay in advance 200 yen (about $2) but after two hours you have to pay an additional 100 yen per hour to get your stuff back. We had some time to wander around the shops before our Shinkansen left (They run every half hour, but some go straight to the Tokyo Station and some stop at Shinagawa which is much closer to our hotel, so given it will be rush hour in Tokyo when we arrive I wanted to wait for a Shinagawa Shinkansen). Another lesson to pass along – no matter how much planning you do, you always end up rushing around to catch the train as the stations are so massive that window shopping inevitably leads to you disorientation as to where you need to go to get on your train – Always give yourself time so you are waiting at the gate for the trains. The Shinkansen trains ALWAYS leave on time, so you better not be late! We got on the 3:40pm train and reached Tokyo at 6pm. Rush hour in the Shinagawa was interesting – lots of people milling around but fortunately we only had a couple of stops before reaching Ebisu and the Westin. After re-checking in and having our stored baggage brought up I went to the Club at Yebisu to see what their health clubs are like (more on this later) and we finished the long day by finding department store takeout food nearby.
Continued
Adventures in Tokyo part 1
Traci and I (neither speak Japanese) are visiting Tokyo (my first, Traci’s second) and wanted to pass along our thoughts and experiences to anyone interested – so here’s our Great Tokyo Adventure Blog from our March 2005 Trip.
Sat/Sun – Day 1 Traci and I flew on United’s 777 non-stop service to Tokyo, leaving Seattle on Saturday at 12:40pm. Although leg room is somewhat cramped, we fortunately got to sit alone on the right side (United has 2-5-2 seating in coach). The flight took 9 ½ hours and was very smooth – the service was excellent, the crew spent the whole flight providing food and drinks even in economy. They served a roast beef meal followed by snacks (chips and cookies) followed by another meal including a hot ham and cheese sandwich. The 777 has individual TV screens and show 6 different movies/TV programs over and over. United didn’t even charge for the headsets! The roast beef was good, fortunately, because it’s the last beef to be had for a while….We landed 9 ½ hours later – 4pm Tokyo time the next day (Sunday) – we lost our Saturday! I give United a big thumbs up on the voyage.
Getting thru Japan Immigration was fairly smooth, just as we finished and walked to the baggage claim, our luggage appeared on the carousel. We got our luggage at 4:20pm but couldn’t get on the 4:30 airport bus so we ended up leaving on the 5:30 pm bus. While waiting, I made my first Japanese purchase – 300 yen for a bottle of coke. For some reason the coke in Japan doesn’t seem as sweet as in the US ?different corn syrup? At the airport I first realized how much of Japan uses both Japanese and English – on everything from LCD signs indicating which bus or train leaves for where, to directions around the airport and even on billboard ads. Sometimes ads are all Japanese text until the middle somewhere where you start seeing English – such as company names and web addresses. I’m thinking more than anything else, the world wide web which is based on the Roman Alphabet will make English the dominant language over the next generation. We got on the 5:30pm bus and traffic to Tokyo wasn’t too bad – it took about 2 ¼ hours to get to our hotel. We were the last stop of 5 hotels. The streets were narrow with many sharp curves. It was also weird trying to understand the traffic patterns with everybody driving on the left side of roads (although many of the streets were very narrow and we traveled in the center). We finally arrived at the Westin around 7:30 pm. Fortunately the Westin Tokyo is a wonderful hotel. It is located in Ebisu, the site of one of Japan’s new superdevelopments (housing, big shopping, train station) and is the home of Sapporo beer’s headquarters and beer museum. We plugged in our depleted electronics – Japan is on 100 volt power vs 120 in the US but as long as you can deal with 2 prong outlets electronics don’t seem to know the difference. I brought a power converter which we didn’t use the whole trip – you need it if you have motorized electronics like hair dryers or electric razors – but anything with rechargeable batteries doesn’t. The Westin had adapters in the room 3 prong --> 2 prong, but I brought one along with a 3 outlet mini-power strip so we could charge our iPods, Palms and laptop. Everything charged fine except the ipods which strangely charge for a while then think they’re full when they are not, so you had to start the charging process again – eventually they get full. I’m not sure why that is…The Westin room is large, certainly at least the size of any Westin around the country – the bathroom is gorgeous. I’ve been told Japanese hotels tend to have mini rooms and even smaller bathrooms – that doesn’t seem to apply to the Westin.
We met Traci’s friend Curtis and wandered around the top two floors of Ebisu place which has about a dozen restaurants. We first found a convenience store that sold “throw away” (prepaid) cell phones – for 78,000 yen – about $75 (48,000 for the phone / 30,000 for the prepaid service) we now had full cell service. Unfortunately the phone is all Japanese so we can’t figure out voice mail or e-mail service, but we can make and send calls. Even at a place with many foreign tourists (because of the Westin) most of the restaurants have no English menus. However almost all have plastic food models in the window so you can figure out what you want. Curtis speaks Japanese well (he used to work in Tokyo) so he could order off Japanese menus. We chose to eat a soba noodle dinner with Tempura. The views from the 32nd/33rd top floors of the city are spectacular and it was a clear night. Most of the restaurants at the top of Ebisu place charged a quite reasonable 800-2000 yen for entrees (about $7.50 - $18 US) but there weren’t many beef dishes available (more on this later). Considering this is a tall brand new skyscraper connected to a foreign hotel it was a pleasant surprise. After a tasty dinner we went back the the Westin and quickly fell asleep around 10pm Sunday night (5 AM Sunday in Seattle)
Monday – Day 2 After enjoying an all you can eat American buffet breakfast included in our Westin room rate, we ventured on the Tokyo Subway for the first time and went to popular neighborhoods at Akibahara, Shibuya, Shinjuku. The JR Yamanote line is a big circle with subway trains going each direction around the circle and brings you to most of the big neighborhoods. And of course we don’t have to pay thanks to JR Rail passes. The subways are clean, no graffiti or trash anywhere! There are little tunes which seem to be unique to each station signifying arrival of trains – kind of like the little electronic music made by video games each time you complete a task. The trains are surprisingly quiet and many of the people inside are dozing in and out of sleep – very little talking. Talking on cell phones is not allowed on the subways – I guess you don’t have to worry about it in New York since the subway makes too much noise to talk anyway. Every square inch of the subway car is covered with ads and you see many American celebrities endorsing products (Randy Johnson, Sandra Bullock) – I guess this is where the Simpson’s writers got the idea for the Mr. Sparkle episode. The stations are huge but the signs are in English as well as Japanese and are easy to navigate except for their large size (it would be just as hard to navigate the stations in a US city as a Japanese one). The ones with many connections especially with the bullet trains (Shinkansens) are especially confusing. Not only are there many shops like in US airports, but there are whole shopping malls built into the stations selling everything from furniture to clothing. My strategy to avoid having natives assume I spoke Japanese was to wear a Seattle Mariners jacket to indicate my origin – unfortunately, on our first subway journey there was one native wearing a New York Yankees jacket and another wearing a Seattle Mariners jersey. Oh well…
It was a cold rainy day in Tokyo so we try to stay indoors as much as possible – fortunately most of the big stores are connected directly with the main train stations. When we ventured outside we found neon signs and many people, kind of like a Times Square in every neighborhood. We start in Akibahara, Tokyo’s electric city. There are many electronic stores (kind of like Times square) but they are narrow and high – many different stores 6-8 floors high with a small showroom of different electronic goods on each floor. The tiny size of some of the new video cameras and laptops are impressive, but we don’t find many earthshaking new products, and most of the stores sell the same goods. I am especially outraged at one floor of one store that sells BB guns which are replicas of “famous” war weapons (AK-47s, Uzis, etc…) They sell police style riot gear and have posters of kids dressed up in war gear firing these guns – some are even automatic BB guns. Crazy! The same store had a floor devoted to X-rated cartoon DVDs which are popular in Japan. The multifloor shops highlight a big weakness in Japan – access for the handicapped. While the Americans with disability act remains a big challenge for American developers, you can really feel for the handicapped who have a big problem reaching many of the smaller train station platforms and many of the stores! Besides the stores, we found a Sega World video game parlor – uniquely Japanese games were mixed in with a multiplayer Bingo and multiplayer Horse Racing game were found. I played a game patterned on Dance Revolution where the player beats on a drum in synch with the music. After Akibahara, we went to Shibuya which is another neighborhood with a huge train station and many stores. There is an area called the “Food Show” which is a large bazaar of various take out foods from $1.00 rice balls and $50 cantaloupes (no kidding). This was also are first experience with butchers selling miniature cuts of steak by the gram! 150 grams which is 5 oz sells for $80-100….and we aren’t talking about filet mignon or choice New York steaks! It’s pretty incredible how much beef costs. We haven’t eaten at McDonald’s but I do wonder how they can charge reasonable prices $5-6 for our much loved value meals and still have beef? For the most part you can find any food you want but its all to go. The Japanese spend an extraordinary amount of time packaging your to go meals in nice little boxes, packed to avoid getting squashed and even with a cold chemical pack! Almost all the department stores have food courts in their basements where it is easy to find food (you just point or pick it out and pay for them) without speaking any Japanese. Its kind of funny walking down the very long corridors with small food stands on each side with merchants (usually young females) quietly but constantly speaking in Japanese I guess to stimulate business – their sales pitches are louder than a mumble but much quieter than the Pike Place Market fish sellers. Figuring out what is in some of the packages is a challenge when you don’t read Japanese. If you stay away from the $100 steak the food is quite reasonably priced. Some additional observations about the department stores: Like Nordstrom there are some good values and some ridiculous designer prices like $280 T-shirts. It is funny to hear music in English, everything from relatively new songs like Train, to old 80s classics from Lionel Ritchie to rap music artists also sorts of language which would get you thrown off the air in the US by the Federal Communications Commission. We ventured into a restaurant (one that had an English menu at the door) solo and I had a caesar’s salad with fried chicken for a reasonable $16. There’s no tipping in Japan so although the prices for most common foods (beef excluded, obviously) may run a little higher, without the need for a tip the prices aren’t much different than you’d expect in the US. Also, restaurants in obviously expensive buildings on high floors with great views don’t necessarily charge tons of money like in the US – I think its because there are so many restaurants in tall skyscrapers (and usually bunched together) so its not such a exclusive perk.
We finished the day in by spending the evening Shinjuku, a very busy area with many stores – think of 4 or 5 downtown Seattle Bon Marche’s lined up – all with food courts in their basements. You would think all the Japanese do is shop – I don’t think even New York has the retail space to compare with Tokyo. There are soooo many big stores in so many neighborhoods. It was raining pretty hard and was fairly chilly (in the low 40s) so we returned back to the Westin.
Tuesday – Day 3. The most adventurous part of our trip started very early – we caught the train at 5:30AM to go to the main Tokyo station – Japan’s Grand Central Station. From there we took the 6:36 AM Bullet train (Shinkansen) to Osaka, and then transferred to a different Shinkansen to Hiroshima. The 537 mile journey took 5 hours including stops and the transfer. Japan’s Shinkansens now go as fast as 180 miles per hour….its amazing! The seats are very comfortable and I think travel via Shinkansen is much better than by airplanes, at least if your not traveling thousands of miles. Both the conductor who checks tickets and the hostesses who go up and down aisles selling snacks and drinks stop to bow as they enter and exit each car even if they are just passing thru. Most of the riders on our trains were businessmen in their uniformly navy blue suits who mostly used the time to sleep. Its fairly easy to get around in stations, trains and the city as long as you know English – I’d go as far to say the vast majority of confusion (and there was lots) trying to find the right train and stops isn’t a language problem – we’d probably have much the same problem if the huge stations were in Atlanta – they are just so big and there are so many trains. Half of the Shinkansen audio stations that you can listen to on the train are either American popular music or lessons in conversational English. The biggest language barrier for us seems to be in the restaurants and we had to find places we could point to the food/pictures or places with English menus. Before traveling to Japan, we bought JR Rail passes for about $350 each – they were the Green Car (first class passes) although there really isn’t much different between Green Car and regular cars (Green car 2 – 2 seating vs regular car 2 – 3 seating). In fact there was no Green car between Osaka and Hiroshima so the only Green cars we rode in were between Tokyo to Osaka and then Kyoto to Tokyo).
After the 537 mile journey we took a street car to the Peace Park. We started out by finding a restaurant at the museum complex and I had a Chicken karaage meal while Traci had a chicken katsudon lunch which together cost around $25. After lunch we entered the Peace museum which went over the history of the city and its experience with the A-bomb. Some of the exhibits were fairly graphic, but milder than the Holocaust museum in Washington DC. There are authentic photographs along with multimedia presentations. In general it was well done and a fitting tribute to the victims. The Peace park is a rather large complex that includes the museum as well as a perpetual flame for victims. There are several areas where people bring origami Cranes in honor of a young leukemia victim who folded 1000 cranes in hopes of reversing the disease caused by radiation exposure. We then crossed the peace bridge to visit Hiroshima castle. While I was initially impressed by the structure, we quickly figured out the castle was destroyed by the A-bomb and the whole project was a replica. Disappointed that we don’t see Tom Cruise working on his samurai techniques we leave this “Hollywood” castle. We then hopped back on the Shinkansen and got off in Osaka which is basically the half way point between Hiroshima and Tokyo.
Osaka is a very large city with many large department stores of its own. We found a restaurant in the middle of one of the many department stores that had models of food in the window – I had a Udon / Shrimp tempura dinner for around $15. Afterwards we wandered around Osaka at night, and found a long covered street with shops lining each side. There are many video game parlors, Pachinko parlors, shops of every description, karaoke bars and hole in the wall restaurants. Toward the outer edge of the street from downtown there were more adult oriented entertainment venues so we headed back. We found a very impressive shopping mall in the heart of downtown with a gigantic Ferris Wheel on it. We paid $5 each and had a great view of the expansive city from the Ferris wheel and immediately after leaving found a Gelato place at the exit. Traci and I sampled the Gelato and I liked the strawberry one so much I had to order a second serving. The Gelato in Japan had been recommended to me, but I couldn’t understand why Japan would be a place with good Gelato. I know now it does. We then went to the train station and found the area with the subways. Its confusing in Japan because many of the largest stations have Shinkansen areas, regular trains (or as Seattle thinks of them – the dreaded light rail), and subways all with their own ticket counters, ticket machines, ticket gates and tracks. Further adding to the confusion is the fact that several different companies run the different modalities so you need different tickets, and our JR rail passes don’t work at other companies rail systems. Fortunately the JR rail passes do work on most of the Shinkansens (just not the real high speed Nozomi trains), and the Yamanote circle train line in Tokyo which is where we spend the bulk of our travel time Once we found the Osaka subway, we followed directions to Traci’s family home in Osaka – They maintain a house in Osaka which Traci’s cousin Miye currently lives in as she continues her education. While we don’t have any problems getting to the right culdesac, we can’t figure out what house it is especially since its 10pm at night. The addresses in Japan are difficult – there isn’t a consistent grid system like in the US – addresses are based on the neighborhood not street and house numbers are often in the order they were built. Fortunately we have the cell phone and figure out which house to enter. Japanese houses are smaller and don’t have central heating, something that can be a problem on 40 degree nights – but with enough blankets we have a pleasant sleep on the grass mat floor, still not quite the same as the Westin’s Heavenly beds…
Continued
Sat/Sun – Day 1 Traci and I flew on United’s 777 non-stop service to Tokyo, leaving Seattle on Saturday at 12:40pm. Although leg room is somewhat cramped, we fortunately got to sit alone on the right side (United has 2-5-2 seating in coach). The flight took 9 ½ hours and was very smooth – the service was excellent, the crew spent the whole flight providing food and drinks even in economy. They served a roast beef meal followed by snacks (chips and cookies) followed by another meal including a hot ham and cheese sandwich. The 777 has individual TV screens and show 6 different movies/TV programs over and over. United didn’t even charge for the headsets! The roast beef was good, fortunately, because it’s the last beef to be had for a while….We landed 9 ½ hours later – 4pm Tokyo time the next day (Sunday) – we lost our Saturday! I give United a big thumbs up on the voyage.
Getting thru Japan Immigration was fairly smooth, just as we finished and walked to the baggage claim, our luggage appeared on the carousel. We got our luggage at 4:20pm but couldn’t get on the 4:30 airport bus so we ended up leaving on the 5:30 pm bus. While waiting, I made my first Japanese purchase – 300 yen for a bottle of coke. For some reason the coke in Japan doesn’t seem as sweet as in the US ?different corn syrup? At the airport I first realized how much of Japan uses both Japanese and English – on everything from LCD signs indicating which bus or train leaves for where, to directions around the airport and even on billboard ads. Sometimes ads are all Japanese text until the middle somewhere where you start seeing English – such as company names and web addresses. I’m thinking more than anything else, the world wide web which is based on the Roman Alphabet will make English the dominant language over the next generation. We got on the 5:30pm bus and traffic to Tokyo wasn’t too bad – it took about 2 ¼ hours to get to our hotel. We were the last stop of 5 hotels. The streets were narrow with many sharp curves. It was also weird trying to understand the traffic patterns with everybody driving on the left side of roads (although many of the streets were very narrow and we traveled in the center). We finally arrived at the Westin around 7:30 pm. Fortunately the Westin Tokyo is a wonderful hotel. It is located in Ebisu, the site of one of Japan’s new superdevelopments (housing, big shopping, train station) and is the home of Sapporo beer’s headquarters and beer museum. We plugged in our depleted electronics – Japan is on 100 volt power vs 120 in the US but as long as you can deal with 2 prong outlets electronics don’t seem to know the difference. I brought a power converter which we didn’t use the whole trip – you need it if you have motorized electronics like hair dryers or electric razors – but anything with rechargeable batteries doesn’t. The Westin had adapters in the room 3 prong --> 2 prong, but I brought one along with a 3 outlet mini-power strip so we could charge our iPods, Palms and laptop. Everything charged fine except the ipods which strangely charge for a while then think they’re full when they are not, so you had to start the charging process again – eventually they get full. I’m not sure why that is…The Westin room is large, certainly at least the size of any Westin around the country – the bathroom is gorgeous. I’ve been told Japanese hotels tend to have mini rooms and even smaller bathrooms – that doesn’t seem to apply to the Westin.
We met Traci’s friend Curtis and wandered around the top two floors of Ebisu place which has about a dozen restaurants. We first found a convenience store that sold “throw away” (prepaid) cell phones – for 78,000 yen – about $75 (48,000 for the phone / 30,000 for the prepaid service) we now had full cell service. Unfortunately the phone is all Japanese so we can’t figure out voice mail or e-mail service, but we can make and send calls. Even at a place with many foreign tourists (because of the Westin) most of the restaurants have no English menus. However almost all have plastic food models in the window so you can figure out what you want. Curtis speaks Japanese well (he used to work in Tokyo) so he could order off Japanese menus. We chose to eat a soba noodle dinner with Tempura. The views from the 32nd/33rd top floors of the city are spectacular and it was a clear night. Most of the restaurants at the top of Ebisu place charged a quite reasonable 800-2000 yen for entrees (about $7.50 - $18 US) but there weren’t many beef dishes available (more on this later). Considering this is a tall brand new skyscraper connected to a foreign hotel it was a pleasant surprise. After a tasty dinner we went back the the Westin and quickly fell asleep around 10pm Sunday night (5 AM Sunday in Seattle)
Monday – Day 2 After enjoying an all you can eat American buffet breakfast included in our Westin room rate, we ventured on the Tokyo Subway for the first time and went to popular neighborhoods at Akibahara, Shibuya, Shinjuku. The JR Yamanote line is a big circle with subway trains going each direction around the circle and brings you to most of the big neighborhoods. And of course we don’t have to pay thanks to JR Rail passes. The subways are clean, no graffiti or trash anywhere! There are little tunes which seem to be unique to each station signifying arrival of trains – kind of like the little electronic music made by video games each time you complete a task. The trains are surprisingly quiet and many of the people inside are dozing in and out of sleep – very little talking. Talking on cell phones is not allowed on the subways – I guess you don’t have to worry about it in New York since the subway makes too much noise to talk anyway. Every square inch of the subway car is covered with ads and you see many American celebrities endorsing products (Randy Johnson, Sandra Bullock) – I guess this is where the Simpson’s writers got the idea for the Mr. Sparkle episode. The stations are huge but the signs are in English as well as Japanese and are easy to navigate except for their large size (it would be just as hard to navigate the stations in a US city as a Japanese one). The ones with many connections especially with the bullet trains (Shinkansens) are especially confusing. Not only are there many shops like in US airports, but there are whole shopping malls built into the stations selling everything from furniture to clothing. My strategy to avoid having natives assume I spoke Japanese was to wear a Seattle Mariners jacket to indicate my origin – unfortunately, on our first subway journey there was one native wearing a New York Yankees jacket and another wearing a Seattle Mariners jersey. Oh well…
It was a cold rainy day in Tokyo so we try to stay indoors as much as possible – fortunately most of the big stores are connected directly with the main train stations. When we ventured outside we found neon signs and many people, kind of like a Times Square in every neighborhood. We start in Akibahara, Tokyo’s electric city. There are many electronic stores (kind of like Times square) but they are narrow and high – many different stores 6-8 floors high with a small showroom of different electronic goods on each floor. The tiny size of some of the new video cameras and laptops are impressive, but we don’t find many earthshaking new products, and most of the stores sell the same goods. I am especially outraged at one floor of one store that sells BB guns which are replicas of “famous” war weapons (AK-47s, Uzis, etc…) They sell police style riot gear and have posters of kids dressed up in war gear firing these guns – some are even automatic BB guns. Crazy! The same store had a floor devoted to X-rated cartoon DVDs which are popular in Japan. The multifloor shops highlight a big weakness in Japan – access for the handicapped. While the Americans with disability act remains a big challenge for American developers, you can really feel for the handicapped who have a big problem reaching many of the smaller train station platforms and many of the stores! Besides the stores, we found a Sega World video game parlor – uniquely Japanese games were mixed in with a multiplayer Bingo and multiplayer Horse Racing game were found. I played a game patterned on Dance Revolution where the player beats on a drum in synch with the music. After Akibahara, we went to Shibuya which is another neighborhood with a huge train station and many stores. There is an area called the “Food Show” which is a large bazaar of various take out foods from $1.00 rice balls and $50 cantaloupes (no kidding). This was also are first experience with butchers selling miniature cuts of steak by the gram! 150 grams which is 5 oz sells for $80-100….and we aren’t talking about filet mignon or choice New York steaks! It’s pretty incredible how much beef costs. We haven’t eaten at McDonald’s but I do wonder how they can charge reasonable prices $5-6 for our much loved value meals and still have beef? For the most part you can find any food you want but its all to go. The Japanese spend an extraordinary amount of time packaging your to go meals in nice little boxes, packed to avoid getting squashed and even with a cold chemical pack! Almost all the department stores have food courts in their basements where it is easy to find food (you just point or pick it out and pay for them) without speaking any Japanese. Its kind of funny walking down the very long corridors with small food stands on each side with merchants (usually young females) quietly but constantly speaking in Japanese I guess to stimulate business – their sales pitches are louder than a mumble but much quieter than the Pike Place Market fish sellers. Figuring out what is in some of the packages is a challenge when you don’t read Japanese. If you stay away from the $100 steak the food is quite reasonably priced. Some additional observations about the department stores: Like Nordstrom there are some good values and some ridiculous designer prices like $280 T-shirts. It is funny to hear music in English, everything from relatively new songs like Train, to old 80s classics from Lionel Ritchie to rap music artists also sorts of language which would get you thrown off the air in the US by the Federal Communications Commission. We ventured into a restaurant (one that had an English menu at the door) solo and I had a caesar’s salad with fried chicken for a reasonable $16. There’s no tipping in Japan so although the prices for most common foods (beef excluded, obviously) may run a little higher, without the need for a tip the prices aren’t much different than you’d expect in the US. Also, restaurants in obviously expensive buildings on high floors with great views don’t necessarily charge tons of money like in the US – I think its because there are so many restaurants in tall skyscrapers (and usually bunched together) so its not such a exclusive perk.
We finished the day in by spending the evening Shinjuku, a very busy area with many stores – think of 4 or 5 downtown Seattle Bon Marche’s lined up – all with food courts in their basements. You would think all the Japanese do is shop – I don’t think even New York has the retail space to compare with Tokyo. There are soooo many big stores in so many neighborhoods. It was raining pretty hard and was fairly chilly (in the low 40s) so we returned back to the Westin.
Tuesday – Day 3. The most adventurous part of our trip started very early – we caught the train at 5:30AM to go to the main Tokyo station – Japan’s Grand Central Station. From there we took the 6:36 AM Bullet train (Shinkansen) to Osaka, and then transferred to a different Shinkansen to Hiroshima. The 537 mile journey took 5 hours including stops and the transfer. Japan’s Shinkansens now go as fast as 180 miles per hour….its amazing! The seats are very comfortable and I think travel via Shinkansen is much better than by airplanes, at least if your not traveling thousands of miles. Both the conductor who checks tickets and the hostesses who go up and down aisles selling snacks and drinks stop to bow as they enter and exit each car even if they are just passing thru. Most of the riders on our trains were businessmen in their uniformly navy blue suits who mostly used the time to sleep. Its fairly easy to get around in stations, trains and the city as long as you know English – I’d go as far to say the vast majority of confusion (and there was lots) trying to find the right train and stops isn’t a language problem – we’d probably have much the same problem if the huge stations were in Atlanta – they are just so big and there are so many trains. Half of the Shinkansen audio stations that you can listen to on the train are either American popular music or lessons in conversational English. The biggest language barrier for us seems to be in the restaurants and we had to find places we could point to the food/pictures or places with English menus. Before traveling to Japan, we bought JR Rail passes for about $350 each – they were the Green Car (first class passes) although there really isn’t much different between Green Car and regular cars (Green car 2 – 2 seating vs regular car 2 – 3 seating). In fact there was no Green car between Osaka and Hiroshima so the only Green cars we rode in were between Tokyo to Osaka and then Kyoto to Tokyo).
After the 537 mile journey we took a street car to the Peace Park. We started out by finding a restaurant at the museum complex and I had a Chicken karaage meal while Traci had a chicken katsudon lunch which together cost around $25. After lunch we entered the Peace museum which went over the history of the city and its experience with the A-bomb. Some of the exhibits were fairly graphic, but milder than the Holocaust museum in Washington DC. There are authentic photographs along with multimedia presentations. In general it was well done and a fitting tribute to the victims. The Peace park is a rather large complex that includes the museum as well as a perpetual flame for victims. There are several areas where people bring origami Cranes in honor of a young leukemia victim who folded 1000 cranes in hopes of reversing the disease caused by radiation exposure. We then crossed the peace bridge to visit Hiroshima castle. While I was initially impressed by the structure, we quickly figured out the castle was destroyed by the A-bomb and the whole project was a replica. Disappointed that we don’t see Tom Cruise working on his samurai techniques we leave this “Hollywood” castle. We then hopped back on the Shinkansen and got off in Osaka which is basically the half way point between Hiroshima and Tokyo.
Osaka is a very large city with many large department stores of its own. We found a restaurant in the middle of one of the many department stores that had models of food in the window – I had a Udon / Shrimp tempura dinner for around $15. Afterwards we wandered around Osaka at night, and found a long covered street with shops lining each side. There are many video game parlors, Pachinko parlors, shops of every description, karaoke bars and hole in the wall restaurants. Toward the outer edge of the street from downtown there were more adult oriented entertainment venues so we headed back. We found a very impressive shopping mall in the heart of downtown with a gigantic Ferris Wheel on it. We paid $5 each and had a great view of the expansive city from the Ferris wheel and immediately after leaving found a Gelato place at the exit. Traci and I sampled the Gelato and I liked the strawberry one so much I had to order a second serving. The Gelato in Japan had been recommended to me, but I couldn’t understand why Japan would be a place with good Gelato. I know now it does. We then went to the train station and found the area with the subways. Its confusing in Japan because many of the largest stations have Shinkansen areas, regular trains (or as Seattle thinks of them – the dreaded light rail), and subways all with their own ticket counters, ticket machines, ticket gates and tracks. Further adding to the confusion is the fact that several different companies run the different modalities so you need different tickets, and our JR rail passes don’t work at other companies rail systems. Fortunately the JR rail passes do work on most of the Shinkansens (just not the real high speed Nozomi trains), and the Yamanote circle train line in Tokyo which is where we spend the bulk of our travel time Once we found the Osaka subway, we followed directions to Traci’s family home in Osaka – They maintain a house in Osaka which Traci’s cousin Miye currently lives in as she continues her education. While we don’t have any problems getting to the right culdesac, we can’t figure out what house it is especially since its 10pm at night. The addresses in Japan are difficult – there isn’t a consistent grid system like in the US – addresses are based on the neighborhood not street and house numbers are often in the order they were built. Fortunately we have the cell phone and figure out which house to enter. Japanese houses are smaller and don’t have central heating, something that can be a problem on 40 degree nights – but with enough blankets we have a pleasant sleep on the grass mat floor, still not quite the same as the Westin’s Heavenly beds…
Continued
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