Ray and Traci's Guide to Maui

We would like to present our list of favorites from one of the world’s most beautiful places. Every visit brings new places to see and new adventures to enjoy.

When to visit: The best time to visit Hawaii is when the crowds are small, prices are (relatively) low and the weather is good. The period between early October and mid-November bring the best deals – obviously you will save money on airline tickets and hotel bills but other bonuses like free room upgrades, easy access to popular restaurants and especially deep discounts for tourist activities will be enjoyed. Weather isn’t a problem although it can be a bit toasty early in October.

How to make a reservation: Hawaii is one of the most popular destinations for the tourism packaging industry. Virtually every airline that flies to Hawaii sells packages including airfares, hotel and rentals. You can also book flights, hotels and cars separately on individual company websites. Some hotels have lodging packages that include car rentals. I’ve found the internet tourism companies (pleasantholidays.com, expedia.com, etc…) have the best rates – We have booked our recent trips to Maui with pleasantholidays.com. You don’t get frequent flyer miles or frequent hotel stay miles with many of the discount packages – it pays to check to see if there is a significant price difference between booking a flight on the airline website and booking the car/hotel package with pleasantholidays.com separately (we have done that before) so you can pick out your seats and get frequent flyer miles. Also be aware that many hotels don’t add taxes to their quoted prices but many travel packagers give you a total price including tax. Costco’s travel service also has some good deals, especially for certain condo rentals – but you may have to wait for a long time (30-60 minutes) on the phone to get to an agent. Basically, you could go crazy checking all the permutations of discount travel reservations but at least take a look at the pleasantholidays.com website as in our experience have been the cheapest with the widest range of hotel options (total dive to five star resorts) to fit all tastes and budgets.

Where to Stay: There are two major tourist areas on Maui – Kaanapali Beach in Lahaina/Kapalua (West side of Maui) and Wailea/Makena which are toward the southern tip of the island. In addition, the Travel Channel has named Kihei which is a town on the way from the airport to Wailea as the place to find the best condo rental deals in Hawaii. We always stay in the Wailea area because it tends to be less windy, has great beaches, and is less congested. Advantages of the Kaanapali/Kapalua area include more tourist activities, more shopping and more restaurants. Halloween is a big deal in Lahaina and be prepared for gridlock if you want to drive around on that day. If you want to play golf, the 3 courses at Wailea and 2 courses at Makena are hard to beat. If you want to do a lot of activities/shopping it makes a lot of sense to stay in the Lahaina area to reduce driving.

A word about accommodations – There are a huge number of places to stay on Maui and one can find great deals if you do a little research. For adults guests where price is no object, Kapalua has the Ritz-Carlton and Wailea has the Four Seasons Maui. Whether staying or just strolling through the grounds, the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort on Kaanapali Beach in Lahaina is one of the most beautiful resorts anywhere and boasts a rich variety of animals in an artificial tropical zoo. We like staying at the Grand Wailea Resort with its water park including a collection of interconnected pools and water slides. Families may want to stay at the classic Wailea Ekahi Village, a collection of comfortable condos next to the beautiful Wailea Beach. It pays to figure out what activities you want to do before deciding on a hotel – it makes no sense to spend lots of money on the Grand Wailea if you want to spend most of your time windsurfing on the other side of the island. For the most part, all the beaches on Maui are great for most vacationers who want to lie on the sand and play in the surf. Specific activities like surfing and windsurfing require going to beaches away from the tourist areas for the best conditions and teaching. Also keep in mind people who stay in the hotels of a resort area tend to get better tee times and preferential greens fees. When looking for a place to stay on Maui its helpful to start at a travel website like pleasantholidays.com, expedia.com or hotels.com to get lists of hotels, price ranges and amenities available. From a list of potentials you can look at various internet sites like yahoo travel and the travel channel to look at specific comments by past patrons.

Ray and Traci’s Favorite Places to Eat

1. Azeka’s Ribs & Snack Shop – Many places sell marinated beef ribs – “Kal-bi Ribs”, “Korean Ribs,” but Azeka’s Ribs are world famous since 1976 and are found in Azeka’s snack shop in Kihei. You can buy complete prepared meals with ribs or better yet, buy 1 pound of marinated uncooked ribs per person and have your own barbecue! If you eat at one place during your visit to Maui, make it Azeka’s Ribs!


2. Sansei Restaurant & Sushi Bar – Two locations are found on Maui, one in Kihei and one in Kapalua and this restaurant was featured on Rachael Ray’s $40 show on Maui. Food is half price as a late night special!


3. Stella Blues – Looking for a “regular” restaurant to take a break from plate lunches and delicious ribs? Try Stella Blues in Kihei which has a nice selection of breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Seafood, vegetarian dishes, pancakes and desserts – they are all available.


4. Hakone Restaurant at the Maui Prince Hotel (Makena) – On Saturday nights (we found that the date changed from Monday to Saturday nights on our last visit), Hakone has an all you can eat Japanese buffet including sushi and all sorts of Japanese foods. The buffet is pricy ~ $50, but the amazing spread of all you can eat delicious foods can’t be beat.


5. Humuhumunukunukuapua’a – Named after Hawaii’s state fish, Humu’s is a floating restaurant at the Grand Wailea Hotel. Below the restaurant swims a variety of hungry fish that love to munch on pieces of bread diners throw into the water. Besides the fish show, you can find a delicious $50 steak and lobster entrée found among choices of fish and meat entrees with Hawaiian influences. To keep the meal somewhat economical, stay away from the drinks!


6. Aloha Mixed Plate – The plate lunch is a Hawaiian institution: it includes a main fish or meat entrée, rice, and macaroni salad. Aloha Mixed Plate has been a favorite on the  and is located in Lahaina behind the Cannery Mall.


7. Da Kitchen – Looking for a cheap and filling meal in Kihei? Look no farther than Da Kitchen! (A location in Kahului also exists). Salads, Burgers, Steaks, Ribs – its all here and cheap, cheap, cheap! Warning – do not have lunch here before a big dinner – the huge meals will ruin your appetite.


8. Longhi’s (Locations in the Shops at Wailea mall and the original location in Lahaina) – Looking for a place for a great breakfast? Longhi’s fits the bill – fresh fruit, French Toast, Pancakes, etc…Good food!

Fun on Maui

Maui is full of tourist activities, many of which we recommend. Popular attractions are often offered by multiple businesses with wide ranges of prices. Taking the absolute cheapest tour on a mountain bike down Haleakula is probably not the way to go. On the other hand it is easy to overpay for many activities. There are many tourist activity shops that offer “discounted” rates for many businesses (and they also want to try and sell you time shares at the same time). Many businesses have websites that offer web discounts for reservations, something to think about especially for expensive tours like helicopter rides. Finally, travel packagers like Expedia and pleasantholidays.com have activities as options to their Hawaii packages at significant discounts. Buying in advance often saves money but limits your choices of which company to patronize.

1. Snorkeling at Molokini – Want to see schools and schools of colorful fish? Several different companies offer the Snorkeling at Molokini tour. We signed up for the Prince Kuhio boat – A tour typically includes an early morning boat ride to the Molokini Marine Reserve (about 1 hour off Maui), snorkel equipment, a barbecue lunch and a return trip which passes by some giant turtle areas. Once you reach the reef, an amazing number of colorful fish inhabit the area. Some tours offer a Snuba option which is basically scuba diving with the air supply based on the ship, but you are probably better off swimming around with snorkel equipment to see the various fish. Flotation devices provided by the tour company make the snorkeling relatively easy and you can spend as little or as much time in the water.


2. Mountain Biking down Haleakala – Like the Molokini snorkel tours, several companies offer a bike excursion down the Maui volcano. We took the Cruiser Bob tour which emphasizes the safety of the bikes. If you want to bike down Haleakala, be careful to pick a tour with safe bicycles and one where the tour van follows the biking party down. You do not want to take a tour that just dumps you off the top of the volcano and leaves you on your own to make your way down. This tour is more physically demanding than any other – people have died on the mountain, mostly by colliding into an oncoming bus. It is also easy to fall off the road and fall down the mountain. The scenery is spectacular and the downhill bike ride is quite fun but be aware of the dangers.


3. Jet Skiing at Lahaina – Unlike the mountain bike tours, the jet skiing offered in Lahaina is much safer than jet skiing almost anywhere else. You take the tour from Kaanapali Beach in Lahaina, in front of the Hyatt Regency Maui – a rubber raft takes you to a platform just offshore where you ride a jet ski in a specially marked area. The ocean surf provides waves for jumping on and you don’t need to worry about running into boats. If you enjoy jet skiing or want it try it for the first time, this is the place to go.


4. Helicopter tour of Maui – We took the Blue Hawaiian helicopter tour of Maui and enjoyed it. Much of the island is only accessible from the air and the beauty of Maui is magnified by a helicopter tour. You will see the road to Hana and see first hand why you don’t want to drive it – going to Hana in the air is so much more enjoyable. Gorgeous waterfalls inaccessible by ground are seen although we took the ride after an unusual dry period and many of the water features were dry. Since everything in Maui is expensive (especially gasoline) the Maui tours are not cheap but for those looking to see all of the beautiful island might consider splurging on a flight.


5. Scuba Diving – Several companies offer scuba diving tours and classes. One can take a 1-2 hour introduction class/tour or enroll in a several day long class leading to full certification. I took an introductory class at the Grand Wailea which takes place in a special 12 foot deep scuba pool. After completing the swimming pool class he took a 1 hour dive off the beach around a reef. The reef tour included an introduction to a small octopus as well as a drive by of a giant sea turtle. Scuba diving is interesting but getting used to the dry compressed air as well as the uneasy sensation of breathing under the surface is difficult. In general, scuba is somewhat more difficult than it appears leading to my conclusion that snorkeling off Molikini is the best way to see pretty fish.


6. Shopping - The main airport is in Kahului and a Costco can be found just outside the airport. Kahului also has the stores like Home Depot and Wal-Mart. The main shopping center for Maui residents is Ka'ahumanu Center. Inside this large shopping center are most of the chain stores you’d find at home including a Sears store. Maui has four main shopping areas that cater to the tourists. The Shops at Wailea is a collection of upscale shops and boutiques. In Lahaina, two main areas of shopping attract tourists. The Cannery Mall which is on the main highway thru the town has a food court, a Safeway, a Starbucks and various T-shirt and souvenir shops in a fully enclosed shopping area. Lahaina’s Front Street is the main tourist trap with a strip mall, collection of shops selling souvenirs of every kind, Bubba Gump Shrimp Company Restaurant, and the Wharf Cinema Center with more shops and restaurants. The fourth and largest tourist shopping area is Whaler’s Village in Kaanapali with restaurants, shops and boutiques.


7. Luaus – A visit to Maui isn’t complete without attending one of the luaus available both in the Wailea and Lahaina areas. Luaus are all you can eat extravaganzas including a whole pig which is cooked underground in a pit. Beef, Chicken and fish entrees are also available. Luaus also include beverages like Mai Tais and entertainment including hula dancing, music, drums and fire dancers twirling torches to the amazement of stuffed patrons.


8. Parasailing was available at the Lahaina harbor and we decided to try it out. While flying along the Maui Beach at 800 feet was quite exciting, the parasailing experience is probably not much different (and probably less interesting) than doing the same thing along the Seattle waterfront in the middle of summer.

Pictures from Maui

A beautiful Maui sunset

Colorful fish of Molokini

Mountain bike down this volcano

Scuba diving in an Octopus' Garden

Here is the end of the road to Hana

Pictures from Holidays in New York

View of Wall Street from the Empire State Building

Radio City Music Hall's Holiday Show

Stars and Music on Fifth Avenue by Saks

Holiday Skating at the Rock

Empire State Building's Christmas Lights

Holidays in the Big Apple

Inspired by scenes in movies such as Home Alone and Miracle on 34th Street, Ray and Traci decided to brave the cold temperatures and visit New York City during the December holiday season. Every December, an international medical conference is held in Washington DC and on this occasion a three day post conference was planned for our second visit to the Big Apple.

Before traveling to NYC in December, it is important to remember two things – it is cold and very expensive. Ray typically spends a lot of time studying travel sites looking for good deals at higher end hotels. On this occasion, the strategy backfired as prices did not appreciably fall despite planning 6 months prior to the trip so were forced to pay - uggh -the dreaded rack rate for the first time ever. Interesting enough, the USA Today ran an article about the high prices of hotels in NYC this December – even bare bones discount chains were getting $370 for Times Square area rooms.

In December, New York has beautiful holiday decorations but also cold weather. The 27 degree temperature made packing lots of winter clothing mandatory and discouraged some traditional tourist activities like the ferry to Ellis Island/Statue of Liberty.

We decided to travel from Washington DC to NYC’s Penn Station on the heavily taxpayer subsidized Amtrak (and given the number of empty seats on our train we can see why it is not profitable). Train travel, while not nearly as exciting as riding the Japanese bullet trains, was a nice change – viewing rural areas along with big cities was both interesting and humbling. Our train ride took 3 hours and 20 minutes – note the Acela trains are 20 minutes faster and make the same stops (so the extra 50% fare isn’t worth it).

After arriving at Penn Station we tried to get a cab to take us to the Sheraton at Times Square. Lesson #1: It is hard to get a cab in NYC when you need one! Study the subway maps ahead of time and plan ahead. After waiting in 30 degree weather at the Penn Station cab stand we decided to lug our bags back down into the subway and rode past 4 stops to get to Times Square and the Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers. Fortunately our rack rate room was ready when we arrived shortly after 12pm. Lesson #2: New York has its own standards for hotel rooms. Stories about tiny rooms abound – beds placed at angles so the door can open, poor heating, inconsistent water temperature, complete ignorance of the word “complimentary” – Our room was small but navigable, cold but not frigid, and clean so I guess we should feel fortunate even though we had to pay the “rack rate.”

From the Sheraton which is located on the north part of Times Square we sauntered down to the famous “TKTS” office where ½ price show tickets are sold the day of performances. Given our on time arrival in NYC we tried to see a Wednesday matinee show of “Mamma Mia” but they only had obstructed seating so we chose to get tickets to see the Holiday Spectacular by the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall. Having a few hours before the show, we decided to eat at Maxie’s Delicatessen in Times Square. Traci had a bowl of soup but Ray was quite hungry and had a tasty $15.95 steak. We found that reasonably priced food is quite available even in the Times Square area and suggest looking at menus (most are available on the internet) for good food values. From Maxie’s we wandered up legendary 5th Avenue. Christmas decorations abound in New York’s shopping district as stores try to out decorate each other. Ray stopped in the famous St. Patrick’s Cathedral – quite an amazing architectural sight (both inside and out). Next, we went inside New York’s monument to egomania – Trump Tower. Within the halls of fired apprentices reside establishments devoted to the Donald, all boasting the world’s best something or another. Interestingly enough no high end jeweler has opened shop in Trump Tower – instead is a rather conspicuous costume jewelry store. Ray did sample some strawberry ice cream at Trump’s shop and found it good but hardly the world’s best. Next we saw the Christmas Spectacular. As expected the show consisted of musical numbers, dancing, and several Santa Clauses. After 1 hour 10 minutes, the Rockettes and Santa left the stage and on came a rather mundane performance of the traditional nativity scenes. The holiday show is a New York institution but think about getting ½ price tickets and skipping the nativity scene.After leaving Radio City Musical Hall we wandered around the Rockefeller Center and found a nice Soup/Salad/Sandwich place called Bocca where Traci had more soup and Ray had a custom tossed Caesar Salad. Time seems to pass especially fast in New York and we returned to the Sheraton to rest up for a very busy day.

We started Thursday by purchasing tickets for the Grey Line Tour Bus (basically you buy a ticket that gives you 48 hours to travel any of their 4 major NYC tours and the ability to hop on and off at various stops). We started by taking the tour bus to Macy’s (claims to be the largest store in the world). It didn’t look much different than the Seattle Macy’s but it has several eateries and a really cool gingerbread replica of the store. A block from Macy’s is the famous Empire State Building and we ascended to the 86th floor observation deck to view New York on a cold but clear day. The view was quite amazing – Statue of Liberty, Central Park, New Jersey – all from a 360 degree outdoor viewing platform. From the Empire State Building we took the subway to Chelsea where Traci’s favorite TV channel (The Food Network) originates from. We found the Chelsea Market in a rather non-descript building – many different eateries and a high end grocery store occupy the first floor. Chelsea Market is certainly no Pike Place market but Ray found a good slice of NY pizza (in New York carnivore pizza is similar to meat lovers) as well as good gelato. Unfortunately the Food Channel studios were on upper floors and Traci wasn’t able to score tickets to an Emeril taping. We hopped back on the subway and decided to get on an uptown tour bus which headed to Harlem. Other than the Harlem Globetrotters neither of us have heard too many positive things about the neighborhood so it was quite illuminating to see how much change has occurred – lots of new development (even President Clinton has his office in Harlem), renovated brownstones and lots of stores mix in with historic landmarks such as the Apollo theatre. On the way to Harlem we passed by the Dakota apartments where John Lennon was being remembered on the 25th anniversary of his tragic death. On the return loop we passed by the Upper East side where we learned that 90201 is not the wealthiest zip code in the world – New York holds the title. Large apartment buildings line the eastern border of Central Park most of which have 7 or 8 figure values. After a brief stop at the Sheraton, we walked to the St. James theatre for one of the highlights of the trip – seeing The Producers. Thanks to purchasing tickets 6 months in advance we sat in the second row center stage and both found the show extremely enjoyable. Sitting so close to the actors really added an exclamation point to live theatre. From the Producers we went to a restaurant very near the Sheraton called the Eatery. Ray enjoyed a Macaroni and Cheese dish while Traci had a delicious udon noodle salad. The Eatery had a nice après broadway show atmosphere. After dinner (now close to 1AM) we returned to the Sheraton and collapsed.

A snowstorm hit NYC early Friday morning and we got a somewhat late start on our day. While 4 or so inches covered the city, NYC continued to move along – even the double decker tour buses kept operating although there weren’t many takers for the outdoor roof seats. We spent the snowy morning in the Museum of Natural History in Central Park. Our previous tour guide recommended the butterfly aviary and the dinosaur areas so we started there. The butterfly aviary is a greenhouse like area where butterflies fly around and on you. The dinosaur areas have both reconstructed skeletons and reproductions of prehistoric creatures in various activities of daily living. Besides those exhibits the massive museum has areas devoted to exhibits about the universe, minerals, and a huge collection of stuffed animals – from the mundane pigeons of Central Park to exotic and extinct animals. After the museum we went to the gorgeous brand new Time Warner Building in Columbus Circle. This new building contains an exclusive shopping area, a Whole Foods Market, an exhibition with Samsung’s latest and greatest electronics as well as the New York studios for CNN. In contrast to the NBC tour which we took on a previous trip to NYC, this experience brought to light the many people who report on the 24 hour news behind people like Anderson Cooper and Lou Dobbs. From CNN we met up with Ray’s cousin David at the Sheraton and took the subway to Chinatown where a scrumptious dinner at Joe’s Shanghai was enjoyed by all. Joe’s Shanghai has a location north of Times Square but we wanted to see Chinatown and made the journey on the subway. Little Italy is adjacent to Chinatown and was well decorated for the holiday season. We completed the evening by returning to Fifth Avenue and enjoying the holiday lights of this exclusive shopping district. Highlights included Rockefeller Center with its Christmas tree and skating rink and Saks Fifth Avenue with large lighted snowflakes which sparkled with choreographed holiday music. We also traveled to the “Top of the Rock” where a multilevel observation deck allowed stunning night views of New York including the holiday illumination of the Empire State Building. After another exhausting day we returned to the Sheraton.

Our final day in NYC started at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). MoMA is quite a place – the top floor has traveling exhibits; during our visit we saw lots of devices created to make people feel better. We saw tents designed to house homeless people over New York building vents, miniature helicopters for spying, even a riot suit to protect demonstrators confronting police. As you descend downward you go from exhibits of Van Gogh and Picasso to some really weird stuff – even exhibits where nothing is there (dark rooms, blank pieces of paper). MoMA definitely has art for every taste. From the museum we made a final trip thru Times Square and stopped at the most jammed packed Toys R Us you can imagine – complete with an indoor Ferris wheel that families stood in line to ride. After a few minutes in this toy store you become quite thankful for internet shopping. After our sojourn into Times Square we met our car service driver at the Sheraton (Lesson #3: arrange your airport transportation on the internet ahead of time – whole sites are set up just to compare car services and ratings). Our driver parked in front of the wrong Sheraton - The Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers is across the street from the Manhattan Sheraton so it probably happens a lot. As we departed NYC thru the Holland tunnel we got a quick view of the Garden State – New Jersey. After listening to our driver, I strongly urge everyone to never rent a car and drive in New Jersey. Poor roads, poor drivers, and widespread insurance fraud plague New Jersey drivers. Fortunately we only had one major near collision and reached Newark for an uneventful flight back to Seattle.

Ray and Traci's Favorite Places in Las Vegas

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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