If you ever find yourself in south-central Nevada with a day to spare, you could impress your friends with stories of your drive along the Extraterrestrial Highway. Here’s my version of an impressive tale. I hope to read yours soon. It all begins in a small town called Caliente in central Nevada, about 240km north of Las Vegas. I think…
Category: America
A few gratuities for Brand USA
I see President Obama’s plan to increase selective tourism to the USA is about to commence next month with the launch of a marketing campaign called Brand USA, according to this recent New York Times article. The objective of the Brand USA campaign is to stimulate inbound tourism to the states from a select bunch of countries. According to the NY…
The Pisco King
Meet Johnny Schuler, Peruvian restaurateur, celebrity chef, tv personality, master distiller and Medal of Honour winner for his work in promoting the uniquely Latin American spirit, Pisco. We bumped into Johnny one freezing Friday over lunch in The Plaza Food Hall by Todd English when we stepped in from the cold to enter the Plaza Hotel in our dining ‘brag book’. We’d…
Mulholland Muddle
I’m not a big fan of Los Angeles. To me, the conurbation is a large collection of villages connected by a lacework of freeways with very little attractiveness or interest in between. This often presents a dilemma as sometimes we’re in LA on a stopover with time to explore the Greater LA area, but no hire car. Other times we…
The Art of Modern Restaurant Dining
Six months ago Michelle and I had dinner at The Modern – the flagship restaurant of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. It was a day, pretty much like any other, if your typical day includes… A 90 minute haircut resulting in a tonsorial crop shorter than your typical marine grunt. Or … Getting married in…
The Moki Dugway
We cheerfully bailed out of the disappointing Monument Valley Hotel early in the morning, with a drive along Utah’s Scenic Byways to Bryce Canyon City planned for the day ahead. I’d planned the route originally on Google maps, intending to capture as much of the spectacular Colorado Plateau scenery as possible. As the cellular reception was virtually non-existent, and SatNav…
Mammoth problems in the high Sierra
Two trips to the Sierra Nevadas fifteen years apart prove that the core message expressed in Split Enz’s refrain “history never repeats” is a load of crap. The Sierra last millenium One January, in the fag-end years of the last century, then-partner Michelle, and long-time mate Ding and I left the fleshpots of Las Vegas and set a course for San Francisco.…