Back to pedestrian life

On wednesday, I'll be becoming a pedestrian with all the fun things that go with it. Getting soaked on my way to the subway by heavy rain that chooses exactly the time when you're out of reach of an umbrella to start falling. Having to rush after work on pm shift to catch the subway before it stops running. Being held hostage by union people who decide to go on strike whenever they want an extra day off. Getting mugged and so on and so on...
Good thing is if I don't get mugged I'll be using my newly acquired I-pod and read all this books I bought long time ago. I like reading but I hardly find the time to open a book lately.
I was considering the possibility of renting a car whilst my car is being serviced but eh! if I can have a little fun riding the subway...
The car has got a lot of work to be done on it. 160 000 Km is starting to be a lot for a petrol engine. Transmission belt is making very strange noise, front brake discs are worn out according to the MOT guy and I couldn't agree more with that. I almost ran into a car that pulled in front of me the other day because of the brakes. I think I'll do the work that needs to be done on the car and sell it. I checked the ads on internet and found the same car with a lot less mileage and a V6 for 13 000 €. The price of second hand car running on petrol is going down faster than the diesel ones, especially big engine. With the price of petrol these days, people are very wary of spending to much in their car. As I don't care, because I think that driving should be fun, no matter the cost, I'm quite happy to see that I can score a V6 for the price of a small new car!
I still need to speak to my bank manager about a little loan to buy the car.
On our holidays, we got to be pedestrians a few times. And see what you get when your in Sequoia National Park when the sun is just rising. Just beautiful.

It's not the fog it's that: Hell and heaven in the same picture!

That's what they called a prescribed fire. It's supposed to clean the forest and bring life to it too. They should come and see in Corsica every summer how fire is cleaning the forest! There's none left! Funny thing is, eventhough it was a "prescribed fire", it was getting out off hand and after a little while we saw the fire fighters coming to stop it! You should have seen the american tourists there taking the piss at them.

Breakfast

I found the breakfast in the States very interesting. I, sometimes, fancy something salty in the morning, like steak or cheese. I must say that I found the bacon and eggs very addictive and would it be not for my health I would have had that kind of breakfast every morning! A complete meal with a salty start and a sweet finish with the pancakes. I love those pancakes too and maple syrup! They're nothing compare to the feeble attempt made by McDonald's in France to show us what a pancake is. For one they're enormous. They're about 3 times bigger than the McDo's ones. Maple syrup is much better too. We had to buy a pancake mix and maple syrup to make them at home. So far we've resisted the temptation to make some just by pure lazyness! A breakfast like this brings you through the morning no problem. Thing is, if you're American, you probably will need a snack break around 10am to be able to stay full until lunch! The only healthy attempt we had, was at the Four seasons Las Vegas by the pool on a glorious morning. We indulged ourselves to a fruit plate and a raspberry smoothie. Just nice!

My first breakfast in L.A

Going healthy by the pool (don't want to look anything near all those fat people seating by the pool!)

In Death Valley, you sure won't die of starvation

Last breakfast before heading back to France. I know it's enormous but that was our last one so...

Amerifood

My little trip to the States showed me quite a few sides of the food scene. It ranges from Yumi! to No thanks! Ever wonder why there is so many overweight people in the States? The answer is so simple : there is a restaurant everywhere you look. Walking just 100 meters in the street, you come across Taco bell, Jack in the Box, Subways, Burger King, etc, etc. Decent restaurants were hard to find if you're not familiar with the city. I must say the best meal we had was at the Craftsteak at Las Vegas MGM Grand. Uta had a friend there who used to work with her in Paris. He actually happens to be the director of the restaurant, and so he invited us to try their steaks. What a treat we had! We just wanted to go for a main course, or entrée as they say (I will never understand why they using a word that means "starter" in French to name a main course). Rachel, our waitress, cute and very nice, talked us into getting a starter otherwise Alex, Uta's friend, is gonna kill her if we did order only a main course. So we went for something light, Tomatoes salad and salad. Obviously, it wasn't enough for them so they threw up a couples of grilled quail legs!

That was excellent and already we were feeling full! Then, Uta had her 10 oz Chateabriand filet and I had the 16 oz rib-eye. The meat was so tender you could almost cut it with your fork!


It came with onion rings and mash potato but again we had a few extras like sweet corn and pan fried peppers.

To digest I had a shot of Ciroc, which is actually a French Vodka made out of grapes. I had never heard of that brand before and I must admit that the fact it is made with grapes gives a sweet taste to it.
The other decent meal we had was still in Vegas at the Red Square at the Mandalay Bay hotel. The decor is obviously Communism orientated with a big decapitated statue of Lenin at the entrance complete with a nice bird poo finish to it as if it came right from the Red Square!

The thing that interested me most in that restaurant was their Vodka list, over 100 vodkas! I had a Stolichnaya Vanilla, Kettel One Citroen and Stolichnaya 100's proof. To absorb all that Uta had angel pasta with chicken and basil in a tomato sauce and I had the tagliatelle with Maine lobster and black truffle.


It was just the doctor ordered! Big chunks of lobster and I couldn't resist the black truffle! Then I had a chocolate "moelleux" with vanilla ice-cream and fresh strawberries.

Being in the States for the first time, we had to have junk food. I think that if they took the bread of everytime, they will actually be able to do eadible food not too heavy. Of all the breads we tried, I found that they are all baked with too much sugar. It's almost like if you're eating a brioche without the buttery taste. Again no wonder American are fat. Imagine eating that almost every day lunch and dinner. And I'm not talking about the breakfast. I will come back to that later.
First encounter was in the plane. Ham and cheese sandwich in a brioche and Pretzel and a little Mars for our afternoon break before arriving at Philadelphia. (What the F**k is that!)

In Los Angeles at a shopping centre, I had a chicken teriyaki burger from "Great Steak" with all the options : cheese and onions! No taste just stuffy food. The fries were soft and not crispy at all!

In San Francisco we went to "Bistro Burger" (what a name!), and Uta went for the California Burger, avocado and salad

, and I for the bacon and cheese burger.

The good thing was that they actually asked me how I wanted my meat and they quite got it right, as I like it rare. The burger was excellent very tastefull and the meat, as it was rare, was tender and juicy (please Adrian or Austen no sexual comments on that part, I'm talking about food!). I ordered a large portion of curly spicy fries, which were not spicy at all!

Uta had a banana and strawberry milk shake and it was very good!
Well that's all I have to say for today. I'll probably do a post on breakfast later.

Back from the Yanks

Well, I'm back from the States. Very interesting country and a lot of pictures to share. I'm a bit jetlagged at the moment, 9 hours difference between San Francisco and Paris! We've tried quite a few of their internationally reknown cuisine! We've tried all kind of accomodations from 5 stars to cabin tent in Yosemite where we had the coldest night ever. I'll be back on that and many more in a future post.
Being there for the first time, I was impressed by how stupid they take the people. People in store or hotel spoke to us as if we were 12 years old with Down syndrom. At the Grand canyon, we bought an electrical adapter and the shopkeeper thought it will be necessary to tell us by pointing at the two ends of the adaptor :"you plug this side to the wall and your outlet on this side". Well thanks very much for the tip but I think I can manage to figure out by myself how this thing works! Same thing in the bus, a recorded message said every time the bus was going to depart "please hold on" I mean everyone who has taken the bus knows that bus drivers are not the smoothest of drivers! I'm sure they are this cautious because of law suits. If the message was not played and a person will injure himself falling whilst the bus was accelerating, he could sue the bus company for not warning him to hold on!
My first encounter with this type of behaving happened at Philadelphia airport. We arrived at terminal A and where supposed to go to terminal E to check in for our connecting flight. We came across a very big queue of people waiting to pass through customs, one by one removing all metallic items and shoes!

We could see from there that a few meters down the road there was an entrance for the other terminals and that we could access it by going out of our terminal and follow the pavement to the other entrance. I then asked one of the guy that worked theer if we could access terminal E by the entrance of terminal C which looked less crowded than ours. Answer of the guy :"yes you coud but I'm not promising you will be quicker". All I wanted to know was if we could go to the other terminal and be able to reach terminal E by this doors, not if I will be quicker. What if he did not say that to me, could I sue his ass because I had to wait longer there?