Travel Crumbs

Going for my first visit to Fenway park today. I’ve always like the Boston Red Sox but only in the last 8 years or so began to follow them more closely. Two reasons for that, first my sister moved to Boston about 8 years ago and second Boston started to be a consistently good team in this time frame.

I am a cricket fan so for me Lord’s is the birth place of all that is good in the world of sports including all of the great American baseball parks. In America, Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, and Yankee stadium have special meaning. They are at the heart of baseball emotion. It’s nice to have new blood in the mix shaking things up but nothing beats a Red Sox v. Yankees matchup short of the Ashes. Now that I have a son I plan to take him to all of these famous sporting venues and do my best to instill in him the magnitude of their history and emotion. So maybe someday he can feel the same joy I do seeing a player like Ortiz hit a grand slam to beat the Yankees at Fenway.

Because Fenway has been in existence for so long and because it was built in the heart of the city there are loads of good bars and restaurants right around the park. For example we went to the Boston Beer Works which is steps away from the park. We did have to wait about 30 minutes or two pints before being seated. Also beware of a stupid rule they have of making people wait in the line outside the door even if they are part of a party already seated at a table, the wait to get a table at Boston Beer Works didn’t take long, of course this was a Wednesday night game and we were eating less than an hour before the game started. It’s not a long walk before or after the game from the park to Newbury street which has a plethora of good restaurants including Stephanie’s and a number of good curry places. If it is a night game and during the week many of the places further away from the park like Newbury street will start shutting down shortly after the game is over so walk quickly or leave a bit early if you want your vindaloo at one of the fine indian restaurants on Newbury.

If you do want to get tickets for the Red Sox, you need to plan ahead, this is one of the greatest baseball clubs of all times folks. If you can order before the season starts the official Red Sox site might work for you, but for me, I used stubhub.com and got 2 tickets exactly where I wanted to be on the first base line.

Boston is one of the great American cities. There is so much history embedded in downtown Boston that it’s overwhelming (so is New York but we won’t mention them here out of respect to Red Sox fans).

Southend and Southie are two different areas. Southend has “fashionable” men and brunch places where the employees wear pajamas, Southie has Ben Affleck and some good pubs.

You must do the duck boat tour once. They start near the Prudential building, best to buy your ticket early in the day for whenever you want to go for the ride later.

Great restaurants

• Fugakyu in Brookline (biggest sushi restaurant I’ve ever been to)
• Parish Cafe
• Troquet (wine bar next to Boston Commons on Tremont)
• Ming Tsai’s restaurant Blue Ginger

Copely Plaza and the Prudential building form a pretty decent size indoor mall that have all your mall type things and a pretty good Legal Seafoods. I recommend going to the top of the Prudential building at least once to get a feel for the scope of the city.

checklist for Boston:

• Go to a night game at Fenway (stubhub.com)
• Take a duck boat tour
• Walk down Newbury street and do some shopping
• Park under Boston Commons and run around the park, check out Boston Gardens across the street
• Go to the top of “the Pru”, the prudential building
• have brunch at 647 Tremont (brunch in your pyjamas)
• visit Faneuil Hall Marketplace

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I won’t be telling you about all the cool or family friendly places to go, not the best restaurants (save one mentioned by a fellow traveller as a must do, Mia Francesca’s), or the best hotels. I will be telling you about an average hotel with above average prices though. The Crowne Plaza at O’Hare was a pretty dreary experience. The price you pay during the week for this hotel is ridiculous, $209 + $27 in taxes. Taxes they’ll charge you even for a night you didn’t stay there if you were a no show. How can they? The state government or the hotel justify charging you taxes for absolutely no services or product rendered? That seems criminal to me, un-American at least eh?

The worst part about this hotel is the area around it, it’s a wasteland of nothing with little pockets of decent restaurants that are very long and sometimes freezing walks away. Most of the staff are just cordial enough not to be plainly called rude but you are constantly aware of that underlying rudeness ready to pop out. There is a DoubleTree right next door that is more than likely better and a Sheraton down the road that is closer to Higgins road which actually has restaurants rather than rows and rows of office buildings.

After passing on taking the train or a cab into the city thinking it would be too costly time and money-wise, I later found out that if there is no traffic you could probably get into the city with a 20 minute cab ride. Next time I won’t hesitate to visit the better part of this town because O’Hare is a shit hole and so is the Crowne Plaza.

One positive plug for O’Hare, it is definitely easier to get around in than the Atlanta airport so if you have to choose between the 2 stops, choose Chicago (unless a snow storm is predicted).

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Costa Rica is a non-stop 4 hour flight from Atlanta, Georgia but it’s galaxies away in temperature in the month of February. We went from overcast 40 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit to the upper 90s and sunny in a very short time. Delta Airlines offers non-stop flights to both international airports in Costa Rica, we happen to choose Liberia which was the closest airport to our ultimate destination Paradissus resort in Playa de Conchal. Paradissus offers all inclusive packages, including a constant flow of drinks around the largest pool in Costa Rica. There are different levels of service available and we highly recommend the Family Concierge package. This gets you two really important things, access to one of the most quiet and perfect locations around the pool and very attentive service as well as making dinner reservations for you via the poolside service attendants. Our constant service attendant at the pool was called Omar, Omar was fantastic, helped with the baby when he could, brought drinks and food whenever, brought toys for the baby and asked us every day if we’d like to make reservations for dinner and would then go and make them.

There were many things we would have liked to try available to someone at the resort including, diving, snorkeling, canopy tour(zip line), Sunset sailboat rides, and surf lessons (I will do this next time in Costa Rica!) but alas with a baby it’s difficult to do those things. Paradissus does offer daycare but upon inspection we just weren’t satisfied with the level of structure in place and the training of the staff. For someone single or a couple traveling with kids 8 or above you would have something interesting to do every day of the week. But for a family with babies or toddlers the largest pool in Costa Rica and the warmth of 90 degrees in February seemed pretty nice to us. At first I felt a little disappointed that I was subject to the pool area but very quickly I began to like it and relax and enjoy the sequence of sunning and then a dip in the pool and another piña colada. It seemed to me that most of the people that weren’t off on some adventure activity spent the majority of their time around the pool. The beach had a few people but didn’t seem to be used as much as you might think. My experience in places like the Florida pan handle has been the opposite, most people lounging on the beach and then maybe going for a dip in the pool at the end of the day. The beach outside of Paradissus was lovely but didn’t have the best setup as far as lounge chairs and I think had no service attendants. It was very much like leaving the protection of the castle to go out and hang around the mote.

I think Costa Rica and the Paradissus is an excellent destination, especially for people in the southern United States but I do have a few criticisms. Let’s start with the Liberia aeropuerto, what a mess for such a small airport. If you are a frequent Delta airlines don’t bother with the business class/First class line, or rather if you can get in that line and then hop over to the regular class line without cutting in the queue you are better off because they have 2 or 3 counters servicing that line and only 1 person handling the business class line. Don’t forget to pay your departure tax before getting in line. Yes, Costa Rica has a $25 per person exit tax and you must have a ticket saying you paid this and your passport to get past the first part of the ticketing line. If you are a Tenko hut family then you might go ahead and pay your departure tax at the resort you are staying at. You can pay this anytime during you trip and you can save yourself some time and hassle if you get it done before the last day and just keep it with your passports. Once you do pay your departure tax, manage to get your tickets and bags checked, get through immigration, and snake around through the people to get to your gate, you get to wait around in a lovely open air hangar. Good news is it probably took you so long to get to the gate that you don’t have to wait long. Delta airlines is not consistent here with regard to boarding, they board by row numbers and disregard any need for people with children or elderly to board first so they aren’t in everyone’s way when the masses board. I guess the memo about boarding by zones and medallion status never made it that far south or maybe it was hurting the bribery business.

That’s really my only criticism of Costa Rica, now for a little criticism of the Paradissus resort. While being a beautiful well manicured resort situated in a fantastic natural location, the food is very average. It is an all inclusive resort so I wasn’t expecting 2 Michelin star chefs but they don’t seem to take much advantage of the plentiful fish that are only moments away. I would expect them to make a big thing of the fresh catch brought in twice a day and cooked to your heart’s desire, the best fish tacos south of Taqueria Del Sol, and superb hamburguesas made from all the free roaming cow you see on the ride to the resort. I have to admit the breakfast buffet is fairly nice with freshly made waffles, pancakes, French toast, and omelets. Gordon Ramsay could make miracles with this place. Another criticism I have is the lack of wireless internet access throughout the resort. They do have internet access via cafe Teando at a very moderate cost or free if you have the Family Concierge package and they do have an access point available at the pool and in many of the rooms but you could not get access to the internet through that access point. So they have most if not all of the technology in place they just aren’t finishing it off well. If they would just do everything they do now plus these two things well I would probably vote for bringing the family here once a year, I’d definitely recommend it as a business retreat for people based in Atlanta. For the same time commitment to get to Destin Florida you can have 20 more degrees in warmth in the winter and you can see things you’ll never see in Florida like monkeys, macaws and iguanas.

So here’s your check list:

• Book the Family Concierge service if you want a nice area around the pool, no hassle restaurant reservations, and free internet at cafe Teando. You can negotiate the daily fee for this.
• Find HighTide adventures at the Resort entrance to the beach and book your outdoor adventures when you first get there.
• Pay for your departure tax at the resort the first day and keep the receipts with your passports
• Book a ride from and back to the airport before going down there. We got a bus that would fit 5 people for $80 each way.
• Make sure you get enough sun tan lotion before getting to the resort because the prices are absurd there, $25 for a regular size spray on bottle
• Bring a small spanish book and give it a go with the locals and resort workers, efficient way to learn!

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Armed with loads of cafe lattes and a Maclaren Techno XLR stroller we took on Stockholm. We strolled from Kungsholmen to Gamla Stan, Sodermalm and good ole’ Ostermalm (my favorite area) and my feet are bloody sore.

I really think you need to know where you’re going to find the great cafes and restaurants among the mass of tourist traps. Hopefully this blog helps you but also visit-stockholm helped me quite a bit. Reading about cafes and restaurants on that site gave me worthy destinations to attempt to find while strolling with the baby.

Of all the restaurants and cafes I visited in the 5 days we had in Stockholm, I would say that my favorite places were Café Crème, Muggen, East, and Annakhan with honorable mention for Saturnus for their cinnamon rolls.

Of course Stockholm can be a bit nippy just like Newcastle Upon Tyne for late August but I think I’d rather have that than sweating in ninety degree Atlanta weather.

I was happy to find Wayne’s coffee has free wifi with a purchase of any type however I was denied any surfing time there by the baby. Don’t go looking for a Starbucks, there aren’t any. After a week of Swedish coffee and lattes I miss Starbucks quite a bit.

I highly recommend the “Under the Bridges” boat tour which you can catch right across the street from the Grand Hotel. I really enjoyed getting to see the neighbourhoods on the other side of the lock and all the massive building projects they have going on at the moment in preparation for hosting a winter Olympics.

There is a place called Sweden House in Stockholm. This place is sort of a central repository for all things touristy. There is a shop with lots of Sweden souvenirs but the main area here is the information counter. You take a number and it will flash on a digital screen when it’s your turn. The people there can help with all sorts of tour information as well as hints on where to find a Swedish language book.

Even though it’s a fairly big city, Stockholm has more than its share of good hearted and helpful people. Witnessed personally by me, people opening doors for women pushing strollers, residents helping struggling tourists with directions, most shop workers and waitresses being very helpful to a couple travelling in a new city with a baby.

Places of note:

• Annakhan — great curry in Ostermalm
• Humlegarden park in Ostermalm
• East — Asian fusion, sushi, outdoor patio with big crowds towards happy hour
• Gondolen — in Sodermalm, great views and camera opportunities
• “Under the Bridges” boat tour — catch it in front of the Grand Hotel
• Café Crème — in Ostermalm, on Nybrogatten, packed at lunchtime
• Sheraton Hotel — just across the bridge from Gamla Stan (Old Town)

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