Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Italy Travelog #5
Rome - Saturday, 24 May 2025, 9pm

After we checked into our hotel just after 3pm there was plenty of time left in the day. For us it had already been a long day. 4pm Saturday is 7am Saturday in San Francisco. With the time changes we'd basically been up for most of 24+ hours, with only a nap of 2 or 3 hours on the cramped airplane flight for sleep. But even a little sleep is better than none, and the summer-y daylight in Rome helped us wake back up this afternoon.

We made reservations for dinner with the help of the hotel concierge and then walked out to the nearby plaza for a bit of shopping, about half a mile away.



A few things struck me about the convenience store in the plaza. One, it had fresh fruits and vegetables and meat and bread. ...Okay, it was more of a small grocery store than a convenience store, but for something the size of most US convenience stores it had more than just prepackaged crap, hotdog- and taquito rollers, and a beer cave. And two, while it didn't have a beer cave it had some surprisingly cheap wines. I could've bought a likely decent Italian table wine for the equivalent $2.35. Instead, though, I just bought a bottle of beer and some cookies for after dinner plus a can of soda for the next morning. It was definitely better to buy the soda for 0.95€ here than 8€ back at the Waldorf Astoria.

Speaking of the Waldorf, we went back with our bags of shopping before dinner. It would've been nice to combine the trips into a single outing, but restaurants around here don't even open for dinner until 7:30! We did our shopping at 6, and the little plaza certain wasn't interesting enough to hang out in for 90 minutes. I mean, we did look around since we had time. It's the kind of place you're done with in 5 minutes.

So, we chilled back at the hotel for an hour then walked back out, straight through the plaza again, to the restaurant the concierge had recommended, Da Luciano.

What sold Hawk on Da Luciano was— aside from the fact it was the first restaurant the concierge suggested that didn't involve the words "The menu is mostly fish" (since Hawk doesn't like fish)— was homemade pasta. Nonna makes all the pasta fresh in the morning. And to go with the pasta they have both fish and not-fish. 😅



The concierge also told us the white pizza on focaccia was a can't-miss. We didn't see a focaccia white pizza on the menu. ...Yes, I speak enough Italian— or at least enough pizza-Italian— to parse the words in Italian on the menu. So instead we took a flyer on a basic margherita pizza as an appetizer. OMG it was good! Hawk even liked it— and she hates most pizza.

The margherita pie was a good pick as an appetizer. It was light, sweet, and savory all at the same time. And the cracker thin crust— "It's on matzah!" Hawk quipped— was light and tasty. It left us plenty of room for our secondi.



Hawk ordered a plate of gnocchi. The potato pasta is her go-to pick in Italian cuisine. And hearing that it was homemade here was the key thing that go her excited to go. And Nonna's gnocchi did not disappoint. Hawk quickly pronounced it the best gnocchi she's ever had.



My secondi was veal saltimbocca. On the menu it's "Saltimbocca alla romana", but yeah, it's veal pounded thin and sauteed in a pan with ham (prosciutto) and a white wine based gravy. BTW, saltimbocca is a fun word. It means, literally, "jump into the mouth".

The saltimbocca was positively delicious. Yes, things were jumping in my mouth. 😂 I don't know if I can call it "the best I've ever tasted" like Hawk's gnocchi, though. I mean, I can, but that's a meaningless comparison as this is only the about the 3rd time ever that I've had saltimbocca as it's not common in US Italian restaurants... or the few times I've seen it on the menu it's been hideously expensive so I've tended to pick something else. This dish was I think 14€, so quite a bargain. And yes, of the 3 total meals of saltimbocca that I've had, this was at least tied for the best. 🤣

Now it's about 9pm and we're back at our hotel room. We're sitting on the balcony, having just enjoyed the sunset. I figure I'll go to bed by 10am as we'll have a busy day tomorrow touring in Rome.

Sunday we made a day trip out to Zim Zim Falls. It's a fairly tall waterfalls in a fairly remote corner of the Bay Area. It's in Napa County, but not the part you think of when you hear "Napa Valley". There are no wineries, tasting rooms, or hot-spring lodges nearby. It 's out in the wilderness.

We rolled out of our garage just before 9:30am, having slept in a bit and then waited to see if we were up for a big day outdoors. It seemed like we were, so we filled water in our packs, stuffed changes of clothes in a sack, and set out for the day.

Getting to Zim Zim always feels like a bit of adventure in and of itself. The past few times I've thought of the road trip as having two parts, but this weekend I've realized it's really three.

Part One is zooming along interstate highways up to Cordelia, California. If you're not a local you might be wondering, "Where?" It's the small town on the edge of the Bay Area where I-680 ends at I-80— or where 680 begins as it forks off from 80, depending on your perspective. For us it's also a typical spot for an early lunch break on this trip. There's a Del Taco here, and eating at Del Taco is one of our guilty pleasures. We only get to do it on road trips, though. This one 73 miles away is practically the closest one to us!

Part Two of the trip is driving country roads up through Solano and Napa Counties. There are wineries back here, unlike what I said in the first paragraph, above. But the wineries are in the southern part of the leg of this trip, in the Suisun Valley geographical area.

Part Three of the drive starts as we turn off of Route 128 onto Berryessa Knoxville Road. In the past I've thought of this as an extension of part 2, but then each time I've gotten frustrated at how long it takes. Sunday I measured it. It's 24 miles. And the last several of those miles are slow— actually slower and slower each year— because the road is in increasingly poor shape as it climbs above Lake Berryessa. Notably the road involves 3 water crossings to get to the trailhead for Zim Zim.



This weekend two were dry and the third had only an inch or so of water flowing across the road bed. But that wasn't the hard part of the drive. No, the part where I was thinking, This is probably the last year we drive here in our sports car convertible, was the crumbling road itself. The potholes are getting worse and worse.

Well, right around 12:30 we got to the trailhead. The drive had taken 3 hours, including our stop for brunch at Del Taco. Time to hike!

I mentioned recently that March 2025 has been a great month for over-achieving my New Year's resolution to try new restaurants in the area. Y'know, that New Year's resolution from... 2023. 🤣

About 10 days ago I was coming home from a client meeting in San Jose and was trying to figure out where to grab lunch. My Plan A had been to get lunch with the customer, or at least with my sales colleagues, but everyone else had places they wanted to get to quickly. And frankly I had to get back in reasonable time, too, as I had a string of afternoon meetings to join. I looked to see what restaurants were along my driving route. I was just about to settle for one of many familiar chain restaurants when I saw another option: a pizzeria that specialized in personal-sized pizzas. I love pizza— I mean, look, I have a tag for pizza, and my Apple News app offers me "Pizza" as a news topic— so I decided to give it a try.



While "Pizza California" sounds like it's another chain restaurant— and the well-branded exterior kind of looks like a chain restaurant, too— it's not a chain. It's a one-off pizzeria that's apparently been in San Jose's Berryessa neighborhod for almost 30 years. While that's not exactly my home turf I'm surprised I hadn't heard of this joint before!

Pizza California is vaguely similar to those Chipotle-style pizza chains that have popped up everywhere in the past 10 years. Y'know, the ones where you specify your pizza one topping at a time while a worker assembles it behind a plexiglass divider. Pizza California is like that except you don't walk down the assembly line watching your burrito pizza get made. You order at the cash register, and someone in the kitchen, out of sight, makes the pizza. Oh, and they have beer. A lot of beer. It was lunchtime, though, so I stuck with a Coke Zero Half-Caf from their Coca-Cola Freestyle machine.



The pizza came out about 10 minutes later looking pretty darn good. I got a combo pizza, a set of about 5 common toppings—or, as New Yorkers would call it, a garbage pie. One thing about a garb—combo pie is that with all those toppings it can be challenging to balance the cooking. Pizza California baked it right. The cheese was properly melted and the toppings were just slight crisped but not charred.

Would I go back? Yes... but I'm not sure when. The pizza was great, and I love being able to get a quality, custom-made pizza in personal size. Plus the selection of a dozen or so beers on tap makes it interesting for an evening visit. But the location is at the edge of how far I'd drive for a casual meal by myself. I'd totally swing by for lunch again next time I visit the customer whose office is nearby. But go out here just for the pizza? Not very often.

Wednesday this week was a busy day, work-wise. I was out and about on the Peninsula visiting a few customers. I met at one customer's offices just before 10am for a couple of meetings, took them out to lunch nearby, then drove up to Redwood City to meet another customer for a couple of meetings, then took them out to dinner. It turned out that both meals were at Greek restaurants!

Lunch in Santa Clara was at Opa!, a new-ish branch of a restaurant that's been around in Silicon Valley for a while. I don't remember if I've eaten at one of the their sister restaurants before. If I have, it's been years. Thus this counts for my Try New Restaurants New Year's resolution from 2023. 😂

Opa! feels like a high-concept chain restaurant. The decor is upscale and modern yet looks a bit too... pat... to be unique. It's not really a chain, though. There are only 3 of them. The menu is decently broad, spanning all the standards you'd expect to see at a mid-scale Greek restaurant, plus a few crossover dishes like the "Greek Philly Cheesesteak" that one of my colleagues ordered. It was huge, BTW, and he said it was great.

I ordered the Greek meatloaf, one of the house specialties. It was pretty good. I mean, how great can meatloaf be? It was moist, came covered— but not drenched— with a mild tomato sauce, and sat atop a serving of slightly too-creamy mashed potatoes and a few pieces of wilted spinach. The only reason I wouldn't order it again is because I'd like to try at least 3 or 4 other things on the menu before doubling back.

Also tasty looking was the grilled flank steak with feta cheese. That was my #2 choice, and one of my colleagues ordered it. He had no complaints about it, but my concern looking at his plate was that it was just a piece of meat with a small sprinkling of cheese. I guess if you're doing a carnivore diet that's perfect, but if you're looking for a square meal it's missing a few sides.

Speaking of sides, I also ordered a few appetizers to share. Saganaki was served alight, which thrilled all 5 of my colleagues, none of whom had ever seen it before. Opa! We also shared a plate of dolmas. They were disappointing. They were very fresh, but inside the freshly rolled grape leaves they were just rice.

Price-wise Opa! was on the spendy side of what Hawk and I usually do for meals out together. The tab for our group of six was about $240 all-in, so $40/head with tax and tip and non-alcoholic drinks. The qualify and presentation of the food seemed fair for the price, though, so I could see us going there together every once in a while.

Dinner in Palo Alto was at Evvia. Yes, it was Greek twice in one day. That happened because I picked the lunch spot while a colleague of mine picked dinner and apparently didn't notice the overlap. Or maybe he just really wanted Greek and was jealous because he couldn't attend lunch. 🤣

Evvia has been a well regarded restaurant in tony Palo Alto for a long time. I'm not a go-to-fancy-restaurants sort of person— except when the company's paying 🤣— so I'd never bothered to try it. But I was also curious to try it on OPM.

Evvia's dining room has a classy feel without being pretentious. We were seated outdoors on the covered patio where things felt a bit more casual. Heat lamps blazed away making it actually too hot despite cool evening air in the 50s.

The food at Evvia was all very good though not distinctive. Nothing made me say "Wow!" And the saganaki was not served alight. Disappointing. Maybe it's a fire code thing with the tented patio?

Surprisingly Evvia was not that spendy. I mean, it was more expensive than Opa!. And if you go deep in the extensive wine list you can add hundreds to your tab. But the braised lamb shank entrée I ordered was just $40. I didn't see the final bill (a sales VP paid) but I figure the average cost for a meal and shared appetizer and non-alcoholic drink would come to about $70pp all-in. Order heavy like the VP did, though, with lots of appetizers and two nice bottles of wine, and... well, I think the bill for 5 people topped a grand. 😳

I could see going back to Evvia with Hawk. It'd be in our splurge range though not a crazy splurge. As not-crazy-expensive as it is I wished I'd tried it on my own years ago.

I found an interesting thing when I went to light a candle the other day. The box of matches I kept nearby had just run out, so I rummaged around other places in the house where we keep matches and found this:



What's so interesting about a matchbook with a restaurant's name on it? I mean, aside from the fact that restaurants basically don't "do" customized matchbooks anymore. It used to be a thing years ago, back when more people smoked. Back when smokers could smoke in virtually every restaurant, everywhere. Restaurants would hand smokers a matchbook with the restaurant's name on so they could light up at their tables, then remember the restaurant by taking the matchbook home, sort of like a calling card. A calling card that makes fire.

What's interesting to me about this particular matchbook is that I've probably had it in my possession, through multiple house moves across multiple states, since about 1992. I know that because the Greek House restaurant in Ithaca, NY was one of my regular haunts in 1992-1993 when I lived a few blocks away. Yes, these matches are from another century!

And why would I have old matches when I've never smoked? Ah, it's because in that century past the apartment I rented had a stove that needed to be lit with a match. That's right, a gas stove without an automatic striker or even a pilot light!

How old is that? Well, since you asked.... I estimate the house I lived in was built in the 1910s. That comes from style of foundation the house was built on and the foundations of other houses in the neighborhood. (Haha, you asked an engineer "How old is that?" and now you get an engineer answer. 😏)  Some houses had stone foundations/footings, others had concrete. Building standards changed from one to the other in the US after 1910. Thus I estimate the neighborhood was built around that time, with my house being slightly newer than some because it had a concrete footing.

Now, the stove might not have dated to the 1910s, but I figure it wasn't newer than the 1940s. Pilot lights become common in gas stoves in the 1940s. For example, my grandmother owned a stove manufactured in 1941, and it had a built-in pilot light.

So, since my flatmates and I needed matches to use our stove, and we were poor college students, we grabbed free matchbooks at restaurants when we dined out so we could eat hot food at home. It was lucky for us, I guess, that smoking was still common.

BTW, the Greek House closed in 2006.

BTW², these 33 year old matches don't work well anymore. Unsurprising since they're cheap giveaways. Two fell apart as I tried striking them before the third lit.

Pasadena Trade Show Travelog #6
At the hotel - Sat, 8 Mar 2025, 6am

Yesterday was a long day kicking off the trade show in Pasadena. It wasn't that I stayed out late carousing; I was actually in bed, lights out, by 9:30. It wasn't even that the show itself was long. The afternoon vendor session was 4 hours, though I did spend 3 hours on setup ahead of that. And I had 3.5 hours of "regular" work with several meetings from my hotel room desk before even that. But what really made it an long day— annoyingly so— was that I woke up at 4am for no good reason. And today it's happening again.

No, I didn't wake up at 4am again. Thankfully. I managed to sleep in 'til 5:30 today. Woohoo? Yay I got 8 hours? I was hoping for more after a marathon day yesterday.

Today's schedule is more straightforward than yesterday's. There's no "cram in as much of a regular Friday of work as possible then go start this show at lunchtime". The show hours are 10-6, and that's all I intend to do work-wise today. It's a Saturday. But, dangit, I really wanted to sleep in 'til... oh, I dunno... the leisurely hour of 7am today?

As to what happened last night with that will-we-or-won't-we get dinner together cliffhanger I left off with.... Shawn and I met for dinner. We went to the Yard House a few blocks away. Well, it was a few blocks away for me and 1/2 block for him. We're at different hotels. At first I grumbled internally that's too faaaar as I was already beat and my feet were aching. But the brief walk was refreshing.

Dinner was exactly what I was hoping for: 1:1 with a new colleague, just shooting the shit about mostly not-work stuff, while downing a few pints of beer with some pub grub. We both were interested in calling it an early evening, so 3 rounds of drinks were plenty. Neither of us wanted to stay out late. (I have some colleagues who consider it a failing if they don't stay out 'til last call.) I was back at my room at 9pm, and lights-out in bed by 9:30.

Now today's another day. I'll see if two days of waking up stupid early has me running out of steam by the time the show day ends at 6pm.

Non-Vegas Vegas Weekend Travelog #12
Back at the hotel - Sun, 16 Feb 2025, 8pm

Tonight is a lot like last night. We finished up fantastic hiking by 4pm, went for an early dinner at a Golden Corral buffet restaurant, and retired early to our room in a low-rise hotel very far off the Strip. Yes, today we ate at Golden Corral again. But it was a different Golden Corral restaurant. 😂 Hawk didn't like the one last night because they didn't have her favorite dinner dish— or her favorite dessert. The one we visited tonight had both. It also had more of a carnival atmosphere inside. (That's a bad thing, BTW. But we mostly ignored it.)

Also like last night I'm pushing this blog forward while letting several journals full of photos and videos from the hike(s) that need processing wait. At this point one— one— from yesterday is ready to publish. Another 5 are in the backlog behind this one. I'll work the backlog after we get back from our trip Monday night.

The one thing not like yesterday is where we went. I already posted in this morning's blog that we went to Valley of Fire State Park. There we hiked to the Fire Wave, probably the most famous spot in the park; continued the trail around in a loop through the Seven Wonders trail; and then hiked the White Domes loop.

We were spent after that and also red-rocked out. We skipped even drive-to spots elsewhere in the park, instead opting for a scenic drive home through the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. It was over an hour of easy, country-highway type driving, through a combination of wide-open Mojave Desert vistas (basin-and-range geography, not flat desert) and occasional canyons and red rocks outcroppings.

Now we're back at the hotel, resting and unwinding from a busy day. And we've still got tomorrow's activities to plan. Our flight home isn't until 7:30pm, so we can plan a full day!

Non-Vegas Vegas Weekend Travelog #2
Lake Mead, NV - Sat, 15 Feb 2025, 11:45am

We got off to a slow start this morning. It wasn't from sleeping in late, though. I wouldn't have minded sleeping in late. It would've been my first time in about 6 days. No, my body decided 5:45am was waking up time. Then there were a series of things I needed/wanted to do that resulted in us not getting out for over 5 hours. 😒

Where are we going out to?



It's the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. We're out here for a day of hiking. The photo above is a view from the trailhead. But unfortunately it's already 11:45. The day's, like, half over. What took so long?

Beginning in Henderson, which is just southeast of Las Vegas, my first task was to get a ride back to Las Vegas Airport to rent a car. Why not do it last night when Hawk and I were literally at the airport together? Well, when we booked this trip initially there were different timings, and it made sense to get the car in the morning rather than the night before. By the time my company forced a change of plans on me, the price of the rental car had gone up over $100 for our 3-day weekend. For that kind of money Hawk and I decided we could Lyft/Uber around a few times. And walking to dinner from the hotel last night wasn't bad.

I checked the hotel's breakfast offering on the way out. Ugh, runny scrambled eggs and a room full of boisterous children. It looks like there's a U8 team staying here for a tournament. I skipped the breakfast buffet and ate a protein bar with half a bottle of Coke Zero.

Once back at the airport— actually, the rental car center, which is 2-3 miles from the terminal— I went through the hoops of picking up my car. "I"ve upgraded your car," the rental agent said cheerfully. Hooray, the benefits of elite status! "It's a Toyota Corolla!" she continued. ...Wait, what? Nobody in the history of the world has ever thought, "Oh, my, a Corolla, what an upgrade!"

Well, good news/bad news. My assigned car— my upgrade Corolla— had a cracked windshield and a busted windshield wiper hanging loose. I trudged back to the rental office— yes, it was a trudge, as they gave me what seemed like the farthest away car in the lot— and got a new assignment. This one actually was a slight upgrade. Well, an upgrade from a Corolla anyway. 😂



It's a Hyundai Elantra, and it's almost new— just 1,005 miles on the odometer. And it's not really much of an upgrade from a Corolla, though it does look sharper. And it has heated seats— which are a huge bonus for Hawk, whose back problems are flaring.

Back at the hotel we gathered our hiking gear for the day. Hawk had already packed most of mine while I was out, which was helpful. But we still needed to finalize where to go. We'd meant to do that last night, but both of us tired out quickly and went to bed early. And it took me a while this morning as I was still unpacking— mentally unpacking— from a busy week of training at work.

As we got ready to actually leave I realized I'd forgotten to pack my hiking gloves. I use them to protect my hands while boulder scrambling. And our chosen hike, Owl Canyon, would definitely have boulder-scrambling in slot canyons! Well, good news/bad news. I could buy a pair of gloves easily at a sporting goods store like Big 5, which there's one of half a mile from the hotel. But it wouldn't open for another 30 minutes.

"No problem," we figured. "We'll go out for a quick brunch first." Except the place we picked was closed. Permanently. Oops. With the drive time there and back the Big 5 was already open, so I just did my shopping. They had hiking socks on sale, so at least I made my shopping a two-fer. And they had the exact type of gloves I wanted.

We still needed brunch. We quickly agreed on another restaurant kind of on the way out of town. Then, as we pulled into the parking space in front of the door, we noticed another restaurant across the street: Del Taco! Yes, Del Taco, one of our guilty favorites. Well, not guilty, because we have no reason to feel guilty for it. We un-parked, drove across the street, and ate at Del Taco.

It was nearly 11am by the time we got rolling again, finally actually driving out to our hike for the day. We reached the trailhead for Owl Canyon at 11:30, laced up our boots, checked our packs, and got ready to hit the trail.

Whew, it's taken hours longer than it should have to get to this point, but now we're looking forward to a fun hike!

Update: Keep reading in Hiking the Owl Canyon Loop - Part 1

I saw an interesting article in my newsfeed yesterday, "Gen Z Doesn't Know How to Act in Bars." I'm always curious to read the latest in how older generations are scorning the young. And this article was published by Vox, which has a strong reputation for insightful explanatory journalism. Perhaps this article would go beyond superficial scoffing, I thought, and show whether there's really a there there. Well, it did, and it didn't.

First, let me summarize the complaints, according to the article, about how Gen Z acts incorrectly in bars:

• Gen Z closes out their bills each round, instead of leaving a tab open for the evening, making more work for the bartender. Yes, this really is the primary complaint; the article even states that explicitly. ...Which makes me wonder who wrote this, an overworked bartender?


• In a group of Gen Zs, not everybody will order a drink. ...Again, what sources were used for writing this article?


• Gen Z groups are more interested in socializing with the friends they came with than chatting up the bartender. ...Seriously?


• Gen Z groups stay a long time without drinking the whole time. ...Are you sensing a pattern here?

The author shows a moment of self-awareness about the rubbish she's spreading. Before presenting the above complaints she writes:

"Obviously, it’s incredibly satisfying to point out how a person — or, even better, a whole group of people — does something wrong. It’s even more fulfilling to be able to signal a divide, a marker that, for objective scientific reasons, you could never be implicated in this type of chaotic discordance. Look at this worse person — who is nothing like me — move through the universe, incorrectly!"

You could plausibly argue that this foreward to the complaints— which, taken together, all sound like they come from impatient bartenders who wish customers would just pay and get out— invites us to scoff at them and dismiss them. Indeed, for some of us, like me, it does. I love her little passage about thinking ourselves better than others. But in a published work I believe you've got to evaluate the content by its mass. When an essay is 98% complaints and 2% one trenchant little paragraph about how, maybe, the complaints aren't valid, most people— maybe even, say, 98%— are going to take away the 98% as the message.

What's wrong with the complaints in the article, by the way? Here are Five Things. And remember, I'm two generations older than Gen Z.

1. Closing out the bill each round sounds like a store problem, not a customer problem. Seriously, easy and fast payment system exist. Stop being cheapskates and replace your early-2000s technology. Don't tell me you can't afford to upgrade when you sell $1.50 bottles of beer for $10+ each.

2. Yeah, not everybody orders a drink. Deal with it. It was like that 25-30 years ago when I was a regular bar patron, too.

3. Is it because your service sucks? One big reason not everybody among my friends 25-30 years ago ordered drinks was shit service. At a pub I met friends at every week, most stopped ordering food and drink because table service became so erratic. That was one particular establishment, but in general service levels are way weaker today than they were back in the late 1990s.

4. People order fewer drinks because they're expensive. Even as a Gen Xer I order way fewer drinks in bars and food-and-bar establishments now than in the past because they've just so darn expensive. At $10+ for a beer and $15+ for a cocktail I just can't enjoy them much anymore. Plus, if had the weaker finances of a 20-something I certainly wouldn't be downing a lot of $15+ mixed drinks!

5. People linger over drinks. That's how bars have always worked. The thing that's most ridiculous about this article is the bartenders' repeated preference that people just order drinks as long as they're there, then leave. And that's just so many kinds of wrong. To name just two: A, it was never like that. B, do you really expect people to buy a drink and leave— they could buy that $10 beer for $2 at the grocery store if that's all they wanted— or to get soused on multiple rounds of drinks if they stay for a few hours? These bartenders seem like the worst of the doesn't-know-how-to-socialize stereotype typically thrust on Gen Z.

Panama Travelog #34
Panama City, Panama - Sun, 29 Dec 2024. 10pm.

After a fizzle of a trip to Panama City's old town today we came back to the hotel in the drizzling rain and took it easy for the rest of the afternoon. At dinner time we debated where to eat. I fretted about so many things this trip going to shit, especially, most recently, getting rooked at a tourist trap lunch spot. I didn't want to spend a lot of money for dinner only to have food that's mediocre at best. Well, when you don't want to pay a lot for dinner there's always... fast food! But not the American chains like the Subway we tried— and enjoyed— last night. There was a local fast food chain we could see from the pool on the roof: El Tarasco.



El Tarasco has a bit of an odd setup for a fast food restaurant. They serve alcholic drinks... but only a few frilly, frozen ones like the piña coladas we're enjoying in the photo above. There's no beer. We ordered drinks, an appetizer of guacamole, and a few tacos each.

I ordered the tacos al pastor shown in the first pic. Hawk got carna asada tacos "keto style".



What's keto style? These tacos have beef and cheese fried on a griddle and then folded over on itself, kind of like enchiladas but without any tortilla. And the taste? A bit overcooked, actually. But, aside from that, tasty.

I mentioned soaking in the hot tub. It occurs to me I haven't shared any pics from or of the hotel this part of the trip. Partly that's because the weather's been shitting almost the whole time we're here, and "Ooh! I will take pictures of the rain and drear!" is not a thing I've ever said. But that said I did snap a few photos in the evening when it stopped raining.



These are from the pool deck on the roof.



We've spent a lot of time up here at the hot tub the past few days. It's vastly better than the dirty duck pond called a "pool" at our hotel in El Valle. I'm glad I made a side-trip the other day to buy a swim suit even with busted navigation since I forgot mine at home this trip.