First time I’ve ever seen jicama used as a taco shell! (Taken when I was a guest at #macayosmex media preview night.) They’re now on the menu at Macayo’s Scottsdale and on my blog.
Post: https://www.travelcraftjournal.com/macayos
SEPTEMBER 18, 2015
SEPTEMBER 17, 2015
#tbt to our Indiana trip with #mrcheeseface.
Post: https://www.travelcraftjournal.com/7-things-you-didnt-expect-to-find-in-madison-county-indiana/
Pancake-Making Machine
I read this story a few months ago about a fight breaking out over a breakfast buffet waffle that ended with 30 people getting kicked out of the hotel.
While I wasn’t able to verify the story, the point is that things can get messy around those self-serve hotel waffle makers. And I don’t just mean the dripping batter.
So I thought the Holiday Inn Express had an interesting solution to promote breakfast buffet peace: a patented machine that makes pancakes in a minute. I got to try one out and see the super secret inner workings. It’s pretty neat. You push a button and the batter inside the machine gets squished out and heated through, and in 60 seconds a pancake pops out on to your plate.
While the pancake machines (aka “Stack Stations”) are already in most Holiday Inn Express Hotels, they wanted more people to try them out. So they sent a blue truck out with a handful of pancake machines and something not available in hotels – a special laser etcher that puts your photo on a pancake.
So that is how I ended up, not with pancake on my face but with my face on a pancake.
If you would also like your face on a pancake, here’s the schedule:
- Tempe Marketplace (today’s the last day!) – Sept. 14, 1-6pm
- San Diego – Sept. 17-19
- Long Beach – Sept. 21-22
- Los Angeles – Sept. 24-27
- San Francisco – Oct. 2-3
- Oakland – Oct. 5-6
- Sacramento – Oct. 9-11
Also, rumor has it that if you signup for IHG rewards at the pancake truck, they give you 500 extra points and enter you in a drawing for more points and/or shwag. I get nothing from this, but I’m generally a fan of hotel rewards programs (I signed up for IHG’s awhile ago) and a bigger fan of free points, so I thought you’d want to know.
Finally, here are Tammy and Jordyn. They were so excited about their pancake selfie, I just had to get a photo of them with it.
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Not really a disclosure: While I occasionally work with IHG, I didn’t get any special compensation for this post. The selfie pancakes are free for everyone. I just thought it was fun and that you might want to give it a try.
September 14, 2015
This is me on a pancake. Story on the blog. #pancakeselfie
Post: https://www.travelcraftjournal.com/pancake-making-machine/
Landmark Routes
When you get to a new city, do you ever find yourself using one particular route as your main reference for navigating the area? It doesn’t have to be the main street, just your main street – somewhere that connects where you’re staying with places you want to go.
It may not even be a regular surface street. It could be a transit line, a freeway, a pathway. It’s where you say, “if I can find _____, I can follow it to where I need to be.”
For example, our Denver-area friends humored us by aways giving us directions – whether it was to the Botanic Gardens or just a nearby drugstore – that started us off on Arapahoe Road. Since that’s how we got to their house, that’s where we felt most oriented.
(Farther north, my Denver street of choice becomes Colfax, because it goes all the way across town and still passes landmarks I remember from childhood, like Casa Bonita and Elitch’s.)
When I spent a summer in Sevilla, Spain, there was a particular bus (maybe the 34-?) that stopped near our dorms, ran by several of the University’s campuses and to the city center. Most of the time, it was the only bus I needed. If I ended up in another part of the city, I just had to find a 34 bus, and it would take me home.
Is there a name for this type of central navigational lifeline? I feel like we need one. Landmark route? Reference road?
I’m open to suggestions.
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PS Yes, that last photo (probably taken by someone in our group) is a skinnier, not-glasses-needing, 1999 version of me in Sevilla. ¡Viva España!