"Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience." Francis Bacon

My first experience of Virgin Atlantic has altogether been a fairly pleasant one, despite a few unimpressive incidents. At the departure gate, a range of magazines, including The Week, Hello, In Style and Stylist, are available for passengers to help themselves to. There was, unfortunately very little choice of newspaper however: The Daily Mail or The Financial Times were the only options. We were all warmly greeted when boarding the aircraft, with staff offering to help passsengers find their seats. A blanket and a pillow are left on every seat for the passengers to take as they board.

Just after take-off, every passenger is given a complementary pack, which includes a draw-string bag, sleeping socks, and eye mask, a toothbrush, a small tube of toothpaste and a pen. Headphones are also handed out. There is a small screen on the back of every seat, which shows the current location of the plane and how it is progressing.

Later in the flight, a choice of movies, TV programmes, games and radio stations become available too. The choice of films was not very large, but it was a nice and very up to date selection.

About an hour after take-off, food and drinks were brought round. The choices for the meal were: chicken curry, roast chicken, or vegetable curry. Each main dish came with a starter of minted cous cous salad which was pretty dull- there was too much mint and little of anything else of flavour. Salad, I believe, was a hightly inapporopriate term for something in which the only vegetation was the mint and a very small amount of peppers. The chicken curry I chose ‘Kori Gashi’ was neither particularly bad nor particularly good. The daal that came with it, however, seemed to rely on being too hot, to mask a lack of any other taste. The paratha was too thick and slightly confusing- an incomprehensible combination of too oily yet too dry. To finish the meal, there was ‘Cococnut Prini’, a fairly non-descript, strangely textured, vaguely coconut-ty, overly sweet, jellyish mush.

Drinks, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic, were provided on demand and without limit throughout the flight. Breakfast was served at about an hour and a half beofre the scheduled landing time. The two choices were English breakfast or vegetarian Indian breakfast. The English breakfast that I had consisted of reasonable scambled eggs, a couple of nice little hash browns, and a not very pleasant meat patty with tomato sauce.

About half an hour before the scheduled landing time, we were informed that the airspace over Delhi was overcrowded which meant it was necessary to wait for it to clear before we could land. However, due to the plane not having enough fuel to wait until the airspace was clear, we had to take a diversion of abour 400 miles each way to Ahmadabad, to refuel. We were kept up to date with what the situation was throughout the delay, and countless apologies were given both by the captain and by the hotesses. In the end, we arrived at Delhi about 3 hours late, but after a pretty comfortable, fairly pleasant flight.

Kababji Grill

1351 Connecticut Avenue Northwest
Washington, DC 20036-1801
(202) 822-8999

The occasion was the graduation of our daughter, Roya, with her MA from Georgetown in English.  (Isn’t she clever!)  The idea was to mark the occasion with a meal to honor her and three of the other graduates from the same program with a good meal.  Three sets of parents and other friends and supporters made this a party of twelve.

We originally planned to go to an Indian restaurant but changed our minds as some of the party didn’t like Indian food.  So we booked a table for twelve of us at Kababji, a Lebanese restaurant on Connecticut Avenue about half a block away from Dupont Circle.  We weren’t disappointed.

Kababji was founded in Lebanon in 1993, and it has expanded all over the Middle East with branches in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.  This restaurant opened in 2009 and is the first Kababji in North America.  The food concept is to serve fresh food with healthy Lebanese/Mediterranean ingredients in a simple and modern atmosphere.  The menu and cooking are exactly what you’d expect on a Lebanese menu with an emphasis clearly on excellence in execution rather than innovation.  Main courses are (as the name of the restaurant suggests) mostly kababs cooked on an open fire and brought straight to the table.

We started off with mezze.  Each of us ordered a traditional Middle Eastern appetizer, which we passed around the table.  (The portions were enormous.)  I ordered foul medammas, a dish that I had fallen in love with on a business trip to Egypt a few years ago.  It consists of mashed fava beans, chopped parley, lemon juice, chopped tomatoes and spices.  Traditionally served for breakfast in Egypt, part of the fun of this dish is to put it together yourself so that you can decide for yourself on the proportions of each ingredient.  At Kebabji, it comes already assembled — delightful but my memories of the “real thing” in Cairo left me feeling just faintly disappointed.  (I also missed the charm of this dish being transliterated as foul madams as it appeared on the menu in Cairo!)

The other appetizers — and I tried most of them — included hommos (their spelling), baba ganoush, and mashed chick peas with yoghurt.  I was especially impressed with the baba ganoush, an eggplant puree, which had the distinctive smoky flavor but without tasting artificial.  The eggplant is flamed over an open fire to give it the smoky taste and then blended with tahini, salt, lemon, and olive oil.  Simple, healthy and delicious!

I had grilled lamb chops for my main course.  The chops had been marinated with lemon, olive oil, parsley, and spices, and were served medium.  It was very good indeed.

Most of us had no dessert although the restaurant kindly provided tiramisu and sparkling wine for each of the graduates.  Some of us (very good) Turkish coffee.

Since this was a large party, they automatically added a service charge, and the bill for all twelve people — with about two thirds of us drinking wine or cocktails — was $431.  A very good value, considering the location, the nice decor, and the quality of the food.

The only negative on this restaurant was the service.  Although he was obviously trying hard to give us a pleasant and memorable experience, our waiter forgot some orders, forgot to ask certain members of the party what they wanted, and, when the food came, he seemed to have a hard time getting the right dish to the right person.

I didn’t photograph the beautifully presented food as I was too busy talking and eating.  But, if you are thinking of going to this restaurant, I would encourage you to go their website where they have an excellent collection of photographs of the restaurant and the food.

Albino Squirrel

I saw an albino squirrel today in Georgetown!

Domaine de la Présidente Côtes du Rhône Grands Classiques, 2008

A delicious red Côtes du Rhône.   The grape composition is 60% Grenache, 20% Syrah, 10% Cinsault, and 10% Carignan.  The average age of the vines is 25 years.  This wine is from a private vineyard in the  the Southern Rhone valley in the small village of Sainte Cécile les Vignes, near Avignon

In the glass, it shows with sparkling ruby color.  Wonderful aromas in the glass with the fruit bursting upwards — cherries, strawberries with nice concentration.  Very pleasant finish with soft tannins and vanilla flavors.

Not a special occasion wine, but a useful wine for easy drinking at around $10.00 a bottle.

Pitango Gelato

Logan Circle

1451 P Street, NW

Washingtom DC

202 332 8877

http://www.pitangogelato.com/

I recently wrote about, Dolcezza, a gelato place in Georgetown (Washington, DC), and it was only a few days later that I discovered another one — Pitango in the Logan Circle area of Washington.

After a very pleasant dinner at a Thai restaurant, Rice, we decided to walk about and have dessert at a gelato place.

Like Dolcezza, Pitango prides itself on fresh ingredients.  Its dairy products come from a single herd of grass fed cows from a farm in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  Preferring sorbet to ice cream, we chose quince, mojito, white grapefruit, and bosch pear.  All were excellent although I think that Dolcezza seems to have more imaginative flavors and they do something really special with the textures.  But the flavors were intense and tasted both fresh and natural.

Pitango is certainly worth a visit.  We all had the smallest size, which gives you two scoops for about $4.75 each.

Recommended!

Pitango has four branches.  Two of them are in Washington, DC, and one is in Reston.  The other is in the Fells Point area of Baltimore.

Yet again, I traveled on the Megabus from Baltimore to New York and back yesterday.

The bus was on time in both directions, and we were lucky with the traffic.  The only fault was that the power was not working at my outlet, and the bus seemed to lose its Internet connection for the last hour.

Another excellent Megabus trip — and my fare was $1.00 each way!

When people travel long distance, they often focus on the price of the air fare, but the biggest cost item in travel is very frequently the hotel where you stay.

I have had quite good luck using Hotwire (www.hotwire.com), but I do think there are limitations to this service.

Here’s how it works.  You choose the category of hotel where you’d like to stay (by stars) and you choose the city and the area.  Hotwire offers you a price and a list of hotels (without names) with the desired category and area.  It won’t show the name of the hotel until you have committed to the deal and paid with your credit card.  You pay in advance and your reservation is not refundable.

If your stay is a repetition of a previous trip, it is sometimes easy to guess which hotel they are going to put you in.  Also, you can sometimes do some clever detective work entering key words into Google.

The advantage is that you can get some excellent rates at some nice hotels, but, like everything else, there are a few catches and pitfalls.  Here are a few tips to using Hotwire effectively.

1.  Forget about upgrades, points, and any loyalty plan, such as Hilton Honors.  Your deal is with Hotwire, and you will typically be given the least desirable room in the hotel.

2.  This is the big catch!  If you fail to show up on the appointed day, your entire reservation will be canceled.  (Yes, you did read that right!).  For example, you cannot travel on the day you thought you could and you show up a day late at the hotel.  The desk will tell you that there is no reservation for you.  This nearly happened to me during the snow in Washington in February.  I had booked two rooms for five nights, and many flights were canceled because of the snow.  The hotel offered no help whatsoever, and Hotwire said that they might be able to work something out because of the exceptional circumstances.  But, in the future, I am going to make a reservation for the first night and for subsequent nights separately.

3.  Do comparison shopping.  Hotwire is not always the cheapest solution.  I have sometimes found that they cannot get you a very good price if you try to book too far in advance probably because they are in the business of clearing out a chain’s unsold inventory.

4.  If you want to have a clue about the hotel you are going to get, Hotwire seems to do a lot of business with Holiday Inn, including its other brands (Crowne Plaza and Intercontinental).

5.  Remember your stay does not include breakfast.  At certain hotels, particularly airports, there may be no other choice than to eat the over-priced hotel breakfast.

Here are a couple of examples that I have had from Hotwire.

• I booked a four-star hotel during the busy and very expensive holiday season in New York, and I got the Intercontinental for about $160.
• I booked a 3.5-star hotel in the Ealing, Brentford and Hammersmith area of London in February.  I got the Holiday Inn in Brentford, which was wonderful for $55.

So, I recommend it, but would certainly not recommend using Hotwire for every stay.  Besides, they tend to operate only in very popular areas.

Ruddy Duck Brewery and Grill

13200 Dowell Road

Solomons, MD 20629

www.ruddyduckbrewery.com

410 FYI DUCK

This will be a short post because it was a short visit.  We’d had dinner and simply wanted a quick drink before going to bed.  I had an instinct that this would be a very good place, and I had two beers.  Most of the beers are brewed on the premises although they also have some “guest” ales.  I decided to try the stuff that they made themselves.

The first was a Belgian Style Tripel.  This was a very fragrant but full flavored beer.  With its golden brown color and a total absence of harshness, I wouldn’t have guessed an alcohol level of 8.7%.  Excellent.

Even better was the full flavored and hoppy Dubbel.  This was much darker in color because of the malt.  Wonderful balance of sweetness and bitterness.  The alcohol content was 8.4%.

Although we’d already had dinner, I looked at the menu.  It seemed to be mostly standard bar fare but a bit more interesting and a promise that the produce was sourced from local farmers and people who could guarantee fresh ingredients.

I will definitely be back and spend longer next time I am in the area.

This Champagne was a gift, and it was wonderful.  As I poked around the Internet, I noticed that more than one person suggested that this was the finest Dom Pérignon ever made.

Everyone in the party loved it!  One of my friends has tended to go for slightly sweeter Champagnes, and this certainly did not have the aggressive acidity that one often associates with lesser bone dry Champagnes.   He absolutely loved it.

The initial taste definitely had that doughy, bready smell and taste. It had nice citrus flavors with notes of nuts — almonds and hazel nuts.  The balance between complex fruit and acidity was perfect.

The bubbles made their way up the glass in a seemingly never-ending stream of fine mousse.  This is the kind of Champagne that red wine drinkers like — full bodied.  This wine is made with approximately equal proportions of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.  (Pinot Meunier, the other legal grape in Champagne was not used.)