Text 10539, 72 rader
Skriven 2011-05-08 23:41:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: my recent trip 299
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The club breakfast. A cooler with Coke, Diet Coke,
ginger ale, Sprite, water, Thirster grape, cranberry,
and orange juices, milk of various fatlessnesses, and
Florida's Natural orange juice. Assorted pastries and
breads. Cereal. The espresso machine worked only
intermittently, but what do I care. My kind of food, not.
I had a pecan roll that was so stodgy and dry that I had
to smear it with butter to get it down. I did a study of
the curious liquids. Thirster, as you all recall, is a
mark of Rituals Coffee Co. from Columbia, MD and its
grapefruit juice is available wherever fine airplanes
are flown. Here, though, the varieties available were:

Grape - thin, with light purple color. Somewhat foxy, as
one expects. Probably a mix of white grape and Concord;
not nearly so rich-tasting as Welch's. Claims 100% juice
but tastes rather cut (that's what white grape does).

Cranberry - a standard cocktail, a bit too sweet, a
bit too thin, not tart enough, the only value of which
being that it is enriched with one's 100% RDA of C.

Orange - this was hugely sweet, and I had a hard time
believing that it was all juice. It smelled and tasted
like cooked somewhat rotten navels; i.e., sort of canned.

By contrast the Florida's Natural was - though pleasantly sweet
- less sweet and smelled more like fresh Valencia oranges.

Coca-Cola, the normal sort. They offer this in the eco-friendly
250 ml recyclable aluminum bottles, only you need two of them
to make yourself unthirsty. I had drunk so many Beams that the
caffeine didn't bother me. I'd forgotten how much I like the
taste of Coke; even despite the high-fructose syrup, it tastes
better than the other colas.

==

From 5:30 to 8 there are light snacks in the club lounge.
These involve Sun Chips, crudites and cheese bits, fresh
fruit (excellent pineapple, good red grapes, okay but pretty
strawberries, mediocre cantaloupe and honeydew), and
chafing dish things that are grudgingly replenished - I had
chicken tenders (all right, salty, probably Tyson) and
nuggets (ditto, though less all right, having more coating)
and a meatball (gave Lilli the other two I'd scrounged, as
it was apparent they had cheese in them) and avoided the
mozzarella sticks. Many SPG club lounges offer free cheap
beer and less than delectable wine during happy hour; this
one did not. No big loss. I could, had I wanted, drunk
Poland Spring and imagined it free cheap beer and Thirster
grape juice and done the same for less than delectable wine;
instead we went to a dive bar - the only one in the area -
called Kelly's Irish Pub. Here the atmosphere is dubious
but the drinks cost half what they do at the hotel. $10.50
for a pint of Guinness and a Jameson's. The beer is well
poured. The Jameson I'm not so sure about - the first one
was fine; the second Lilli sort of frowned at and remarked
that it was sort of weak. I tasted and found it all water,
the only booze being the residue from the first one. Lilli
surmised that the bartendress might have been trying to
protect her from me or herself. Which brings me back to the
atmospheric dubiety, which obtains firstly because the city-
wide no-smoking ordinance is completely ignored, and secondly
because despite the massive majority of Chinese in this
part of town, the few Asians here sort of skulked in the
darker recesses of the room, whereas it was all white people
at the bar, except for me. Anyhow, we got the girl's
attention, and she repoured the drink as a double.
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