Text 30238, 91 rader
Skriven 2015-08-26 12:19:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: picnic au revoir 140
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A bunch of time divvying up the unspoils. As I had only one
day to provision, I took only the quarter pound of leftover
pastrami, the remains of the spiced-up cheese puffs, gummi
peaches, pepperoni, and durian wafers. Most of these, except
the last, became car snacks for the way back; I forgot the
rest in the back seat of the car (though did manage to take
the durian wafers with me).

We finished up the bacon and the quiche and said our goodbyes.

I climbed into the back seat, and it was off with Gail and
Dale on the 5-hour trip to our waypoint, the Red Roof Inn by
I-81 in Wilkes-Barre. Nice day, and the GPS was mostly reliable
and took us down the highway until around Scranton, when it
told us to diverge onto I-476, a toll road, then going off on
the state road that the hotel is actually on. This, as it turns
out, saved us 1.6 miles but cost two tolls. I remain against
overreliance on computers.

The Red Roof is a fairly decent and quite cheap hotel,
slightly hard to find, as its sign is tiny and its driveway
narrow, and it is up on a bluff between the road we were on
and the Interstate.

Slight issue since my Global Entry ID doesn't have an address
on it, which compliant IDs are supposed to have. I am pretty
sure that federally issued cards are mandated to be accepted
without that feature and was ready to make a fuss (I'd done
so various places and gotten them to agree every time but
one, a liquor store in Alaska, where I solved the issue by
getting Swisher to buy my beer), but instead Dale showed his
license, and all was apparently well. The girl at the desk
admitted afterward that she would have eventually accepted
the Global, but this way saved her extra paperwork.

The rooms were pretty decent though smelling heavily of
carpet cleaner. Great-tasting tap water. Pretty nice beds.

Leggio's is a pizzeria that grew into a sitdown restaurant;
it gets pretty good reviews and, best of all, is less than a
mile from the hotel.

It took a while for the hostess to arrive at her station and
greet us: this set the pattern for the meal, reasonably
friendly but quite slow.

We ordered fried calamari to share as an appetizer: these
took longer to arrive than I thought appropriate; worse,
they were rings only when they did, with a decent marinara
that we became quite familiar with throughout the meal.

In the interim our waitress brought out the signature garlic
knots - seven of them, an odd number in more than one way.
These are pizza dough sticks tied into knots, baked, and
served in melted garlic butter with Parmesan strewn over.
Messy but okay tasting, a cheap way of warding off the
slavering hordes while the kitchen figures out what it's
doing, which apparently takes a while.

For mains, Dale got a predictable but tasty and very lemony
chicken piccata, which came with a side of fettuccine in
that marinara. Gail ordered a personal-size stromboli, but
what came was a giant cold cut and pepper calzone with a
bowl of that same sauce. I managed to avoid it by ordering
my veal marsala over linguine. I should know better than to
order veal that is reasonably priced, because I know that
corners are going to be cut. At least this wasn't prebreaded
- it was, however, pretenderized by chemical means and so
though oldish and gray quite easy to cut with a fork. The
taste was okay. Cheap wine in the sauce - I'm used to Florio
or at least a respectable California version; this had to be
from New York state and was foxy and oversweet. Lots of
linguine, and I could eat only a third of the serving (if the
wine for the sauce had been better, I'd have eaten half of it).

Beer with dinner: I had a local black and tan, which was quite
a bit stouter than I imagined it would be, and thus warred with
the food. The Shipps had Yuengling, a friendlier choice, and
which I switched to for my second round.

No room for dessert; the offerings aside from tiramisu didn't
sound very Italian anyway.

Back at the hotel, the water pressure was good (too good, it
splashed all over the place) and the water hot.

My bed at least was comfy, and I got close to a full night's
rest.
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