This all started with O's desire to see her oldest brother, Rudy. He's getting on in years (as we all are) and his health is not the best. He lives in Massachusetts, so she hasn't seen him in quite a few years.
And while I took my first flight in two years last month to Hawaii, O still doesn't feel comfortable getting on a long flight.
Do you feel a road trip coming on? I do.
I did a cross-country in 1978, the year I turned 30, in a brand-new VW camper van. In August. With no air-conditioning. It was my honeymoon with my second wife. I still remember driving 500 miles straight, and I do mean straight, across Minnesota, 12-foot walls of corn hemming in the narrow corridor of road, the hot, humid air heavy with the smell of pig shit, with the windows wide open because it was even less bearable with them closed.
Fun times. So I'm hoping this trip will be different. We're driving a hybrid to mitigate the spiking price of gas. It isn't August. We have air-conditioning. And O and I have an almost forty-year bond that allows us to enjoy spending deep time together.
We want to see as much of the country as we can, so we've planned a peregrination of prodigious proportions: a grand two-month circumnavigation starting in the southern tier from our daughter's place in Escondido through Phoenix, Socorro, Roswell, then, if we haven't been abducted by aliens, on to Amarillo, San Antonio, New Orleans, Savannah, and Charleston with many stops in between.
After that, we head up to Asheville and the Shenandoah Valley to D.C., visiting many Civil War battlefields on the way, culminating at Gettysburg. We'll stop in Philadelphia, NYC, and Boston, before ending the outbound portion of the trip in Adams, MA, where Rudy lives.
We'll come back in mid to late May through the northern tier when the weather, I hope, improves in that area. Ithaca, We'll drive through Cleveland, Pleasureville, Kentucky (where O's other brother lives), Indianapolis, St. Louis, Chicago, Wausau, Wisconsin (where my dad was born), Fargo (other than Alaska, North Dakota is the one state I've never visited), and finally Missoula where one of O's sisters lives.
The journey of 10,000 miles begins with a small (638 mile) drive to Las Vegas.
I hate this town. I love this town.
It's big. Everything is on a magnified scale, slightly larger than life. It's loud. Music blasting everywhere and the constant clatter and bong of the neon-lit, animated slots.
It's sensory overload on steroids. We noticed that Chinese tourist dollars are huge here. A large percentage of the casino patrons were of Asian descent, and the design of many of the slots reflect this. Many are dragon-themed, many have have Chinese ideograms and lucky imagery incorporated in their design.
The worst of American celebrity culture is on display here. Almost everything has some celebrity brand name associated with it. All the celebrity chefs, no matter how minor, have restaurants here; some have more than one.
And that brings me to why I love this town. First, it's an overload of eye-candy (of the eye-gouging sort, sure, but still), with people watching that puts Walmart to shame. It's also a convenient place to break up the grueling drive from Boise to Escondido, and we have found a laid-back, low-rise hotel that offers some respite from the horrors of the Strip (they advertising the largest martinis in town, which helps). but most of all, Vegas is a world-class food destination.
Gone are the days when casinos used $2.99 steak dinners to lure gamblers. Now patrons queue up to pay top dollar for top of the line cuisine and still are willing to dump the rest of their money at the tables.The place may be overrun by TV celebrity chefs, but there are also dozens of places run by exceptional chefs from all over the world.
Including Japan and, increasingly, China. When we were here over New Year's, we wanted Peking duck, and we got it. However, the restaurant we really wanted to go to was fully booked. This time we made sure we had reservations, both for seating and for duck.
Mott 32 is a Chinese restaurant in the Venetian Hotel. It's named for the first Chinese grocery in NYC, which opened in 1851 at 32 Mott St. They offer a number of "tweaked traditional" dishes, most Cantonese.They also offer "42-day, applewood-smoked Peking duck." We weren't sure exactly what that meant, but it sure sounded good.
We started with (of course) a gin martini (me) and Grey Goose rocks (O).
We dug the groovy light fixture.
We started with hot and sour soup dumplings. We agreed that they were the best soup dumplings we've ever had. The filling was pork and incredible fresh and savory ginger in a tasty broth. You dip them in an excellent Chinese vinegar that perfectly sets off the sweetness of the pork. The resulting combination of flavors is stunning. I may never be able to eat soup dumplings anywhere else.
The Peking duck absolutely matched the standard set by the dumplings. It was superb. The skin was crispy and dripping with fat, smoke, and savory spices.
The meat was also very succulent and flavorful. Definitely one of the best versions of PD we've ever had.
2 comments:
How exciting! I can't wait to go along for the ride. We've, of course, traveled to all these places in our full-time RV lifestyle, but reading about them from the perspective of a wonderful writer will be intriguing.
Luciya says her mouth is watering!
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