Las Vegas/San Francisco Oct '04

This unlikely trip happened solely because I had hundreds of thousands of Cathay Pacific air miles expiring at the end of 2003. As I've said before, I generally like the airline, although I think it's gone downhill a bit lately. But their Asia Miles frequent flyer program is the very worst in the world. I spent most of September 2003 trying to use the miles to go somewhere, anywhere, at any time, without success. You can only reserve up to one year out, so I figured I could beat the system by calling early in the morning, and asking for availability exactly one year out. Theoretically everything should be available because those seats weren't available the previous day. But for a week I was told everything is booked. And that includes all classes, plus all the partner airlines. Which is ridiculous, because BA and Qantas had plenty of availability, but Cathay kept saying they had none on those same BA and Qantas flights. Anyway, this went on for a couple of months, but finally two seats opened up for San Francisco, so I grabbed them. Of course I wanted to go visit Stoli there, but the US wasn't really anywhere in my thinking for a holiday at the time. Which is why I pretty much hate frequent flyer programs. They waste huge amounts of effort trying to book a seat, and then you end up going somewhere you don't want to go at an inconvenient time, like midweek. But it feels like a tremendous waste to let them expire, which is why I wish they had never been invented.

Anyway, enough ranting, I had never been to Las Vegas, and thought it could be fun in a kitschy, let's make fun of everything sort of way, so we decided to start our West Coast adventure in Vegas, Baby!

103. New York

We flew to New York via Hong Kong and Vancouver on Cathay Pacific, which was very good flight except for the stop n Vancouver. From the plane Vancouver looked like a rainy, dreary place, which was depressing since we'd be spending a week there on the return journey. I had to work a couple days in New York, which meant staying at a hotel on our corporate list, which is usually a bad idea. This trip proved no exception, as we stayed at the W Hotel, which should be avoided at all costs. There are three W hotels in New York, but we stayed at the original (and worst) of the bunch. It used to be an undistinguished old hotel on Lexington Avenue, perhaps New York's ugliest avenue. It got tarted up in the usual W way, but as the old saying goes, it's like putting lipstick on a pig. The lobby is dark, and music thumping, hence establishing its street cred, and it had the usual absence of service. One oddity is that what few people they did have standing around and not providing service were old and unattractive, the type you'd find in KMart rather than a hip hotel. Usually staff at these types of hotels are models and actors so they at least contribute to the ambience, but here they clashed. Room was standard and on the fourth floor so you could practically see into the Lexington Avenue buses as they noisily chugged past. (Room: 4, Facilities: 5, Service: 3, Overall: 4).





We had dinner at the Heartbreak restaurant at the hotel, which wasn't bad, had a bit of design to it, though again, very "experienced" servers. And Somchai proclaimed his risotto to be the saltiest thing he has ever eaten, including salt. (Food: 10, Decor: 16, Service: 12).