Route27

Over the years Mara and I have visited some amazing places. We have stayed at a lot of wonderful hotels and have been welcomed by friends and people who are amazing at their hospitality jobs. However there are a few which especially stand out in our memories. I want to recommend and share some of these with you.

The first place on our list is a hotel which was strongly recommended to us by Alyssa Banta, a US photographer who for years had a second home in Delhi. She recommended this haveli in Jaipur saying its an ancient sanctuary and respite from the craziness of traveling through India. She was so right. This ancient governors place was up to western standards with a great mix of colonial and traditional service. The food was great, the variety of rooms they had to offer were fantastic (we stayed at a mini two level apartment with a balcony) and the pool the best city pool I have ever been to. The structure resembles MC Escher drawings. Highly recommended.

When in Jaipur, be sure not to miss this gem.

Samode Haveli
Jaipur, India
A HERITAGE HOTEL
reservations@samode.com
91-141-2632407

Halloween
Yet another successfully Holloween Outing in Chicago. Mara dressed up as a loly pop girl, a very nice costume. I ended up being a baby. I think the motivation and the costume idea came from the fact that so many of our friends recently are having babies. Besides, I pulled the baby costume off several years ago at Erica’s party in Denver.

6:00 PM We get dressed and decide to drive out to our party destination. Since our last halloween we attended three parties and felt that the party hopping was a bit too much we decided to focus on one party and perhaps one alternate destination. We also decided to drive there, leave our car and pick it up the day after.

Immediately after we got into the care and making some calls we changed our plans and headed over to CUBBY BEAR.

6:30 CUBBY BEAR – Please was not quite full but had a almost a 90% costume dress-up percentage. Notable costumes were two body builders cross-dressed as genies. We med the gang, took some pictures and headed for the party. Drunk Notables: ass slapping cowgirl.

8:00 Halloween party in Lincoln Park (near depaul). This was a good Halloween party with the best food spread I have ever seen at a house holloween party ever. We decided to make this our main destination for the evening. Drunk Notables: a very, very drunk avon girl who decided that I (can you imagine) needed to do her a favor as she stumbled and pulled me towards her. Ehhh, no thanks. Second Drunk Notable: a silver dressed, short skirt costume whose main purpose was to catch attention Beep-bob girl who was so drunk that kept on moving her glass from underneath me when I was pouring yet more vodka into her vodka-red bull combination resulting in lots of vodka on the floor.

1:00 AM Wrightwood tap. We decide to leave the party (unwise) and go to a bar. We dance, we laugh, and call it a night. Notable drunks: I suppose that would be us, but of course we were not obnoxious at all. If Ken ever gives me the pictures we will show the world what a baby Andy in a bar can do.