Paris: 'You're not normal!'

Paris (France)

17 SEP - 18 SEP 2014

 

I was lambasted, harangued, taunted and humiliated for even considering to wear a pocket chief with my trusty black blazer and resplendent jeans, let alone allowing to convince myself that I could execute the fashion feet, which in turn meant that I had directly placed myself in the firing line of whatever this now unforgiving audience could conjure up. In hindsight it was over the top but I had allowed myself a small indulgence of Parisian couture ahead of my midday escape. Hence I honourably endured the well-mannered taunts of work colleagues that had collectively changed the pronunciation of my name to ‘Henri’ for the entirety of the meeting. There are, admittedly, far less unpleasant things than sitting in a team meeting, looking out over Sydney harbour to north head and accepting the good natured jibes of your co-workers for concocting one of the coolest surprises going around town at the moment. Well, it was going to be the coolest surprise in this town only until  about midday really, as I mentioned, I had a 3pm flight out of Sydney and into Paris via Abu Dhabi and Amsterdam in order to execute my incomprehensible, and lets say it, ‘enigmatic’ surprise. And hence I  continued to stare, with eyes slightly glazed, focusing on the path of a Manly ferry as it progressed from Vaucluse to Circular Quay, cutting through the deep harbour blue, and thinking to myself, this was going to be legendary!

 

 

Meeting room view - 'Say what you want guys, I'm focused elsewhere' - Federal Courts of Australia - Queens Square - Sydney

 

View from my desk, it's 'ok' - Federal Courts of Australia - Queens Square - Sydney

 

This idea was the resultant distillate from the essence of several other trips that I had been in the midst of planning in earlier months whose own identity and life I regretfully had to relinquish due to the onset of reality, i.e., a full time job with little or no scope for leave in its first few weeks! How can you not give a new starter in a role leave immediately? Especially when the reason for leave was to go to the Football World Cup!? I mean seriously, where’s the compassion? Where’s the justice? Who’s running this Federal Court of ours?

Plans were felled, ruthlessly chopped down by the brute force of reality. Reality then lent its own requirements to my mind whereby I was finally able to construct an awesome holiday from the ruins of all those that went before, with one simple catch, I would not be involved in the execution of any of those plans, as in, the next holiday benefit would have to be paid forward to some lucky recipient! The actual benefit to me therefore? Good question…the benefit to me was allowing to place myself into the role of travel agent for my parents and to send them to places that they would never have arranged for themselves and never have dreamed possible, for various reasons. One of those destinations was to be the City of Lights, Paris.

Planning trips on behalf of other people for me is easy. It usually starts with one great idea. On this occasion it was this, ‘They have to have dinner at Jules Verne’. For those that don’t know, Jules Verne is a Michelin start awarded restaurant located on the 2^nd floor of the Eiffel Tower. It’s somewhere that I’ve always wanted to go and it was the first thing that came to mind when constructing the ‘epic Parisian’ four day get away for them.

Inspired by the thought of dinner at Jules Verne I then crafted an itinerary like a feverish Ebola victim, manic, careless, brutally unkind to my own well-being (financially), I settled upon the following plan. Let me roll it out for you now, because I know it like the back of my hand;

Thursday 18^th of September - Depart Belgrade 06:00 – Arrive: Paris 09:15 – Airport pick-up and drive to the apartment on Rue de La Harpe in the Latin Quarter – (afternoon at leisure) – (evening – dinner at Le Restaurant @ Le Hotel)

Friday 19^th of September – (Morning – tour of the Eiffel Tower), (afternoon – Bus tour of Paris), (evening – Seine dinner/river cruise)

Saturday 20^th of September – (morning – Louvre museum tour), (afternoon at leisure), (evening – Moulin Rouge dinner/show)

Sunday 21^st of September  - (morning – walk of Montmartre), (afternoon at leisure), (evening – dinner at Jules Verne restaurant)

Monday 22^nd of September – Depart: Paris 10:10am – Arrive: Belgrade: 12:35am

The itinerary was crafted in my mind over weeks, figuring out how many iconic places and sights I could cram into the four day period, each time wondering ‘What could I do that tops that?’, ‘What would  they really remember?’… then that last question somehow stuck with me, ‘What WOULD they really REMEMBER?…’. All these places and sights were great but I know in myself it’s the placing of a fantastic, unexpected moment in a specific location that makes that moment truly unforgettable, and then I had my inspired moment, what if, without telling them, I flew to Paris whilst they were there and perhaps ‘casually’ ran into them somewhere…actually,what if, knowing their itinerary I just ‘happened’ to stroll on in whilst they were having dinner at one of the venues I had organised for them!?  What kind of freakin’ surprise would that be!? There would be no way in hell that they would see that coming!! Now that’s the type of idea that deserves to earn the title of being capital of the land of EPIC! The idea then planted itself so firmly in my mind that from the moment I thought it that until when it happened there was not one single second when I thought of  changing it, or of doing something different or forgetting about it, it was ON!

As I sat on a shiny plain white table near departure gate #18 at Sydneys’ Charles Kingford Smith airport, looking onto the main runway, I thought of all the various components that went into planning this jaunt, but mostly I thought of the complete looks of dismay that I was going to inevitably receive from pulling off a stunt of this magnitude. Sitting there in my own headspace and mulling  it over for a little while I heard the boarding call for Flight KL3937 to Abu Dhabi.  I looked at my newly acquired mate ‘Oz’ who’d also taken up residence with me on this glossy table and thought ‘Ok, now it’s definitely on…lets go and do this’!!!

12 kms above the Indian Ocean - Etihad flight to Abu Dhabi

Etihad flight to Abu Dhabi

 The flight to Paris was relatively uneventful, with stops in Abu Dhabi and Amsterdam. It was only when I arrived in Paris that the trouble that I intuitively felt was coming with several luggage handovers actually eventuated. There in the arrivals hall was my name, printed in dark blue on the electronic boards, HENRY ELISHER – KL1229 -  AMSTERDAM – TO BAGGAGE SERVICES. Ahhhh DAMN IT!!!! I knew what that meant! I knew before departing  Sydney that this was going to happen, so confident was I of this scenario that I actually tried to negate the issue by ONLY having carry-on luggage! The problem with that plan however was that my carry-on luggage came in a few kilos overweight and I  therefore had to check it in. I remember in Sydney, watching my back track away down the conveyer belt thinking, ‘I hope we meet again’, and yet here I was nearly 24hrs later, at Charles de Gaulle airport, standing in queue at Baggage Services, waiting for the inevitable news that some bright spark baggage handlers in Amsterdam had hit the ‘wacky tobacky cafes’ pretty hard the night before and had sent my bag on a cargo flight to Nigeria. Expected time of return, NEVER!!

 

Home of KLM - Schipol Airport - Amsterdam - Netherlands

 

Now this is how you get to a first date, you fly in - Schipol Airport - Amsterdam - Netherlands

 

Now to deal with the hassles of having no luggage. Actually, more like the hassles of having to deal with a first date in Paris with no luggage, no toiletries, no anything! I did still however have my trusty Boss suit in tow, at least that was something of a suitable default. Now  my head was filling with disjointed thoughts of newly formed requirements  drawn from this base of small misfortune, thoughts such as ‘damn, need to buy a new phone charger asap’ and ‘what’s my signature scent going to be now???’, making appearances in my head as I sped south on the RER from CDG to my stop of St.Michel/Notre Dame. Usually, may I say, situations such as these this irritate the living daylights out of me, but I’m not sure whether it’s my more ‘mature’ age or whether it was the situation as a whole, but mostly the issue of my lost bag was met with an internal ‘c’est la vie’. I was in Paris now and I had some big days planned no matter what.

Exiting at  St.Michel/Notre Dame station I surfaced in the heart of the Latin Quarter and immediately I remembered why I love Paris so much. There’s such a charm, elegance and sophistication that you can’t find anywhere else. It’s the epitome of what ‘being European’ is but in a distinctly French way, and therefore for me it’s a city that I am very much fond of. Making my way down to Quai de Montebello on a magnificently bright, warm day, I saw Notre Dame come into view as I crossed the square Rene Viviani, reminding myself of scenes out of the move Before Sunset where the main characters, Jesse & Celine walk the same road up from Shakespeares’ bookstore in the opening scenes.

 

Notre Dame from square Rene Viviani - Paris - France

 

Notre Dame - Paris - France

 

My home for the next few days was to be an open and bright apartment on Quai de Montebello which had an unbeatable aspect straight over the Seine and onto Notre Dame, yeah I though, this is  working for me…this is alright. The sun just appeared to be that much brighter today and given that the forecast for these days in Paris had provided the forlorn hope of ‘rain, cloud, late thunderstorms’ for each day, then this sunshine seemed to me to be the justified trade-off for my bag remaining in perpetual transit.

 

View from the apartment - 19 Quai de Montebello - Paris - France

 

My early afternoon was fairly mundane to be fair. Running around to locate an iPhone charger at an FNAC near Chatellete/Le Halles, undertaking toiletry shopping in the Latin Quarter and acquiring a bottle of red wine along with the consumption of a red wine chaser on the Rue Saint-Jacques. It was all very grounding, setting the scene for what would eventually be the coupe de grace at Le Restaurant that evening.

The decision of having dinner at the restaurant of L’Hotel was made in part by recommendations from Tripadvisor and part from the memories I had of watching one of my first ‘No Reservations’ shows on the travel channel. Actually, it was from the same show that the wonderful world of Chez Robert et Louise was brought to my attention also, the restaurant that currently owns the title of ‘…What Henry Elishers’ last meal would be..if ever he was required to have a last meal because he ended up on death row for being overtly stupid’.

As the late afternoon sun lit the rooftops of the French capital and they were soaked in their various burnt orange afternoon hues, I left the apartment, suited, booted and donning a pair of newly acquired Ray Bans, I felt uncharacteristically cool. I mean how many times do you fly across the world, get dressed up and walk into a restaurant with the notion of surprising someone in this manner? If your answer to that question was zero, then you’re wrong, you get one chance, and that’s why with this one chance I wanted to make sure that I got as close to perfect as possible

Walking into L’Hotel I felt enlivened, this moment was going to make a bold entry into the ‘memory charts’ and knock a few of the favourites by the wayside. By the time I had walked from the apartment to the hotel I had given myself about 30 mins of certain space prior to their arrival. My game plan was to wait at an open and visible table in the L’Hotel bar, which in fact you had to pass through to get to the restaurant in any case, and just watch the realisation of what was happening hit them squarely in the face like a sledgehammer. I ordered up a St.Germain sour from the bar,  took my seat ringside and waited for the show to commence, all the while fielding texts from all over the world wanting to be provided with a blow by blow account of what was happening. I think half the time I spent in the bar was replying to texts message of people that were nearly as eager as was I was to find out how this would play out!

Le Bar @ L'Hotel - doesn't it just sound better in French!? If you said 'The Bar at The Hotel' in English you would sound like a tool! - Paris - France

 

Waiting for impact with a St.Germain Sour - Le Bar @ L'Hotel - 13 Rue de Beaux Artes - St.Germain -  Paris - France

 

As the minutes ticked down and passed into overtime my brain started to play tricks on me. I questioned whether I had the right date, the correct address, whether they may have had any reason to have cancelled this dinner. I had well and truly rounded my second St.Germain sour and had set my sights upon a third when I saw the familiar style of movement of my parents as they entered the bar. No we were close, the moment of impact was nigh! When I say style of movement I mean that I recognise how these guys move when they enter an unknown place, there always appears to be an air of confusion, turning around, looking for seats, pointing at vacant tables, it’s always a production of indecision and hesitation. I knew this would happen. Which is exactly why I had selected a table that could be easily seen. I also knew that they wouldn’t ‘see’ me as such, that even if they saw a person sitting at a table their brain would not comprehend that it was me in this distinctly unfamiliar location. It was in those few seconds of their confusion that I realised just how cool an experience this was, and as my mum spun on her heal looking for a vacant seat she turned in my general direction;
‘You can join me if you’d like’ – saying it to the both of them as they constructed their dance of disorientation.

As my mum picked up on a familiar voice and looked straight at me I pointed at the two vacant seats at my table and said again;

‘Sit here if you’d like’

I saw her facial expression change and then I saw it, the realisation of what was going on just hit home and now this was the instant that I had planned months for!

Looking squarely at me she just repeated ‘You’re not normal, you’re just not normal’.

My dad, being a second or two behind the game connected fully and just started shaking his head, ‘Unbelievable…unbelievable…but you know what, I knew it, I knew that you might do something like this. I even said it to Tanja and Vladimir the other night…’

 

'...You're not normal Henry'...'I know :)' - The 'gotcha' face - Le Bar @ L'Hotel - Paris - France

 

Gotcha too! Dad just before he told us that he 'knew something was fishy' - Le Bar @ L'Hotel - Paris - France

 

I just laughed out aloud, not in that fake ‘lol’ sense but in the actual, laughing out loud’ sense. Their reactions, but more so their expressions were absolutely priceless.  Then came the inevitable 101 questions on how long I’d been planning this? How did it come into my head ? Why they were running late? How long had I been waiting? What was the weather like in Sydney? What was the weather like anywhere…?? But just those reactions and that conversation made it all worth the effort that I’d put in over the months prior to that.

The dinner at Le Restaurant was fantastic! A wonderful 7 course meal organised by the chef with wines to accompany every 2 courses.  All of us now, running on that excitement high probably chatted too loudly and a little over animatedly regarding what had just transpired but in all honesty we didn’t care. For me it was one of just one of those times when you can just sit back, enjoy the moment and say to yourself, ‘Well played sir, well played’.

The 3-4 hours that we spent at Le Restaurant came and went all too quickly. The setting itself was charming and elegant without being pretentious, and whole moment was as close as I could have imagined it being to the one that I had planned out in my minds’ eye all that time ago.

 

Dinner at Le Restaurant - L'Hotel - 13 Rue de Beaux Artes - St.Germain - Paris - France

As the evening wound to a close and with several glasses of wine massaging our mindsets, we stepped out of Le Restaurant onto Rue de Beaux Artes and the unfamiliar streets of Paris. Piling into a cab we took the short ride back to Rue de la Harpe, watching the changing colours of the neon night as we sailed through St.Germain and into the Latin Quarter, all three of us sedately quiet, taking in our own impressions and processing all that had gone before.

Entering their apartment on Rue de la Harpe we just sat and chatted for a while, discussing the logistics of what and how I had organised things, and listened to dad as he again repeated his ‘premonition’.  It was a night for making bright and fantastic memories, and how fortunate that the City of Lights should lend us her backdrop to utilise as we pleased for one evening.

 

Apartment view from parents place - 42 Rue de la Harpe - Latin Quarter - Paris - Frane

As I left their apartment and walked the few mins back to mine on Quai de Montebello I felt extremely fortunate. Not many people get a chance to do this let alone think about doing it. This now was something I was going to carry with me always, and whether I’m normal or not, something which shouldn’t be debated (because I’m not), the final result was the three smiles and three separate memories that this idea created, and that’s alright with me.

Paris: Who the hell saw that coming?

The Who the hell saw that coming tour

18 September - 23 September 2014

The Eiffel tower as taken from the Palais de Chaillot

Wow, this trip was so far out of left field that when it came at me it hit me on the right side of my face. In my mind I had already pre-judged 2014 to have been an entirely ‘travel barren’ year, but as I also know in my heart of hearts, you can NEVER say NEVER. Circumstance can be odd and  sometimes can conspire for doom, and sometimes,  conspires for the force of BOOM! (yeah, I said that).

Hence, in the tradition of all my other kick-off write ups such as ‘Life in a year full of Saturdays’, ‘The wing and a prayer tour’, ‘Don’t call this a comeback’, ’43: The tour of awesome’ and ‘The two-timer tour’,  I bring you ‘Paris: Who hell saw that coming?’.

There are so many components to my Parisian jaunt, elements that conspired to fashion my express saunter through several glorious early Autumn days in city of lights, that had I have even attempted to have planned the eventual route that was taken, nothing would have manifested, nothing at all.

I think the best place to start is to provide a flavour of some of conversations that were held in the hallways of the Federal Court when questioned as to what I’d be doing with my entire four days of leave that I had requested. Most conversations were structured accordingly;

Random work colleague – ‘You’re taking a few days off H, are you up to anything?’
 

Me – ‘Yeah, I’m going away for a few days’

Random work colleague – ‘Oh nice, where are you going?’

Me – ‘Paris’

Random work colleague – (insert incredulous look) – ‘For how many days!?!’

Me – ‘I’ll be in Paris for the weekend mostly’

Random work colleague – (now looking at me like I’d been smoking too much tutti-frutti) – ‘Ummm – Why?’

Me – ‘I’m there to surprise my parents, oh, and I have a date lined up, a first date actually’

Random work colleague – ‘Can I get some of the stuff you’ve been smoking??’

The ‘who the hell saw that coming’ tour had so many iterations prior to where it settled that it easily could have been called ‘World Cup Rio’ or ‘Living la vida en Latin Europe’, but as the reality and demands of working for the Federal Court drew down on the mental time credits that I’d assigned myself in earlier months, it became all too obvious that the only travel I would be doing was via the 6:27am all stations ride from Seven Hills to Town Hall.

Let me commence however with an overview of what would be my greatest Criss Angel impersonation, aka - the Le Restaurant heist on Rue de Beaux Artes – Thursday, 18^th of September, 2014. As you know, the best laid plans of both mice and men quite often go astray, and so too, my plans for making it to the World Cup in Brazil and also a France/Spain tour sadly sank into the murk of the shallow marshes, induced by merciful euthanasia. The family resistance gene to ‘required work’ however is still carried by my parents and that resistance equated to both travel fortune and opportunism. Theirs now is a life of retired bliss created on the foundation of purchased time as credited from the Bank of Life. So, as unbelievably cool a son that I am, I hooked these old-timers up with a two month holiday and also threw in an all expenses, kick-arse four day excursion to one of the most loved destinations on the planet.  I give you these lines in order now to set the foundation as to what additionally was to play out in my mind after I created their itinerary.

 

In the early months of this year, sitting back one night  and contemplating my handy work at playing the role of ‘legendary family travel agent’, I had one of those lightning bolt thoughts where the alignment of stars brought on the phenomena  of  brilliant inspiration acquired through pangs of what I thought would inevitably be travel jealousy, that was  of course underpinned by the lead tenets of ‘crazy’ and ‘cool’.

Now ‘what if’, I thought, ‘what if whilst they were in Paris I flew in, all covert, cloak and dagger style, and met them at a five star Parisian restaurant that I had pre-booked for them? What if Henry…what if you managed to pull off that stunt without so much as a word to anyone?’, and thus the planning for who the hell saw that coming commenced in earnest.

Part two of this now breathtaking story has a lot to do with the entry details in  ‘Riga - Latvian night moves. And whilst I have made a promise not to discuss in public what should really be kept private, I will mention that the idea of a first date,  four years removed from a random, innocuous meeting in a Rigan bar, that had me wandering the streets of the Old Town like a hapless, ill-fated nomad , somehow germinated within the midst of these two sentences;

Ms Pop – ‘You know, if you could fly into Europe, anywhere, I would be able to meet you there’

Crazy man – ‘What about Paris on the 18^th of September, I’m there for the weekend’

Ms Pop  - No comments to be added, just refer to the line offered by Random work colleague as outlined earlier dialogue regarding the same escapade.

…And there it was, random events, bonding to form an epic atom of awesome. It was to be Paris like a Rockstar! It idea had now somehow been dreamt, all that was left was for the dream to be realised!!

ACTIVATE DREAM SEQUENCE >>>>

Sydney - Your Saturday best - 7 years of sin and sensation (part 3)

Sydney (Australia)

This is part 3 in my Year full of Saturdays 'review and reflection' special. I think after this one I'll probably have one more left in me, and I think it might be an idea to have a look back at my top 25 moments, then it'll be time to move on, but for today, lets just go with my top 22 spots for acquiring a beverage, or many. Like many of the lists that I create, they are particularly subjective and my recollection and preferences  have quite a lot to do with the company in tow, the time and place, my mood etc. Still, I think a lot of the venues would stand up to scrutiny, so with that in mind, here we go....

The top 22 'Rethinking your drinking' experiences

This is a tip of the hat to those locales that warmly greeted me, had invited me in to their domiciles via their very own clandestine and stealthy means, lulled me into that foreseeable false security where my safeguards were felled quite expeditiously through my very own prolonged lapse of reason, to then, only much later for me, allow me to come to the bewildering and stupefying realisation that I’d been unceremoniously kicked to the grimy, lurid curbs of another unknown metropolis without so much as a cursory wave. To the bars that have supported me up to and well after the midnight hour, this is your moment. . The top 22!

1. Intercontinental Resort & Spa - Papeete - Tahiti (French Polynesia) Considering that I allowed Bardeaux (Queenstown) to make the list even though it's not included in my Saturdays entries, this then needed to be allowed into the mix,  and therefore its entry means that it certainly has to occupy the top spot. Now the story of how I got to Tahiti was a little unconventional. I recall that one afternoon whist working at OzEmail, from memory sometime in early 2000, my 'trip switch' was triggered, it may have been the fact that I was required to deal with yet another irate and irrational  customer, perhaps it was activated by the inert management that surrounded me but whatever it was my brain just went to thinking 'tropical holiday? Yeah, I think it's time!'. Now the critical factor when working in a call centre, and by far the greatest inhibitor to you being able to do ANYTHING at all is that your pay is crap, I mean it's quite pathetic, sooooo, what can you do?? Easy solution my friends, I got around to pulling some heavy duty overtime, and when I say heavy duty OT, I mean seriously HEAVY DUTY OT, overtime on steroids style! I went for one whole month pulling 6am to midnight shifts, every single day. It was ludicrous, and in the end my bosses concurred, they thought it was ludicrous too, so much so that they methodically attempted to pick holes in my 'work story' and pathetically attempted to discount hours where I actually did work. Let me say now, I actually worked a lot of those hours, but not all of them, certainly not all. In any case the trade off was that I was able to spend three weeks in Tahiti and my first port of call was the stunning Intercontinental Resort & Spa in Tahiti. Sincerely, places like this are what dreams of made of. If you attempted to describe the turquoise blue colours of the waters or the variations in hue and chroma of the sky you'd either be very misguided in your attempts or would seriously understate the scene and do it an enormous disservice. Even photos don't quite do the capture the vibrancy of colour and still do it an injustice. The bar itself, as you can see from the photos, is a swim up bar that's located on one side of an infinity pool that fronts the warm tropical waters of the South Pacific, that's for starters, it then has in its arsenal breathtaking views across a 14km stretch of South Pacific sea to the island of Moorea which in turn gives a 'best supporting role' performance to any sort of mood that the day offers, be it early morning or during those long afternoons when the sun takes an absolute eternity to drop out of sight behind the island. More than just enchanting, more than just idyllic, it's a fantasy location in your mind that's brought to life and the bar, whilst being just a token gesture in this setting, has to take out the title of best bar by a long...long...margin!

Intercontinental Resort & Spa - Papeete - Tahiti - French Polynesia

Intercontinental Resort & Spa - Papeete - Tahiti - French Polynesia
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2. Porto Bay – Copacabana – Rio de Janeiro (Brasil) – It’s just the view that makes everything about this place so special. The rooftop bar of the Porto Bay hotel in Copa is nice enough, as you would expect a standard hotel bar to be, it’s inviting, relaxing, somewhere to ease off. But when Rio switches on the sun it's just so damn easy to get lost in those Cariocan sunsets that dazzle over some of the most famous grains of sand on the planet. Golden painted beaches, picturesque emerald green surrounds and the South Atlantic knocking at the front door, those beams of bedazzling Brazilian rays capture you in their outstreched arms and as the brilliance of another day sinks behind the Morro dos Irmaos which provides the dramatic backdrop to Ipanema you're just compelled to stay a drink or two longer. On those brilliant days you really do crave the chance for time to slow down for you just a little, and maybe it even does.

Copacabana from Porto Bay Hotel - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

The sun settling behind the Morro dos Irmaos - Porto Bay Hotel - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

3. Skybar – Traders Hotel – Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) – Another place that has the market cornered when it comes to elegantly framing an iconic view. Located on Lvl 33 of the Traders Hotel there’s no better place to gaze out at the impressive conjoined double phalluses that represent the unique signature of KL and knock back a couple of martini’s than right here. Jet and I spent the annual ‘conversion’ from 2009-10 here and it was by far and away our best NYE to date. Let me just add that the Burj Khalifa in Dubai could learn a little bit when it comes to lighting structures of such magnitude. The Petronis Towers were for a short period of time the tallest buildings on the planet and their night show had absolutely nobody in  any doubt that this was the case. I guarantee that you can see their beams of light from the moon, as for the Burj Khalifa, well it couldn't light a sideshow alley game at a travelling circus. Someone needs to pick up their act!

Skybar - Traders Hotel - Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia

Skybar- Traders Hotel - Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia

4. Hotel h10 Montcada – Barcelona (Spain) – Back in 2008 this was my introduction to Barcelona. I remember on that very first evening in Barca I sat up on the terrace of the h10 gazing out at the Barri Gotic, then to Vila de Gracia, Glories, St Marti, et al, and remember thinking then that the town kind of looked a little dishevelled to me, perhaps somewhat ram shackled, like a little tumbledown jerry built pueblo. First impressions right!? What the hell do they really mean any way, other than your chance to make a particularly poor judgment call on face value!? I do remember that the main thing that caught my eye  that very first time was the unconventional and incongruously placed, 'disco dildo' (Torre Agbar), its position on the landscape looked kind of obscene. Never the less, Barca grabbed me all in one foul swoop that very night and kept me well and truly in its hooks on my return in 2010 with the Montcada hosting a brilliant ‘arrivals’ session for JJ. Good times Montcada, good times!

Hotel h10 Montcada - Barri Gotic - Barcelona - Spain

View from the rooftop terrace - Hotel h10 Montcada - Barri Gotic - Barcelona - Spain...That 'disco dildo' really makes its presence felt at night

5. Bardeaux – Queenstown (New Zealand) – Technically I shouldn’t be adding this the list as it isn’t discussed within the ‘Saturdays’ blog, but I’ve been there, I’ve loved it, loved it HARD in fact, and I make the rules when it comes to my blog and the lists that I construct! Now this place is definitely somewhere that you’d want to bunker down in for a few hours when the temperature outside drops to low single digits, when breathing in the cold night air gives you that sharp knife-like jabbing pain in your lungs and when the evening sky is musing over its decision to turn into a turbid Winter concoction of whatever it is, all the while deciding what exactly its next move should be. This place occupies a smallish corner of the Queenstown landscape but it’s just so damn cosy, you can get lost in this more than agreeable arena on the back of several whiskeys, or, several bottles of wine (hmmm,  now that sounds familiar to me...). It has that après-ski, hanging out in the lodge with my ‘huck buddies’ kind of atmosphere, but it’s the roaring fire that gives this place its charm and the ‘primo’ seats are of course on the leather lounges positioned right in front of it. On the night I was there I was fortunate enough to have occupied one of those lounges with my great friend JJ and another ski buddy of ours… for many an hour! We hijacked a three seater lounge, backed it up against the bar and managed to take down seven bottles of some of the finest red that I can recall, although after the third bottle it didn't really matter. That night will forever remain in my mind as just being LEGENDARY, and  the price for that is that the next day will forever remain in my mind as being AWFULLY DIFFICULT!

A roaring fire, a leather lounge, great company, 7 bottles of wine! Bardeaux - Queenstown - New Zealand

6.  La Poesia – San Telmo – Buenos Aires (Argentina) – Maybe I’m just old school, or perhaps I just like that classical style, or both, which is more to the point, but this typically traditional café/bar that's housed in a turn of the 19^th century building, has  chequered tile floors, an enchanting dark wooden bar, shelves lined with books and random artifacts on the uppers levels, and was previously a noted place in San Telmo for attracting the artists and thinkers of the era, and area. They would come in to wile away the hours in their contemplation of what a picture of Argentinian democracy could look like post military dictatorship. The place certainly has that air about it, not a weightiness as such but an ambiance and mood that is welcoming, warm and purposeful. It’s a corner of San Telmo where I’d be happy to let a few hours slip by in the contemplation of my own thoughts or within the muted gaze and musings of the the ebb and flow of the world outside the windows.

7. Kosy bar – Marrakech (Morocco) – Make no mistake about it, when you’re in Marrakech ‘you know that you’re somewhere else entirely’. Your senses get accosted like the proverbial baseball bat to the back of the head. If it’s not the rhythmic but somehow chaotic sounds coming from the square of Djemaa El-Fna, then it’s the potency of smells wafting over the crowds from the grills in the square, or it’s the vibrancy of colours coming from the shops that frame it. If you’re not prepared  then it can catch you by surprise and your only way back into the fold is to counter attack, which can at times be a futile process. I love Marrakech, it’s a large dose of exotic, a shot of mysterious and it has an ambiance that wraps you up in its cloak of bewilderment and demands that you stay on your toes. Kosy bar is part of this set, yet another rooftop bar, it has fantastic views out over the medina with a direct line of sight to the iconic Koutoubia mosque. It's placed in a location that will  also allow you to take in one of the most stunningly brilliant sunsets around whilst the hauntingly beautiful call to prayer strikes up for the evening.

Getting Kosy - Kosybar - Marrakech - Morocco

Interior of Kosybar - Marrakech - Morocco

Sunset over Marrakech - Morocco

8. Praia Grande – Paraty (Brasil) – idyllic, what other word could do this place justice? With the emerald green waters of Isla Grande Bay lapping up against the front deck of the bar what else could you be justified in asking for? I’d be none too surprised if Corona headed on down south and shot a commercial here, it really is a postcard that can be sent with the caption , ‘from where you would rather be’.

Bar on the beach - Praia Grande - Costa Verde - Brasil

9. Hogfjallshotell – Hemavan (Sweden) – When you’re on the Arctic Circle in the middle of Winter and the sun drops out of the sky come 2pm, you think to yourself,  ‘man, the idea of a drink really suits me about now’. So you board on down to the front door, clip out of your bindings and walk up to the lounge area for a game of snooker and perhaps a whiskey or several, all the while looking out at snow covered Lapland and thinking, ‘Now how the hell is it that I find myself here?’ . Well you could ask me, or you could ask Jay, because both of us know the answer to that question.

Hogfjallshotell - Hemavan - Sweden

Hogfjallshotell - Hemavan - Sweden

10. Hotel Majestic – Saigon (Vietnam) – And it's yet  another rooftop bar making the list. I think sometimes that’s just the way you want it when you’ve dialled your ‘action-meter’ back to tranquillo and you just want to soak in the space that you’re in with the least amount of energy possible. This bar has a great view over the Saigon river and provides the wander lusting voyeur with the opportunity of witnessing locals amassed on both sides of the river, cramming themselves and their two-stroke Hondas OM’s onto the ferries that run the cross river dash every few minutes.

Hotel Majestic - Saigon - Vietnam

11.  Bamboo bars on the Nam Song – Vang Vieng (Lao PDR) – Cruising down the Nam Song on an inflated tyre, letting your mind wander, with perhaps a can of beer Lao in hand, drifting sweetly into eternity, then being sharply snapped out of it when someone shouts out something to you, you pause for a moment, glance over at your travelling partner and just nod, nothing else needs to be verified. A rope is thrown out, you catch it and get pulled into one of the endless number of bamboo bars that are perched on the rivers edge. You select yourself a beverage, climb into a hammock and sway away on the gentle breezes.

Post-script – my memory of Vang Vieng was built upon my one and only encounter with it in 2009. Since then things have changed, the government has stepped in and dismantled many of the bars that line the Nam Song and all the evil contraptions that would allow you to fling yourself with complete disregard for your safety into the boulder riddled river have gone the same way. Foreigners have died in Vang Vieng, either on the river or post Nam Song exuberance, that is a fact. The boozy, drug fuelled, hedonistic ways of backpackers made that inevitable. The place is not what it once was, and that perhaps is a very good thing, but as I remember, ‘back in the day, this certainly was a wild place for a drink!?!?

JJ rocking those Vang Vieng hammocks - Lao PDR

Pick a bar, any bar....

12. Captain Hooks’ – Barcelona (Spain) – Back in July 2010 I spent the better part of two weeks in a fantastic apartment located on Carrer Ample in Barri Gotic, the Old Gothic Quarters of Barcelona. Literally directly across the street was a quirky, oddball, kind of ‘off the wall’type of bar whose theme was based on the fictional character of the same name from Peter Pan. This place also had a curious feel to it, an atypical barin the sense that on occasion you felt uneasy being in there. Uncharacteristically quiet except for the voices that carried throughout from the smattering of conversations that were taking place inside, this place also ended up being a favourite.I remember that they had a great drink there called the Tio, tio Garfito es mio (Uncle, uncle, Hooky is mine) or the cooler version (Dude, dude, Hooky is mine), the construct which I’ve just been able to locate, it goes a little something like this, rum, crème de café(café cream), milk, ‘nata y hielo pile’ (pile of ice cream) – it sounds simple, and probably was, but is was outstanding.

Carrer Ample - Barri Gotic - Barcelona - Spain

Carrer Ample - Barri Gotic - Barcelona - Spain

13.Bar Urca – Urca – Rio de Janeiro (Brasil) – This is a typical ‘corner pocket’ bar located in probably one of the most spectacular parts of Rio. Located on the Urca peninsula in the shadows of Sugarloaf, right on the shores of Guanabara Bay, it has views down into Botofogo and  to Christo Redentor beyond, there’s not too much that you would want to change with its setting, and, it’s all outdoor seating. Order at the bar, walk across the street and pull up a piece of concrete real estate that is the wall that fronts the bay. This place serves great seafood and all you need to do is select the right amber ale for your liking and you’re away.

Urca - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

JJ and Jetson about to kick-off proceedings - Urca - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

14.Cervantes – Copacabana – Rio de Janeiro (Brasil) – Again, another bar that’s not spectacular for the expected reasons, it doesn't have  either the good looks nor a prime location  to sing from the hilltops about, and inside it's standing room only for that matter, but with that said this place is a Copacabana institution. Its beer on tap mostly, but the catch here is, and the thing that will also get you coming back at 3 in the morning, are the ridiculously tasty pork sandwiches, or what the crew at Cervantes call  sandviche pernil com abacaxi. It’s basic fare, a roll piled high with tender pork, topped with a slice of pineapple, to be accompanied by a glass or three of chopp. That’s your only obligation. Its old school, simple, but a classic never the less!

Copacabana - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

15.. Rainforest café/bar – Deira – Dubai (United Arab Emirates) – What to say about a rain forest themed café/bar where by law you aren’t allowed to drink!? You make the necessary alterations and adjusments then say ‘Time to get your shisha on! Pass me that hookah habibi!’.  I commenced a short lived love affair with the hookah in this very place, a chilled out bar where you could order up shisha of all flavours and smoke away the hours in complete bliss. I accidentally discovered what I called the rainforest café, because of its wild décor, on my first occasion in Dubai when I got to chatting with a Canadian guy in some random hotel bar and we decided that a smoke induced morning would be exactly what we needed to get us through to the morning light on other side. The second time was quite the ‘random’ encounter. I was on a flight back home with Emirates out of Vienna when I ran into an old boss of mine, who incidentally was staying at the same hotel as I was in Dubai! All I had to say was ‘Hey Michael, I have a great idea’ – of course this was said after many drinks in the hotel bar – 8hrs later as the sun was coming up at 6am we kind of thought it might be an idea to head back, both of us were on the same 9am flight out to Sydney that day too.

16.. Beatles Bar – Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) – The set up here is fantastic, except for the fact that it’s just Beatles music! I’m sorry but there music has never ‘done it for me’. Still, a place where the tables are on raised platforms, filled with comfortable cushions for you to just laze about on and drink away quite comfortably must have something good going for it.

Chinatown - Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia

Chinatown - Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia

17. Bar Federal – San Telmo - Buenos Aires (Argentina) – San Telmo is my favourite hood in the world...in THE WORLD but somehow I haven’t quite made the ‘bar’ discoveries in the area that I might have anticipated, partly, (well perhaps wholly) because I spend most of my time in one of the copious numbers of parillas gorging on their wonderful bife de chorizos, bife de lomos, papas fritas and bottles of Malbec, but, with that said, I did manage to track down this throw back to the good ‘ole days, when bars had that musty, woody, earthy type of smell and feel. This is a relatively small place on a nondescript corner of San Telmo but it has warmth, soul, character and it makes you feel good. Can’t dispute those qualities huh?

San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina

18. Wirstroms Irish Pub – Gamla Stan – Stockholm (Sweden) – I remember Jay taking me to this bar where on first impressions it looked like a ‘one lane’ in and out type of place with a ridiculously high bench against one wall where after I clambered up found  my feet to be dangling at least half a metre above the floor! Even for a bunch of 7ft Vikings the seating seemed a little disproportionate. The interesting aspect of this bar were the hidden little nooks that you encountered as you ventured to the back of the venue and walked down the flight of stairs, it seemed to be an endless cavern of potential discovery. A room for a band to play, a clandestine sitting area, another corner bar if you cared not to venture up higher from your subterranean abode, it was a labyrinth of bar space. I tried to find the place when I was back there in 2010 but didn’t have the ‘guy in the know’ with me.

Gamla Stan - Stockholm - Sweden

Gamla Stan - Stockholm - Sweden

19. Zurriola maritimo (Zm)– San Sebastian (Spain) – Overlooking Zurriola beach and with a view to Monte Urgull this place justifies its position by having a fantastic view in my one of my very favourite places on the planet. San Sebastian is a bar/tapas town and this bar doesn’t fit into that mould at all, in fact, it wouldn’t stack up against many of the places in San Sebastian if it came to food, charm and character, but as they say, location is everything and these guys have it in spades.

Dina, Jay and myself at Zm - San Sebastian - Spain

View from Zm - San Sebastian - Spain

20. Fusion lounge – Hoi An (Vietnam) – Hoi An is a dreamy little place, quaint and charming, it’s beauty is also quite disarming. Overlooking the Thu Bon River however there’s what I call a 'cultivated venue' that has some great drinks, fantastic food, and all served at a ridiculous price in a lounge area that wouldn’t be out of place in any thriving metropolis. I actually kind of enjoyed the alternate option of sitting out on the terrace and simply watching late night world of Hoi An sail on past. The lounge area was a little unused in any case and didn't really need me drawing attention to it!

The gorgeous town of Hoi An, across the Thu Bon River - Vietnam

Big night at Fusion, I was there and ummm....all my friends too..??

21.(The WTF is that place!?) – Huay Xai (Lao PDR) – Huay Xai is a two street town that sits on the Mekong, which acts as the Lao/Thai border, in the north-west corner of the country. This sleepy town hosts travellers that are either making the hop into Thailand or those that are wanting to travel further north and take up trekking opportunities out of Luang Namtha. This place SHOULD NOT have the bar in the locations where JJ accidentally discovered it on one of her random walks. As she strolled on a road heading north out of town, some way out in fact, she was somehow diverted down a random lane by who knows what and there found a massive multi-levelled, all wooden, open aired bar that had not a soul in it! Why did a place like Huay Xai need a bar of that size? What the hell was it doing in a place that no normal person could find? Why the multitude of levels? Questions that I’ll never be able to answer in my life, but I loved it never the less!

Seriously, this place is in the middle of nowhere in a town that is nowhere - Huay Xai - Lao PDR

Huay Xai - Lao PDR

22. Random wine bar – Paraty (Brazil) – Paraty is a preserved Portuguese colonial town that has prime position on the Costa Verde with the Bay of Isla Grande lapping at its door. In a place like this time just slows down, JJ and I found this out one afternoon in a charming little wine bar in the old town itself. Time just strolled on by without either of us taking notice, and I think a lot of that had to do with me getting ‘schooled’ by a Brazilian lady why I shouldn’t call JJ ‘nuts’. I mean her explanation was ALL in Portuguese, and JJ’s responses to her were ALL in English but somehow they understood each other perfectly, perfectly enough to both know that I was somehow THE problem!

Honourable mentions

Yono’s - Marais district (Paris) – Served JJ and I quality whiskey sours and gave us happy hour prices well after happy hour was over, and their service generally, as JJ reminded me, was the best in any bar, anywhere! Yono's kept us going on those nights where we waited until was time to hit Chez Robert & Louise for what I remember as being the GREATEST meal(s) of my life! As I've said in an earlier write up, when that hypothetical question is thrown up of 'What would you have as your last meal on earth?', I'd say, 'If they were open, and if I had the chance, it would be an evening at Chez Robert & Louise'
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Random bar- Phonsovan (Lao PDR) – If ever a place need a bar it would be the tediously dismal town of Phonsovan! In fact, 'tediously dismal' is talking  them up several notches but for the sake of this entry I'll let it stand just there. Phonsovan as a town has nothing going for it, NOTHING, other than the ability for you to be served a G’n’T at 8:00am. Thank you Phonsovan, I thank you for at least providing JJ and myself with that much.
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Several bars of Sucre (Bolivia) – there were some cool places in Sucre but one place, a pizza joint and bar also, sold a mojito type drink name  'The Boliviano'.  Rather than utilise mint, as a standad mojito does, their version was mixed and infused with the wholesome goodness of cocoa leaves! Taking down a few of those, both D and myself were dialled into a ride on the happy bus hours thereafter! They were AWESOME!
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Raffles Hotels – Singapore – I like this place, it’s vintage, it’s a classic in terms of name, and apparently the last living tiger in Singapore was shot under the snooker table in the bar, and to add to that, I don’t mind that the Singapore Sling is made in enormous batches, much in the same manner that you’d mix 100 litres of Gatorade on the sideline before a D-grade footy contest on a Sunday afternoon. It’s still a drink, and I still liked it!

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Hotel Atlas – Chefchaouen (Morocco) – You can’t acquire an alcoholic beverage within the city walls of Chefchaouen, but if you escape its breaches and walk up the hillside you can make it to the balconies of the Hotel Atlas which provide a fantastic view of the town and the surrounding country side. Somehow I took a liking to their rose martinis, and JJ acquired the good lovin’ of a Moroccan goat herder, but that’s another story!