Dallas & DFW Hotels

hey everyone,

As the weekend comes to a close, I thought I better write at least one more trip update before I head home and get lost on the busy-ness of everyday life and work home in Hawaii.

Last night I was so tired, I actually just had dinner at a restaurant close to my hotel and went to bed at 9:30 pm. Yes, I know many of you probably don't believe that I actually went to bed that early, but I did. The jet lag had finally caught up with me and I was beat.

So since I don't really have a good food story to tell you, I thought I'd switch and talk about the hotels. I stayed at two really nice hotels on this trip. The first was the Hilton DFW Lakes Executive Conference Center, just about 10 minutes north of the airport. There is a free shuttle service from the airport, but I chose to drive this time and parking was free.

This hotel was located right in the middle of Grapevine, TX, which from the brochures I read is a cute little historic town, usually the kind that I like to go and wander around and just enjoy the small town feeling. Unfortunately got up late on Friday morning, and had only just enough time to eat lunch and make it to my conference so I didn't get to see the town. But there was a lot of shopping also right in the area and the Grapevine Mills Outlet Mall with lots of shops, restaurants, and movie theater.

My room at the Hilton was pretty big and the bed was definitely comfortable (it always feels so weird when it's just me traveling and they give me a room with a huge king bed, I usually sleep near the edge of the bed, so it must be a hilarious sight to see me hugging my pillow near one edge of the bed and the whole rest of the huge bed unoccupied).

Everything in the room was very nice and well maintained (not sure when their last renovation was) and I definitely felt like I was in an "executive" conference center. A big plus were the electrical plugs built directly into the base of the lamp both on the desk and on the bed stands. One of my pet peeves is when hotels make it really difficult for you to find an outlet to both plug in my laptop and to plug in my phone. With this setup, I didn't have to go crawling under the desk to plug in my laptop and I could have my phone charge right next to the bed. So it was easy for me to have my phone alarm wake me up in the morning (and for me to be able to hit the snooze on my phone too since it was right next to the bed).

Probably my only disappointment with the room was that the bathroom didn't have a tub. Taking a tub bath is definitely one of the luxuries I allow myself on my trips and this room only had a standing shower. I must admit that it was a really nice standing shower with dark brown metallic square tiles that really made it look deep and rich.

The shower also didn't have a shower door, there was floor to ceiling glass enclosing about three feet from the wall. This is the type of shower I eventually want to have in my house, but the glass didn't seem like it was long enough to keep the water in, but it actually worked really well. At first I was kind of showering carefully as to not splash everywhere, but then I figured what the heck, it's a hotel, let's test out the design. And so I proceeded to take a "regular" shower, and you know what--there was hardly any water that splashed out. So my kudos to the architect cause it was definitely a good design. (Note made for distance of enclosing glass for my future house's shower).

You can check out my pictures of the room and the shower (sorry only one of the shower, the bathroom was kinda small so it was hard to get a good picture) on my Flicker Dallas Set (this one includes all of hotels that I've stayed at in Dallas, just look for the ones labeled Hilton FDW Lakes).

Also included in the Flicker Dallas Set are pictures of the hotel that I moved to on Saturday, the Sheraton Suites Market Center Hotel. Last time I was in Dallas (actually two Dallas trips ago) this hotel was going through renovations, but they're now finished and man what a difference! The renovated rooms are somewhat trendy with darker woods and some glass table tops, the couch was a bit firm for my tastes (but then again it was a pullout so firm is good, I hate it when you sit on a pullout and you just sink into the cushions because they didn't give it enough support in the closed position), but overall the room felt very modern and comfortable at the same time.

Thank goodness that this hotel had a bathtub, and what a great bathtub it was! They replaced the standard tub with a deep tub that I could fill high enough to cover my entire body (and not have that irritating gurgling noise from the overflow drain). The towel though were obviously not part of the renovation since they were a little on the thin side and some starting to tatter a little.

With their renovation also came a great gym. New workout bench and weights, and lots of cardio machines. The gym also looked out into the indoor pool area (which looked out to the outdoor pool area via floor to ceiling glass walls) and jacuzzi. I thought it was neat that the indoor and outdoor pools were also connected by a water way that went under the glass wall.; I wondered though about how that would affect the water because normally indoor pools are heated (especially during winter) and the weather in dallas, while nice, has been a bit on the chilly side, so I suspect the water in the outdoor pool was pretty frigid

In any case, there are pictures of this hotel's room up in my Flicker Dallas Set too. Oh I almost forgot to mention too, this hotel had some good Starwood Preferred Guest benefits. Gold and Platinum members have access to a lounge at the top of the hotel and complementary breakfast. Since the lounge is normally only open during the week days for this hotel, they instead gave me a free ticket to be able to eat at the hotel restaurant. The nice thing was that for $3, I was able to upgrade to the full breakfast buffet which included omlets, pancakes, and french toast made to order. All things considered their offering was pretty typical, but what really stood out was their bacon. It was PERFECTLY crispy. I mean totally prefect, where it just crumbles if you try to take a fork to it, and it just melts in your mouth when you bit into it. I probably ate way more bacon that I should have, but man was it good stuff. I forgot to find out how much the buffet would have been if didn't have the coupon, but man for that bacon, I'd do it again.

Ok now what I have my obligatory food comment in there, which definitely got my mouth watering again, I think I need to go find some dinner. Meeting up with some friends that I met on my first trip to Dallas about a year ago. They were the ones that took me to the Bishop Arts District that I wrote about in the April 2008 blog entry, so let's see what kind of exciting restaurant they introduce me to this time.

Dallas: AITP Members Summit and Hard 8 BBQ

hey everyone,

Happy New Year! I actually started off the new year in San Fran this year. It felt like old times, I left Honolulu on the day after Christmas and stayed in San Fran until January 2nd. It was definitely nice to catch up with some old friends and sorry to those of you I missed seeing this time in SF.

I was just home for two weeks and now I'm over in Dallas attending the 2009 AITP Members Summit. I actually wasn't expecting much from this event since it was the first time that they're holding it, but it has actually turned out to be a really great event with a lot of leadership insight and strategic perspectives on the role of Information Technology in today's organization. These topics are especially important given the current economic climate so the things that I'm learning on this trip have turned out to be pretty timely.

I know that many of you love to eat as much as I do, so I made sure that I eat at somewhere uniquely Texan on this trip.A colleague of mine in Dallas took me to eat at Hard Eight BBQ. I really wish I had brought my camera with me because it was quite an experience.

It was located in a relatively dark, out of the way area without any major signage that I could see. As we pulled into the parking lot, I could see the roasting pits (is that what they're called?), but it really looked more like some kine of small manufacturing plant than a restaurant.

As we exited that car and got close to the entrance, then you could smell the BBQ, but still it looked like a plant...there were six large metal BBQ pits that were the size of large home freezers, all connected to two what looked like really large old wooden ovens that connected to the smokestacks.

When we finally got to the front of the line (it was almost like a theme park ride, walking through a metal railed area) to get to another large BBQ pit (that was probably off or on really low) that was open with all the available meats, corn, etc. all laid out for you to choose from. There was an employee there that you told what you wanted (e.g. two ribs, steak, etc.) and he cut it from the large pieces there and weighed it for you (most of the meats were sold by the pound, except for some things that were premeasured, like the pieces of steak). I decided a couple of pork ribs (50% off betweeb 5pm and 7pm), a small piece of sausage, a stuffed jalepeno (mostly meat with a small pepper, wrapped in bacon), and whole grilled corn on the cob.

From there we went inside (yes all of that was still outside the building) and there was a salad bar like are where all of the sides and desserts were laid out cafeteria-style. We added our sides to the trays and then picked up utensils at the end of the bar, where we reached a check-out girl who totaled our meal.  It was probably because of the special price on the ribs, but both of our meals, including an all you can drink fountain drink came out to about $12 each. Pretty good for a meal that I could barely finish.

Off in the corner was the soda machine, and right next to it was a big "Pot of Beans" which turned out to be a self-serve (and I guess all you can eat) pot of cooked beans. They weren't overly flavorful, but they did have a bit of a kick, so I ended up eating them with the sausage (which was somewhat dry).

Also in the corner was a big pot of BBQ sauce that was absolutely delicious with the ribs. So the way this worked was that the ribs themselves were covered in a spice rub and the cooked. So they had some taste on their own, but what really made them taste good was dipping them into the BBQ sauce and then chowing down. I think the ribs by themselves were a bit dry, but with the sauce added (which was actually warmer than the ribs) really made them ono-licious ("delicious" for those of you not familiar with Hawaii lingo).

The roasted corn was probably the thing that stood out the most for me through. We had to peel them ourselves (which I didn't care for, you guys know how I like things clean) but man it was worth it because the corn was nice and warm inside...perfectly crisp and moist (not soggy like some corn can be).

For dessert, I had the cherry cobbler, which had a good taste but a little on the cool side (room temperature). I definitely would have preferred it to be warm, but it was still good.

Oh and I definitely have to say that this was a dining experience because the whole inside of the restaurant just made me think of a hunting lodge. It had a high ceiling, with animal head and even a bear's pelt on the walls. We could choose to sit at long wooden tables with short wooden stools or hightop tables with high stools. There were some tvs showing sports and country rock music playing in the background (enough that you know its there but not so loud that we couldn't have an active converstation).

Overall I definitely enjoyed the food and the ambiance. I want to try to go back to try more of the bbq meats and I think it would be a fun place to go with friends just to grind the food and hang out and have a couple of beers (and I don't really even drink that much beer) in a nice casual and comfortable atmosphere.

Well the conference is all day tomorrow so I better start getting ready for bed. Feels nice to get back to my old ways...traveling and eating out. In 2008 my trips were so quick, in and out the city, that I really didn't have time to do much outside the meeting or conference I was attending. Hopefully this year will allow me to balance more fun with the business in my travels.

Have a great weekend!