Month: August 2008

The Breakfast Blog

Yummy Eggs

An interesting find:
The Breakfast Blog
in search of the best eggs in town

Why eggs?
“All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast” – John Gunther

This is a blog about breakfast. More specifically, it’s about my ongoing search for great eggs.

Rather than just annoy a close circle of friends with my views on who does the best benedict in town, or whose scrambles rule the roost, I’ve decided to share these views with anyone silly enough to listen (or read, in this case). I figure there’s at least a handful of breakfast nuts out there who, like me, will welcome some tips on where to find the best breakfast spots in town.

So, why eggs? Why not pancakes, or toast? Why not porridge? Because eggs, for me, are the best test of a good hot brekky. They’re quick to cook, easy to compare, widely available, and, in most cases, a pleasure to eat. Although eggs will be the focus, I won’t totally ignore non-egg subject matter, like muesli, fruit salad, and the like. No point alienating the health freaks. But who’s ever craved a nice-healthy-bowl-of-muesli the morning after a big night out?

My plan is to blog my way through breakfast at two levels. First, I’ll do reviews of breakfast venues – good and bad – and rate them according to the eggs, the extras (sides, seasonings, sauces), the coffee, the rest (other food), the help, the price, and the buzz (crowd, venue, atmosphere, etc). Second, I’ll dish out my own set of gongs for “best whatever”..

I’m not a breakfast man myself. Usually I confine myself to a cigarette and a cup of cappuccino. However occasionally I fancy a nice Egg Benedict. And the ones Breakfast Blog offers us are really yummy.

High Five (5): Abandoned Cities, Cool Things To Do,

Gorilla High Five

Here are Happy Hotelier’s High Five (4) for:

  1. 20 Abandoned Cities and Towns by Weburbanist…a real horror story about abandoned locations with nice photos and a Digg Hit.
  2. 50 Things To Do Before You Die. Self explanatory.
  3. Cool Things in Random Places. In line with the previous find: Quirky things to do.
  4. Delicious Baby with a delicious list of female travel bloggers….I’m inclined to make a list of male travel bloggers…
  5. Market in Maastricht. A colorful post by an expat about visiting the market in Maastricht, which is a very good Dutch travel destination in itself, although many foreigners believe Amsterdam is the only city you have to visit in The Netherlands.

About Happy Hotelier’s High Five
Happy Hotelier’s High Five is a meant as a gesture of appreciation to fellow Bloggers who blog about travel and are sometimes referred to as members of the “T-List” or other interesting Bloggers or Web Personalities.

The arms are usually extended into the air to form the “high” part, and the five fingers of each hand meet, making the “five”, hence the name, although Happy Hotelier’s High Five will always be a left handed one.

I will not publish it on a scheduled date. I will publish it each time when I have found five persons or sites or posts that I deem worthy a High Five. It even may imply me echoing old news here.

The Category Tag here on Happy Hotelier is High Five.

If you want to draw my attention to a post, please use the Contact Page or give me a message at Twitter

About The High Five Logo

I borrowed the photo of a sculpture from Lisa Roet, a sculptor born in Australia and currently living and working in Melbourne, Australia, because one of the main items on my passport is that I miss a big chunk of my right thumb, so my right hand is much alike that of an ape:-)

Yoo Pimps your Property

Yoo Pimps your Property

Cleaning up and publishing some old drafts:

As some readers may know: I am a fan of Philippe Starck, not in the last place because he, like yours truly, is from the very good Bordeaux wine vintage year of 1949:-). Didn’t I promise yoo to pay more attention to Wine?

Lately you don’t seem to see the usual stream of new ideas and new inventions coming from him.

Probably this is because he teamed up with UK property tycoon John Hitchcox and others and formed Yoo. Yoo is mostly about development of residential property, but is also engaged in new Hotel developments.

Granmercy By Starck is one example. Back via the back door in cooperation with his old buddy Ian Schraeger? Oops, Tamara of Mr and Mrs Smith had a Lunch with John Hitchcox who stated there is no connection with this Granmercy and Ian Schrager’s Granmercy.

‘We want to offer democratic, high-fashion living.’ – PHILIPPE STARCK

Well this post is also meant as a rant. Those apartments don’t come cheap. In addition, like many designers, Mr Starck likes Flash for his sites. I don’t like Flash, not in the last place because it prevents poor Bloggers like myself to pinch nice photo’s from a site. (Even if you know how to do it, it is cumbersome) Therefore this silly picture…..

Last edited by GJE on November 29,2009 at 11.13 AM

10 Expat Blogs about The Netherlands

Expat Blog Logo

Clearing up and posting old drafts:

Expat Blogs are a wonderful source of information about a destination through the eyes of a foreigner. Here are 10 of them relating to The Netherlands.

Through Expat Blogs, a community of expat bloggers that charts the various expats in various countries, I found some interesting foreigners blogging about The Netherlands.

  1. A Touch of Dutch, “I’m a happily married American woman and have been living/working in the Netherlands for 6 years. I’ve decided to finally put together a blog for family/friends and everyone to share what life’s like living/working halfway around the world.” And, dear readers this Blog is a Gem with tons of information!
  2. Doe Maar Gewoon English with a very Dutch Title:”The adventures and misadventures of living in the Netherlands. Thoughts on Dutch culture, food, the joys of the public transport system and life in general.”
  3. Sethy’s Blog, “We are both expat from Malaysia and France. This Personal blog aims to keep contacts with our family staying in Malaysia and France. Via this blog we are trying to compare/comment the different style/way of live of our three countries.”
  4. Suze abroad, Suzanne from Down Under has been musing away from 2003. I fully second her sometimes hilarious mutterings and especially her post about The Dutch Midwife Mafia, as we have been confronted ourselves by some grave errors in this area recently. It is not only the midwifes, but also the gynecologists who are really old fashioned here sometimes. In a way they dependent on the midwifes, so they keep their mouths shut and go with the (wrong) flow. Because of this anomaly in Dutch Health system Suze decided to go back to Australia for the child delivery and to live there. Suze had been living in Utrecht.
  5. Sara de Mul – Living in Dutchland is a British woman blogging about living in Amsterdam. Sara has some interesting facts on her Blog. Unfortunately she updates very in frequent, one explanation could be she is really into learning Dutch. Kudos for that, because the Brits I know are very hesitant about learning Dutch.
  6. From Arkansas to Amsterdam A good idea: Here all members of the family have their own section on the Blog.
  7. Orange Journey, “Orange is the color of the Dutch Royal Family. The lineage of the current dynasty — the House of Oranje-Nassau — dates back to Willem van Oranje (William of Orange). But while the color orange has royal roots in the Netherlands, today it symbolizes a broader pride in the country and in being Dutch. We (Mr. and Mrs. Awaara) moved here in June, 2007 and first lived in Oranjastraat. Here it starts our journey in this orange country.”
  8. In Search of Dutchland, “In Search of DutchLand is a blog that chronicles and romanticizes the adventures of a 26 year old Pilipino-American living in The Netherlands. It is a refuge that attempts to illustrate her waking up to a “Dutched” reality complete with personal observations of cultural idiosyncrasies, narcissistic ramblings, and lingering homesickness.”
  9. Gone Dutch, “Life and travels of an American expat living in Rotterdam.”
  10. Reasons Not to Blog. “American living in The Netherlands since 2004. Since then, reading too much, not writing enough, and pursuing sometimes disparate, sometimes desperate academic and personal goals.”

Will be followed (I hope)

Happy Hotelier's 10 Most Popular Posts of July 2008

CitizenM

Woopra is a great tool for this. Rather than using a WP Plugin that generates most popular posts automatically, I prefer Woopra to hand pick a list, as it gives me an opportunity to reflect my posting behavior a bit.

My pages T-List and L-List (ranking number 1 in July), About (ranking number 2 in July, probably because it is a landing page from my other blog, Chair Blog that I have been pushing a lot in July), Page 2 (ranking number 5 in July) and Unusual Hotels (ranking 6 in July) kept attracting a lot of traffic. They seem to do so usually. Therefor I have decided to leave the pages out of the list and only include the separate posts. It also reminds me to post a T-List update in August.

Taking the above into consideration: My CitizenM reviews were ell received according to the statistics. Therefor I repeat one of my photos here. My older Yotel post lifted on the Citizen M success. At least it gives a direction as to how I have to develop the blog to keep it interesting. I have some great hotel reviews in my sleeve, stay tuned!

  1. My second CitizenM Review: Citizen M Hotel Amsterdam Airport Schiphol Opening (2): The Room
  2. My third CitizenM Review: Citizen M Hotel Amsterdam Airport Schiphol Opening (3): Final Observations
  3. Yotel goes to Amsterdam Airport (Schiphol) and Yotel Gatwick’s First Guest reviews, lifting on the CitizenM success.
  4. Pop Top by Public: Never Lose Your Luggage again, about how to personfy your luggage so that it is easy identifiable.
  5. A golden oldy:Dutch Design # 12: The New Heineken 5 L DraughtKeg. Well it is summertime and excellent for the beach. However I have to admit our own beer consumption has dwindled for other reasons (weight control) since posting this.
  6. Too Sexy to Fly Update
  7. Blogging Hotel Insiders. Augmented and ameliorated and to do with Hotels. On its way to become a hit.
  8. My first CitizenM Review:Amsterdam CitizenM Opening (1)
  9. Too Sexy to Fly?
  10. Happy Hotelier’s High Five (3): about Travel Marketing, Networking, Hotel Guests and Guest Reviews. Am glad this new category is taking off despite the ugly hands 🙂

Woopra tells me I have to put more sex in my posts:-)