Fix Me A Plate Cafe

After a few hours hiking around Mission Trails Park, Anna and I were famished. Since we were already in La Mesa, we decided to check out a recommendation from a coworker. We arrived at Fix Me A Plate Cafe at 5:15pm. They were supposed to open at 5pm. The cook finally rolled around at 5:30 to let the waiting patrons and the servers inside. Not a great start.

Everything else from that point was fantastic. Fix Me A Plate Cafe specializes in authentic southern food, and they do it well. Anna had the fried chicken, okra, and red beans. I had the ribs, hushpuppies, and cajun egg rolls. Everything was brought out fresh, and delicious.

The entrees are mostly $10-14. But what we didn’t know was that they are gigantic. My leftover ribs were about as much food as I would get on a large order anywhere else. Come here prepared to bring a doggie bag home.

We will definitely be back. I can’t think of any other place in San Diego that offers this much home style southern food, let alone this good, or this cheap.

Fix Me A Plate Cafe
11:30 a.m. – 2:00 p.m., 5:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
9168 Fletcher Parkway
La Mesa, CA 91942-3424

New Qinghai-Tibet railway

Following the meme of my previous post, we can probably add another spot to the ‘dramatically changed by tourism’ list. New Qinghai-Tibet railway:

“Traveling overland through snow-capped mountains and high-land meadows to visit mysterious Tibetan Buddhist shrines on the world’s highest plateau will soon no longer require the grit and resolve of an adventurous backpacker. This July the first train of the new Qinghai-Tibet railway will whisk passengers from Beijing to Lhasa in 48 scenery-filled hours. Tourists venturing to the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region from China’s national capital can now get there by land in the lap of luxury. Special tourist trains will feature hotel-like services and special viewing cars for the journey to the ‘roof of the world’.”

Taking a trail through those peaks would be amazing. But, I find it hard to believe that the shrines will be “mysterious” when surrounded by people.

Angkor & Vietnam

It looks like Anna and I will be visiting Siem Reap (Angkor, Cambodia) and Vietnam in early May. Initially we were going to do a tour to Angkor, then just travel on our own through Vietnam. However the cost of the tour + flights to Saigon, Hanoi, and back to Siem Reap were about $400 more than flights going from LAX->Siem Reap->Saigon->Hanoi->LAX. The relatively low travel cost in these countries made that extra money seem like a lot to spend. Doing it from the tour would have also meant more travel time overall. So.. Flight package it is.

It looks like our itinerary will be something like this: 4 days in Siem Reap (Angkor), 4 days in Saigon, 3 days in Hanoi, 2 in Halong Bay. Anyone who has traveled in these countries is probably screaming “not enough time!” I know, but there never is. I have two weeks to spend. I’d like to spend them here. There are many other places in the world to visit, but I feel a sense of urgency about these countries.

Much like Peru, I see Cambodia and Vietnam as very changed by tourism in the last decade, but posed for even greater infrastructure and cultural changes as they become tourist destinations. It is already too late in some respects – 4 star resorts and all that jazz. I know from my experience at Machu Picchu that my enjoyment of ruins in particular is directly related to how much free space I have to roam. Selfish? Of course. I hope we can avoid some of the rush by going in a lower season – its going to be hot, and it will be just before the summer break. Angkor is also a very large area, so I hope there will still be many opportunities to explore away from the crowds. Time will tell.

New site

You are reading this on my new host. It gives me a lot more room to play around with – I was limited to 500mb and 5gb/month on my old host. Gallery 2 is working at the moment, but stuff like the RSS feed is busted, and the theme is just a quick hack. Once I get my claws into it, I should be able to do some pretty cool integration with this front page (random/new image blocks) and some interesting managing & sorting (photo map?).

Austin

(All photos for this entry are posted here)

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Anna was in Austin last week for business, I tagged along for the weekend to check out the city. I have heard a lot about Austin, but this was my first time visiting the city. We stayed at the fabulous Austin Motel on South Congress. Cheap, stylish (in a mid century way), friendly, and well located. What more could you ask for?

Austin is a curious city to me. It is an odd mix; artsy-hippy-nuevo with a dash of proud-texan. The sort of place where you can order collard greens and brisket, omelets with velveeta cheese, or vegetarian chorizo tacos to go with your kombucha. For a smaller city (800k?), Austin has a lot going on, and a lively night scene.

Our fist foray into the city we decided to try Cuba Libre. Upon walking in, I was told to remove my hat. This seemed a bit odd for a city that was so casual, but it was fine with me. However, the dress code seemed silly when our too-cool-for-school server played with a toothpick hanging from his mouth the entire time we were there. Classy and hygienic. We should have taken that as an omen. The food was, in a word, horrible. I could only manage a few bites of my meal before pushing it aside. I wouldn’t return if you paid me.

Not a great start. Luckily Cesar had some great recommendations. After some tea at Halcyon (I wish more places would do coffee house bars), and some great beer at The Gingerman, we had completely forgotten the earlier experience.

Of course, we hit up the usual suspects in Austin – The Alamo Draft House, live music, and BBQ. I wish we had a Draft House in San Diego. What a fantastic way to enjoy a movie, we ended up staying for two. There was a folk music convention going on in the city, so we caught some live music put on by some of the attendees. Good stuff. COTR were a lot of fun, a nice mix of musical styles. As for the BBQ, we got our fix at Stubbs, great food.

We spent a good bit of time wandering and people watching around the city. Austin is a cafe kind of town, and fairly walk-able if you stick to the downtown core and area. Outside those parts it does seem to be more of a car city. It was really nice to walk around the river, they have some well done trails. We definitely need to come back when it is warm enough to visit the swimming holes and see the bats.

PS – By my extremely scientific observations of the Dallas airport, I believe Texas has 85% of the world’s supply of chunky gold nugget jewelry. What’s up with that?

I have some Austin photos I want to publish, but I am busy fighting with Gallery 2 and importing the old albums onto the new site. Stay tuned..