Thaise Snackbar Bird is relatively compact restaurant for fast Thai snacks and meals on Zeedijk street. The snackbar is operated by a larger and more formal Thai restaurant on the opposite side of the street. They have separate kitchens, and there are differences in menus.
The food we had there were just superb, very authentic and rich in flavour. Spicyness was also on a good level. I loved especially the crunchy spring rolls, but the curries were excellent, too.
The restaurant has like twenty places to sit, and it fills really quickly. Fortunately, people do not stay to hang around after eating.
www.thai-bird.nl, Zeedijk 72, Amsterdam, Netherlands, +32 20 420 6289
The hotel selection in Amsterdam is quite polarized; there are really good and expensive hotels, and really bad and inexpensive hotels. Trying to find a hotel that does not cost a fortune, and has good rooms, decent breakfast, and nice location can be hard.
Hotel V somewhat fits the bill. It is a design hotel, in other words, a lot of time and energy has been put to the surroundings, rooms, and generic atmosphere. Despite being in a crummy neighbourhood, Hotel V has been able to execute this pretty well.
Our room was small, as most hotel rooms tend to be in Amsterdam — there are huge ones, too, I’ve even slept in such a room. The room looked way bigger in the pictures, so be warned. The breakfast was excellent, and service in general was nice. Free WLAN is always a good perk.
The hotel location is not the best, it is a bit out of the city centre, though near the museum sector. Tram is a good option, and it takes about fifteen minutes to reach the central station. We had booked a bike special, and rode around the town for a day — excellent way to see the city, and also get to the places.
www.hotelv.nl, Victorieplein 42, Amsterdam, Netherlands
P.F. Chang’s is a good choice for a restaurant when you are tired or lazy to think about the portions, and just want something tasty. The selection itself is huge, as usual in Chinese restaurants, and everything is tasty, as again usual in Chinese restaurants. Nothing is spectacular, though.
The restaurant itself is large, and as most chain restaurants, lacking personal touch. The service is once again excellent, and the food comes pretty swiftly. Price is not bad either. Somehow I see having take away a better choice than hanging in the restaurant, maybe it is the non-personality of the dining hall combined with the mall surroundings.
P.F. Chang’s, 900 Stanford Shopping Center, Palo Alto, CA, USA, +1 650 330 1782
Despite Babbo’s not so welcoming entrance in Stanford shopping center, the restaurant is worth a visit to have a lunch while shopping. I would not go there as a sole destination, but it works more than well in a casual lunch or dinner joint.
The food is Italian with some American influence. Surprisingly enough, the portions are not huge, but sized right for average people. You don’t feel bloated after leaving the restaurant.
We ate pastas and salads during lunch time. Pastas were great, but I cannot recommend the salads to anyone. I’ve never seen so weird version of Caesar salad. It was nowhere close to the normal delicious salad, but more of a new way (that didn’t work) of putting the salad together from the same ingredients.
Babbo’s, 717 Stanford Shopping Court, Palo Alto, CA, USA, +1 650 321 1488
Calvin Klein clothes are in the verge of luxury brands, but not quite yet there. The brand is more than normal premium (that would include Banana Republic), but for me none of the US brands have been able to grow into a real luxury brand such as Prada, Gucci or Louis Vuitton.
Despite or due to that, their outlet store has a number of interesting items. The clothing has better tailoring, especially from European perspective, compared to the “normal” US brands — that somehow make too wide or otherwise not fitting clothes.
The outlet prices are already quite low, and sale periods can effectively halve them. So expect good deals.
www.calvinklein.com, Outlet #019, Central Valley, NY, USA, +1 845 928 6550
Guess is a brand that I’ve got a love / hate relationship with. Their brand is so blatantly looking like a cheaper version of Gucci that is advertised with very sexual imagery. This bothers me heavily, and nowadays I’ve started to frown on Guess’ handbags. They just look too cheap to me.
On the other hand, they’ve got some really nice clothes, and I do own a few Guess t-shirts. Maybe clothes are not that archetypal as bags when defining luxury brands and those brands that would like to cheat their way in to the luxury club, including Guess.
If this does not bother you (which I guess is the case with most of you), the outlet store is an excellent place to buy a lot of young and trendy stuff with quite low prices. They have also a smaller section of children clothing that is worth checking if you have offsprings.
www.guess.com, 442 Woodbury Court, Central Valley, NY, USA, +1 845 928 1294
Victorinox makes, at least in my opinion, the best luggage in the world. I’ve fallen in love with their ballistic nylon series, they are both functional and beautiful.
When founding that they’ve got an outlet store in Woodbury, we checked it pretty thoroughly — and bought a new bag to carry all our other finds back to hotel and eventually back to Finland. It is a bit weird to buy European stuff in the US and carry it back to Europe; and save money by doing so. The price of the bag was about half compared to a similar bag in high streets. It was not exactly the same bag, but close enough.
The store is very strong in bags, but there is other paraphernalia, too. Unfortunately, I didn’t pay too much attention to them while looking for the bag, so I cannot say more about the selection.
www.victorinox.com, 964 Grapevine Court, Central Valley, NY, USA
If you are looking for inexpensive children clothing among the Woodbury Commons outlet stores, pop over to Carter’s. The whole outlet is packed pretty tight with all kinds of children clothing.
The sheer amount of clothes packed so tightly together makes the whole experience to feel cheap. Maybe that’s the purpose, or then they need to utilise the floor square meters as effectively as possible.
The prices are good, but some of the clothes are not. There are items worth buying, but some other clothes look cheap or are of bad quality — or both.
www.carters.com, Woodbury Commons Outlet, Store #576, Central Valley, NY, USA
