Travel piece

These photos are from a visit to Oceanside to see my stepsister Jennifer and her new baby Evan. My stepmom and half-sister were there along with one of my newphews. Below is a piece I wrote about that trip.

I took a one-day seminar from Laurie Buckle, managing editor of Bon Appetit and we were supposed to write a 100-word travel piece. I had just finished her six-week course four weeks ago, and was a little burnt out. I said something to Rob about writing a piece on my trip to Oceanside and how crappy the food was there. Everyone thought it was really funny and Laurie actually said it was the best thing see's seen me write. She didn't know where I could sell it exactly, but here goes:

Whenever I visit a new place the first thing I do is try to find local restaurants and examples of local cuisine. I eagerly anticipate the new culinary adventures awaiting me. After all, I watch the Food Channel. I read the travel pieces.
I was ready to be delighted as I traveled to Oceanside. I arrived late and asked the desk dude where to eat. It was about 11:45 p.m. He told me to try Angelo’s, but to hurry. “It closes at midnight,” he said.
I ran to my car and entered the Angelo’s parking lot at 11:50 p.m. I drove up to the suspiciously dark menu. I set my clocks according to the atomic clock feed we keep in the house, it was a good ten minutes before midnight, but a voice said “We’re closed.”
I drove up and down the Coast Highway, but all I found was a scary tuna sandwich at seedy, scary convenience store. It was either that or the ubiquitous petrified hotdog. Oh well, I thought, I could stand to miss a meal.
I started poking in the other direction from the motel and my heart leapt when I saw neon in the distance. Dare I hope? Could it be a McDonald’s. Could I be getting a Big Mac?
Nah. It was a Del Taco, which I resorted to as an emergency measure. The hamburger tasted like cardboard – more so than the usual fast-food burger. Oh well, I’d try culinary adventuring tomorrow.
I woke the next day and decided to bypass Carrow’s with its familiar breakfast menu. I went to the Jolly Roger restaurant in the Oceanside Harbor. I had a lovely harbor-side seat and the restaurant was all quaint and seaside-y. I ordered eggs benedict, my very favorite breakfast food. The waitress smiled conspiratorially, “Would you like extra sauce?”
“Sure,” I said. I love me some hollandaise sauce. My eggs arrived. They were perfectly poached on a nice, crispy English muffin, or what once had been a crispy English muffin, by the time I got to it the muffin had drowned in the sauce. The sauce looked unlike any hollandaise I’d ever seen, not even the canned kind. It was reddish/yellow and had a greasy consistency, kind of like melted butter, but a lot grosser, with not even a hint of lemon.
I scraped off as much sauce as I could, ate my eggs and played with the plastic hash browns. The breakfast proved a good investment, however, because I got a stomach ache that lasted the rest of the day and killed my appetite.