Gastro Bistro Awesomeness

There were two Thai holidays and one American holiday in May, all of which fell near a weekend.  Because of Jeff's work schedule this month though, we really couldn't plan a family trip.  We could, however, plan an awesome Memorial Day staycation for the two of us.

Before we left to go downtown, we got to experience some fun parenting moments.  Vivian gets up at 6:00am, whether it's a weekday or a weekend.  Luckily, at this point she's self-sufficient enough to get her own breakfast and play or watch some TV.  Elena slept in until an incredible 7:30, so when I finally brought her down, we found Vivian towards the end of The Force Awakens.  She was very excited to see Elena and explain the movie to her.

I don't think Elena understood most of it, but she got that this was important to Vivian, so she settled in to see what it was all about.  

It was so cute, I just wanted to hug them both, but I figured I shouldn't disturb them. Vivian has decided that she will be Rey for Halloween and Elena will be BB8.  She explained this to Elena who nodded sagely.  We'll see how she feels about it when Halloween comes around.  So far, she has not been a big fan of costumes.

Before we left to go downtown, Jeff took Vivian to Panipa's for hair cuts.  Vivian also got some fun braids.

After that, we gave the girls hugs, left them with Young, and headed downtown.  One of our favorite staycation places has been the Oriental Residence.  It's right next to the main embassy building.  This is the view out one of the windows of our room.

That's the embassy.  We spent an extra $10 and got a corner room, so we also had a view of the city out our balcony.

It was just lovely.  My other favorite thing about the Oriental Residence is that they give you complimentary macaroons in the afternoon.  Jeff caught me looking at my watch at one point, and he asked me what I was waiting for.  My macaroons, obviously!  He shook his head like I was crazy, but sure enough, they showed up fifteen minutes later.

I put them in Irish flag order ;-)

Coconut, coffee, and orange, yum!  We also took advantage of being child free and having a comfy TV set up to watch Game of Thrones, which we can't easily do at home.

As if that wasn't enough decadence, our plan for the evening was to meet up with friends who live downtown and try out the Gastro Bistro all you can eat/drink experience.  On the same street as the Oriental Residence is the Plaza Athenee.  They have a French restaurant called Reflexions.  Some friends of ours had recommended it to us saying the food was excellent and they had really good deals.  The Gastro Bistro deal was one of them.  For about $70 per person we spent almost four hours eating, drinking, and listening to live piano music.

The food was fantastic!  The piano player had some quirks which led us to believe he was probably on the autism spectrum, but he was also a brilliant piano player, and he clearly loved the music.  He came to the table to ask for requests, and we made sure to clap enthusiastically when he paused for feedback.  It was a lot of fun.  Of course the main part of the fun was trying all the different dishes.  With four people and a wealth of food choices, we did try to vary our orders a bit, but if there was something really good, then we got more than one.  For example, everyone ordered the scallops.  I'm not ashamed to say that we took pictures of pretty much everything before we ate it.  For the sake of the memory, I'm going to include pictures of a few of our favorites.  The pate with onions was probably the favorite in the appetizers.

In the main courses, we loved the steak with straw fries and the risotto.

There was also the fish with potatoes and vegetables that tasted like garlic.

It was heavenly.  Jeff says we should definitely go back again, but I told him I may need to wait a year before I'm ready to climb that food mountain again.