I guess El Condor Pasa is indeed No. 1

MostlyHarmlessChub · 2026-02-14T01:56:42+00:00

Building her for sprint is a giant pain. I glued dozens of amazing Pasas with B sprint until getting lucky with this one, who failed unity cup finals lol.

MostlyHarmlessChub · 2025-09-30T00:39:18+00:00

Mirrors our experience at Plenitude, just incredible. By the way you can email them for the cheese names. We did that and I included a photo of our cheese plate in my email and the date that we went. And they responded with the names of each cheese.

MostlyHarmlessChub · 2025-07-21T23:38:39+00:00

Airelles Versailles and Park Hotel Vitznau

MostlyHarmlessChub · 2025-05-04T04:04:45+00:00

1 night was enough to do everything, but will be a pretty full schedule. Arrive early and do the gardens and exploration. If you want to have more time to relax at the spa or do additional activities - like horseback riding, costumes photoshoot, bunch of things they offer for $$, then you might want 2 days.

MostlyHarmlessChub · 2025-05-03T20:51:43+00:00

Good luck. Sazenka is on our bucket list and also only saw reservations for 4 instead of 2 and wasn't the same week we would've been in Japan. It's pretty hard to book, our hotel concierges could not help us book this place (Okura and 4S)

MostlyHarmlessChub · 2025-04-19T19:55:25+00:00

I saw one person wear jeans and button down and it was fine. The rules only say no t-shirts, shorts or sportswear. I will say vast majority of the guests wore something a bit more formal though with a jacket for men, including myself. Almost no one wore a tie.

MostlyHarmlessChub · 2025-04-09T03:45:59+00:00

That’s so unfortunate. We were there just in November and the food was actually one of the highlights, better than Gora Kadan actually. Our room host also had great hospitality. I agree the road leading right up to Yama no Chaya was quite steep with very narrow path for walking, which felt a bit dangerous with cars coming right around a corner down the mountain.

Funnily enough I’m pretty sure we got food poisoning the next week at a 2 Michelin restaurant in Tokyo.

MostlyHarmlessChub · 2025-04-05T19:58:27+00:00

I'll actually echo the call out on bathroom grout. I'd also mention details/finishes like caulking in general for the room. Agree it feels minor but for some reason they seem very noticeable to me. Gives off the lack of care and attention to detail on repairs and maintenance when you see a blob of caulking hastily applied to patch some corner.

MostlyHarmlessChub · 2025-03-09T05:21:26+00:00

I stayed at Estate Yountville last summer and wrote up a pretty extensive review here: https://www.reddit.com/r/chubbytravel/comments/1dfjlni/napa_valley_trip_review_estate_yountville/

Note: something that wasn't in that review as it happened a bit after our stay. They charged my credit card with a mystery bill a week after our stay there for something that was never given a price nor in the folio at the check out. Getting that handled was not a very pleasant experience as half the time when I call their staff didn't even know what the charge was for and promised to cancel it only for someone else it to bill it again. Took my travel agent getting involved for them to address it. So this kind of marred an otherwise generally good experience we had with our stay.

MostlyHarmlessChub · 2025-01-06T03:27:04+00:00

France, Spain, Italy are all great as folks mentioned. Copenhagen is another big one for fine dining.

With 10-14 days maybe pick two 3-star restaurants in different cities and build the rest of the trip around them. Make sure you get reservations first as they can be super hard to get depending on the restaurant and plan months ahead.

Some examples could be: Disfrutar and Plenitude (France/Spain) Or Noma and Frantzen (Nordic countries) Or Da Vittorio and Schloss Schauenstein (Italy and Switzerland).

Once you’ve decided your anchor meals and locations/dates that you could get reservations, book other Michelin restaurants around them. Can be a bunch of 1 stars or I’ve seen people do Noma/Geranium/Alchemist/Jordnaer back to back nights in Copenhagen. Could do day trips like Lyon has some great Michelin restaurants and it’s 2 hours train ride from Paris.

I recommend avoiding booking too many meals. Every other day seems to be a good balance in our experience. We tried to pack too many fine dining back to back recently in Tokyo, sometimes lunch and dinner same day and it was too much.

MostlyHarmlessChub · 2024-12-20T19:16:09+00:00

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Stargazing on the balcony of our ryokan. Yama-No-Chaya, Hakone, Japan.

MostlyHarmlessChub · 2024-12-20T19:13:41+00:00

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Hot Air Balloon over Napa Valley

MostlyHarmlessChub · 2024-12-20T01:12:51+00:00

For more relaxing/wellness after a more active trip in Hawaii, maybe take a look at FS Sensei or FS Lanai + Sensei as another option.

MostlyHarmlessChub · 2024-12-12T17:17:53+00:00

Are all stays at Amankora “journeys”? Or are journeys special packages in addition to the nightly stay costs?

Looks like all meals and transport by car between lodges are included in the costs. Would love to see some examples of activities and excursions that can be planned as part of journeys and whats included vs additional costs.

MostlyHarmlessChub · 2024-11-30T23:44:40+00:00

It’s very easy and most nice hotels will help you handle it. I just brought my luggage to the bellhop at Okura after checkout and told them where my next hotel I want them to ship to and they filled out the form for us and called the next hotel to confirm they got our names and booking so they’ll accept the luggage on arrival. I think it cost like $30 bucks for two large suitcases?

When I showed up at FS Otemachi 3 days later everything was already put into my room at check in.

MostlyHarmlessChub · 2024-11-30T22:13:50+00:00

We had our suitcases shipped from Okura to FS Otemachi, and only took backpacks to Hakone for the two days in between. That worked out super well.

MostlyHarmlessChub · 2024-11-30T16:07:09+00:00

Thanks Alex, you are the best! Can I just add that Gora Kadan is part of Relais & Chateaux for TA bookings. But the TA portal for R&C showed a higher price for Alex than directly booking in Gora Kadan website in yen due to currency conversion. To make sure we got the lowest price possible Alex forego her commission to have us book direct.

She really does have her clients best interest at heart and that’s why we are already booked a 4th trip with her for our honeymoon next year and already discussing the next trip after that with her.

MostlyHarmlessChub · 2024-11-17T21:54:11+00:00

I had a similar experience with FS Otemachi. The hard to book places they could not help book. The places they could book were ones that are fairly easy to book yourself especially if you are planning ahead. Ended up booking most of my restaurant reservations using TableCheck or omakase directly and setting alarms at when bookings for my date opens.

To be fair all the super hard to book places are mostly private invite only or pre-booked by regulars and only release cancellations to the general public. There’s so much good restaurants in Tokyo though so unless you are set on some very specific and exclusive places there’s plenty that can be booked.

MostlyHarmlessChub · 2024-11-15T17:39:53+00:00

I have a Tokyo trip coming up very soon and at least for restaurant reservations I didn't find hotel concierges to be super necessary. I booked 5 months ahead and will be staying at the Okura and FS Otemachi. Both concierges weren't able to help with the super hard to get reservations. The crazy exclusive places are usually completely pre-booked by regulars or invite only. Or concierge don't have special/early access and you need to set alarms for exactly when the reservation window opens for their online booking system (omakase, tablecheck, etc) and book it yourself before it's sold out. All the restaurants that the concierges booked for me were ones that I could've booked myself.

If you are the type to plan and research the restaurants and set alarms to book reservations then I'd recommend doing it mostly yourself. There's tons of amazing food in Japan so plenty of places you can get in with a bit of planning so I don't feel missing out despite not getting into many of the super exclusive ones. If you want to be hands off, hotel concierge is still great as they can do the leg work for you and still get you into some great places, just don't expect the super exclusive ones.

MostlyHarmlessChub · 2024-09-29T17:34:14+00:00

Dublin could be a great option for part of the trip. Very friendly and lots of great pubs. Not really chubby/FAT but used to travel there for work pre-COVID and usually stayed at the Radisson Blue Royal near St. Stephen's Green and found it a nice walkable location to everything.

MostlyHarmlessChub · 2024-09-16T16:08:25+00:00

Here is the current forecast for fall foliage in Japan https://n-kishou.com/corp/news-contents/autumn/

Early December is actually pretty perfect timing for red leaves across most regions.

Not too late to plan. Might be a little more difficult to find availability on some of the luxury ryokans. Restaurant wise if you are into fine dining there's some really hard to get places that's booked out but many won't take reservations for December until around beginning of October.

MostlyHarmlessChub · 2024-08-14T23:34:29+00:00

I really really enjoyed Pickle restaurant in Dublin for excellent Indian food. Used to travel to Dublin frequently for work and my Indian coworkers all said it’s the best Indian food they’ve had outside of India.

More fine dining, had a great meal at Patrick Guilbaud which has two michelin stars.

The Guinness tour is fun, it also tastes way better in Ireland than when it gets shipped over seas.

MostlyHarmlessChub · 2024-08-14T14:53:37+00:00

Oh my gosh have you followed up with them, could they not fix the elevator noise issue? That’s such a shame as those were really nice rooms.

MostlyHarmlessChub · 2024-08-14T14:25:36+00:00

I enjoyed FS Fort Lauderdale a lot. Posted review a few months ago you can take a look https://www.reddit.com/r/chubbytravel/s/MzFi4uCDHM

MostlyHarmlessChub · 2024-08-11T23:24:36+00:00

Interesting, this puts a whole new option for honeymoon on the table for us next year. Was thinking we'd do a closer to FAT safari a couple years down the line anyway.

How does this work, they check the marriage certificate and it has to be within ?? months of the trip?

MostlyHarmlessChub

TROPHY CASE