The Ultimate Quest for Teriyaki

Amy/"Mum:"

So Breanna’s favorite food vendor is Japanese.  She loves California rolls and Teriyaki chicken with Gyoza.  So on this trip of a lifetime where she has the opportunity to experience other foods we have found ourselves deadlocked on the chase for Teriyaki. So after a very rough morning of not feeling well and having a hard time adjusting to the time change, we took Bre back to the hotel so she could rest.  She promptly passed out and as you readers can tell we caught up on blogging to our hearts content.  Finding ourselves hungry we decided that maybe we should go in search of Teriyaki to make Bre happy.  

So after much googling (using wifi that only works in the hotel lobby) we discovered a restaurant called Tapenyaki that was near by.  She was still napping so we left her a note saying we would be back at 6 with food.  We head to the car in the parking garage from hell where we have to put our mirrors in to park…. (seriously I don’t know how they expect cars to fit in and out of these!! Terrified every time) we realized we forgot to write down the address.  Having no wifi outside of the building and no cell service overseas we pulled the car out of the garage, stopped in front of the hotel to the spot where we could pick up wifi and search on a kindle.  Then after getting the address, the Garmin said “does not exist.”   After several times we finally discovered that we could find the place by hitting the “restaurant search” button.  We go to leave the hotel and the parking validation ticket is not in the car.  We have to back up so Alicia could run in for another ticket.

So we get on the road following the GPS coordinates and basically go in a really big look by which I tell Alicia “This feels like we’re going back in the direction of our hotel.”  But we continue on.  We find the restaurant and I say to Alicia “Um I didn’t think this through very well we’re going to have to park the car!”  so while sitting through a red light multiple times Alicia jumped out of the car to check and see if there was parking in a nearby ally.  We see a parking spot (within a foot of someone’s front door) and say “ok we’re taking it!”  We proceed to the restaurant and find it closed….. “To reopen in about 15 minutes.”  Well that was not the hours we saw posted on their website!  So we kill time until it opens, order food, wait over a 1/2 an hour for food which costed a small fortune, proceed back to the car stashed in the ally to find it blocked in by a van and a bunch of sketchy looking blokes hanging around it.  We are both thinking “Oh crap we’re busted!”  So we apologize for being parked probably where we shouldn’t be, get in the car and go to leave then we find the ally is a dead end…….  luckily the sketchy looking blokes lightened up after we spoke a few words in their native slang (lots of 4 letter words) and helped us back up and told the guy in the van to move so we could get out of the ally.  After getting back on the road again we discovered we were about 5 blocks from the hotel and could have walked in far less time than it took to drive.  When we arrived back later than we said (what should have taken us 25 minutes took us literally 2 hours)... thankfully she was just waking up!  Next time she wants Teriyaki we plan to walk! :)