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Just seven months after breaking ground on Water Street, Juan’s Flaming Fajitas & Cantina is “so close” to a debut and expects to open its second local restaurant in “late September or early October.”

Joining the ongoing revival of this Henderson neighborhood, the cantina is located at the southern end of Water Street, close to the intersection with Victory Road and neighboring the Lovelady Brewing Company taproom.

The roomy, built-from-scratch space will fill 5,500 square feet and included a shaded patio facing Chef Flemming’s Bake Shop.

Opening hours are expected to closely follow the lunch and dinner service of the Spring Valley original and also import its daily happy hours.

Known as the “neighborhood place for great Mexican food, drinks and sports” since 2013, Juan’s is famed for its fiery namesake steak, pork, chicken, or shrimp “flaming fajitas,” plus margaritas, sangria, and daiquiris, sopas, ensaladas, table side guacamole, and “Baja style” fish tacos.

• Juan’s Flaming Fajitas Back On Track in Henderson [ELV]

• All Coverage of Henderson [ELV]

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Swiss Air Lines have released discounted flights from The Netherlands to China this time you can book the cheapest flights when departing from Amsterdam to Beijing. Round trip tickets are available from €353 incl. all taxes and fees as well as checked bag. This is including good option to fly over around or New Years Eve just check what is the weather like before you book this deal as it can be quite cold in Beijing at that time of year. Flights may require longer layover in Zurich on your way so it is up to you which solution you decide to book..

If interested in this deal with Swiss Air Lines you will find plenty of travel options between 20th of September and 19th of December or 26th of December 2018 to June 20198. Max stay 3 months. Promotion is available till 1st of October or until sold out. You can book your accommodation in Beijing throught Hotels.com. Also you can use this Booking.com offer. There are more attractive deals from Amsterdam to Asia right now. Check our previous post here.

Booking sample

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You can save some decent money off accommodation in Beijing when using following offers.

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Booking sample of cheap return flights from Amsterdam to Beijing, China from €353. As per our above booking sample you would depart from Amsterdam to Beijing on 26th of January. Your return flight from China back to The Netherlands would be on 11th of February 2019. Take advantage of this quite rare promotion of Swiss Air Lines and book discounted flights from Amsterdam to Beijing!

Monuments to Nikola Tesla, a pioneer in electricity and wireless information, abound throughout the world. This one in the heart of Silicon Valley houses a time capsule to be opened in 2043 on the 100th anniversary of the inventor’s death.

But what makes it special is that it also—appropriately—serves as a Wi-Fi hotspot. Visitors can sit nearby and surf the web to their hearts’ content by connecting to the “Tesla Statue” wireless network. Also, somehow appropriate to Silicon Valley, the statue has its own website.

Creating Palo Alto’s ode to the great inventor was a community effort. Artist Terry Guyer created the statue, which was backed by 722 people on Kickstarter. After the statue was successfully financed, it was unveiled on December 7, 2013. A plaque on its base explains both the Kickstarter campaign and the Wi-Fi network.

The Park Hyatt Tokyo is a famous property for many reasons, and it typically gets rave reviews. It was also featured prominently in the movie “Lost in Translation.” I could write a full review of the property, but you can find those here, here, here, and here. There are plenty more. We stayed for six nights, and we used extra points to confirm a suite with our booking.

We were confirmed in the standard Park Suite, and as Globalists, we did not get upgraded to a higher level suite (the hotel is under no obligation to do so via the World of Hyatt terms). My wife and I were traveling with our 2.5 year old son and 6 month old daughter. Before I dig into why I don’t want to stay here and why you probably don’t either, it is worth noting that it is a very nice property. It just doesn’t live up to the hype or the price tag, and there are a lot of things that actually make it a place I would not recommend.

Location

Tokyo has fantastic public transportation. There are subway lines that will zip you all around the city, and as we have two young kids that need car seats, we don’t use taxis for our city trips. We depend on public transportation. The Park Hyatt is relatively close to three subway stations, but it is actually close to zero. Within a twenty minute radius of the Hyatt, you have the Shinjuku, Hatsudai, and Tochomae stations. If you’re walking fast, Shinjuku and Hatusdai are fifteen minutes away, and you can probably make it to Tochomae in eleven. That’s not that close, especially in the sweltering Tokyo summertime heat. If you’re planning on going round-trip to any place in town, you need to add another twenty to thirty minutes of round-trip walking time, not counting any walking you need to do near your destination. This may not seem like much, but again, it was really hot, and with kids, it was tough.

Food

As a Globalist member, you can get room service for breakfast as an option. The presentation is top notch, and the food isn’t bad. However, it isn’t that great, and it’s the same food they serve in the buffet. They had the same selection of pastries every day, the same eggs, the same fruit, etc. Asia is famous for having beautiful breakfast spreads, and this one is just okay. Also, Girandole, their breakfast restaurant, is very stuffy. There isn’t any music playing. There isn’t much conversation. It’s a bit awkward. You can get food made to order, and we did, but they were not very good. The waffles lacked texture and flavor. The pancakes were worse than IHOP pancakes. A JW Marriott or Grand Hyatt lounge is going to have just as good of food as this restaurant.

We were there six days so I wanted to try the famous New York Bar on the top floor. New York Bar is famous for their wagyu burger. Have you ever had a $50 cheeseburger? Now I can say I have. To be honest, the price didn’t bother me. I know wagyu beef is expensive, and I was pretty excited. I was surprised, however, when the waiter never asked me how I wanted it cooked, though. It came out extremely overcooked. The net result was that I was eating a wagyu burger that tasted significantly worse than Shake Shack or In N Out.

Concierge

I had a variety of odd experiences at the concierge, depending on who I worked with. Our first issue was getting Tokyo Disneyland tickets. We wanted to buy them in advance, but the Tokyo Disney site is very unfriendly to US credit cards. Before I attempted to buy them, though, a gentleman at the concierge told me that if I couldn’t get them online, I shouldn’t worry as they have plenty in stock and they could just charge the tickets to my room. Good to know. Late that evening, I went to go buy tickets online. Sure enough, the Disney site wouldn’t let me purchase with ANY of my US credit cards. I found a YouTube video about how to get tickets with cash at any FamilyMart (a Japanese 7-Eleven esque store), but I didn’t feel like going out at 10PM so I went back down to the concierge. There was a different person there this time, and I asked her if I could get a few of those Disneyland tickets charged to my room. She said they didn’t have any. I told her that the earlier attendant told me they did. She said, “Well we can get them for you, but there will be a surcharge.” I said, “Right now? Because we’re going tomorrow pretty early in the morning.” She said, “Well, in about 30 minutes…” Me: “Oh. Are you just going to walk to FamilyMart to get them?” She said yes, and I said okay I would just go do it myself.

Then there were the variety of odd milk issues. My son drinks warm milk when he wakes up in the morning and after his nap. At a hotel with a lounge, I just pop into the lounge and get some. At a hotel with a microwave in the room or lobby, I’ll do it myself. Here I went to the restaurant, and they assured me it was no problem to get milk for free there. Every time I went there, they were confused about what I was asking for, even if it was literally the same person who gave me the milk the day before. Sometimes I’d get a full glass. Sometimes I’d get a half glass. I would typically go into the business center to study when the kids were napping, and when I would walk to the restaurant for milk. The concierge folks would tell me that I really should just get that free milk delivered via room service to the business center. Okay… Seemed excessive to me, but I took them up on the offer. Room service came to the business center. With milk. And an $11 bill. LOL. I did not sign that bill… These were just a few of the examples. Getting warm milk for my son was a chore literally every day. For such a high end hotel that prides itself on service, I’m just surprised that literally every day, twice a day, getting warm milk was such a struggle.

We also used the concierge for dinner recommendations, and while the sushi place they steered us to was great, the teppanyaki place was pretty atrocious. We did get Kobe beef there, but the price we paid was over $200 per head. We left hungry. The service was weak. Dinner for my wife and I came with ice cream, and when I asked if my two year old could have a scoop as well, they were glad to give him some, for $5, which is nothing compared to the massive bill we had, but c’mon… I could have done more research in advance, but I was trusting the concierge. After looking on Tripadvisor, it looks like the Teppanyaki place we went to gives kickbacks to concierges for reservations so I see how we got there.

Lounge

There is no lounge. They do have complimentary drinks in Peak Bar from 5PM to 8PM for globalist members, and this is quite nice. I went there only twice though, as it’s not a great environment for kids. I really enjoy the convenience of a lounge and being able to go as I please. I also like Diet Coke / Coca Cola Light. A lounge enables me to get milk, snacks, diet cokes, easy breakfast, and more. Instead of getting free sodas with my expensive suite, I got trips to FamilyMart for buying soda to stash in our mini bar fridge.

Gym

Many high-end hotels have 24 hour gyms. I like those. I typically like to start my workout around 5:30AM so I can get in a good workout before the kids wake up. There are some hotels that feel like having a really nice gym isn’t good enough. They need to have a “health club.” The Park Hyatt Tokyo has a “health club.” And as Globalists, we’re allowed FREE access to it. Wow! What a perk! And because it’s a “health club,” it has operating hours. It’s only open from 6AM to 10PM. That means I had to start my workouts later to fit their schedule. Furthermore, I had to sign in every time. It’s also a pain in the neck to access  from your room. First you go to the 45th floor. Once on the 45th floor, you go down a long hallway, and then you check in at the desk. At this point, you must convince the attendant that no you don’t want a spa treatment… you just want to hit the treadmill for a bit and get out. Great. Now you go up ANOTHER elevator, as the fitness center is actually on a different level. Then you’re finally able to start your workout.

The pool and fitness center at the Park Hyatt are beautiful. You get amazing views of Tokyo from up there, and the way the pool is separated from the fitness center by a large glass wall really is pretty. The problem here is twofold. First of all, the gym is small. Again, for a high-end luxury property, I would expect more treadmills, ellipticals, and free weights. The second problem is more annoying. The room with the pool is quite humid. It is separated from the gym by just one glass wall. While it may not be apparent when you first walk in the fitness center, it is quite humid in there. If you’re someone who works out pretty hard, you probably know the point during your workout which you can expect to start breaking a sweat. At the Park Hyatt Tokyo, that point in time will come sooner. Every time I worked out, I had to start the workout later than I wanted, and I came back to the room wetter than I expected.

The Room Key

This hotel is surely the pinnacle of old school luxury and just to remind you how out of date it really is, they give you a physical key. Yes. A metal key. I’m sure that someone in their marketing department thinks this adds “a touch of old world charm” to the property or something like that. To me, it added a touch of anxiety. I never lost the key, but I knew if I did, there would probably be some fee. It also added a touch of discomfort. Instead of inserting it into my wallet along with my credit cards, it occasionally prodded my thigh from my pocket. Truly lovely.

Ice, Ice Baby

We had an ice bucket in our room. This was replenished twice per day. Again, I think this must be for that “old world charm” client that really likes to have a mini bar whiskey on the rocks at the end of every day. For everyone else, I think a fridge might be more useful and less wasteful.

Conclusion

When high-end luxury is done right, it’s awesome. The hotel takes care of all your needs, and they often anticipate the needs before you have them. I’ve experienced this at places like the Four Seasons Mauritius or Ritz-Carlton Reserve Krabi. At the Park Hyatt Tokyo, it always felt odd. For all the negatives I’ve listed, it’s still a beautiful hotel. I just don’t think it is as good as it needs to be to keep its reputation. Here’s my suite walkthrough.

(CNN) — Travelers around the globe are one step closer to seeing a plane with its wings folded up being taxied to their gate.

Slated to be one of the next darlings of commercial aviation, the Boeing 777X hit a production milestone this week when its major fuselage sections -- the airplane's nose, mid and aft sections -- were brought together.

It has the longest body produced by the manufacturer, of 252 feet, and the widest wingspan of any aircraft in the company's 102-year history: 235 feet, five inches.

Its hinged wingtips alone measure 12 feet, with locking pins to prevent them from folding during flight.

Wider cabins

Arnie Weissmann

Tuscany was the surprising venue for last week's Adventure Travel World Summit, the annual gathering of the Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA). Past hosts such as Namibia, Chile, Alaska and Switzerland didn't raise a critical eyebrow, but among the 800 delegates who gathered in Montecatini Terme last week, some were surprised by (and a bit dubious about) the selection of a province better known for producing olive oil than adrenaline.

But before I launch into the debate around the definition of "adventure travel," permit me a word or two about Montecatini Terme. It's a town I hadn't heard of before being invited to moderate a panel at the Summit, but I found it fascinating. Its spa waters and palace hotels once attracted the cream of Hollywood, but today it's one part "A Room With a View," one part "Sunset Boulevard," one part "From Russia, With Love."

Faded, peeling spa facades sit within splashing distance of lushly decorated, well-maintained art nouveau temples where receptionists still require an examination by resident doctors in order to understand which local waters will effect a "cure."

And "From Russia, With Love"? All I can say is that visitors on packaged tours that originated in Moscow have an outsize presence in Montecatini Terme.

All in all, a surprising choice within a surprising location for this conference.

Concerns about whether Tuscany is a serious adventure travel destination dissipated greatly in the days leading up to the conference. The Summit neatly integrated experience and content; the organizer -- a for-profit association -- understands that community is at the heart of its enterprise, and attendees were urged to participate in a pre-Summit "adventure." They were also required to participate in a "Day of Adventure" immediately before the conference began.

ATTA CEO Shannon Stowell acknowledges that adventure is a "squishy" word; the preconference activities ranged from whitewater rafting to truffle hunting.

Just as water finds its own level, attendees tended to gravitate to doable challenges. I joined a group who, starting in front of the cathedral in Lucca, traversed the Pisani mountains and ended at the Leaning Tower of Pisa, a two-day, 15-mile trek crossing a 1,700-foot pass. Challenging at points, but doable.

And indeed, community was established among our group, which included a Swede, a Portuguese, a Mongolian, a Croatian, a Colombian and an Italian guide.

Across all delegates, the preconference activities gave attendees a mostly common experience and context for the three days of programming that followed.

I say "mostly common" because even though the experiences of whitewater rafters and truffle hunters were vastly different, both the emotional charge and sense of satisfaction appeared to be at similar levels.

Given the spectrum of activities his members offer, Stowell said the ATTA staff "talks about putting guardrails around" the word adventure.

Nature, culture and activity are at the core, they concluded.

"It can't be a surface experience," he said. "It requires some sort of immersion. No drive-bys."

But Stowell admitted that the guardrails are wide apart.

"An adventure for my parents will lean toward culture," he said." One for my insane younger brother will lean toward activity."

The association commissioned a study exploring motivations that drove respondents to book what they considered an adventure travel experience. The study discovered most were looking for transformation, education, impact, wellness and uniqueness.

Could any destination that contains the raw materials to produce those outcomes be described as an adventure destination?

"I hesitate to say 'any,'" Stowell replied. "Not giant urban centers, divorced from nature."

Perhaps the elastic nature of adventure travel contributes to stats indicating an explosive interest in the category. Adventure tourism is growing at nearly 20% annually vs. about 5% for tourism as a whole, said ATTA president Casey Hanisko. But new technology, such as e-bikes, and activities such as stand-up paddleboarding, have softened adventure to the point that multigeneration adventure vacations are being booked.

Susan Kelly, a travel adviser with Luxury Adventure Trips in Seattle, said she considers herself "a gentle adventure traveler" who loves nature and seeks a cultural component. She participated in a five-night, pre-Summit hike, walking six to eight miles a day and stopping to visit women winemakers and local artisans.

"Adventure doesn't have to be hard core," she said. "My clientele is over 50, retired or retiring soon and wants to see the world, learn and be active. They don't want to vegetate on a beach."

I finally put the question Why Tuscany? directly to Stowell.

"Moab [Utah] would be an easy decision, from an adventure point of view," he said. "But we felt good about Tuscany. Yes, it aligned with our funding budget [needs], but we pay attention to things like the variety of offerings, readiness of operators [conducting Summit activities] and how professional the guides are.

"I'll also tell you that one destination I won't name wants to do the Summit and every year says, 'What do you need? We'll give it to you.' But they never attend our events, and relationships are important to us."

That seems abundantly evident from the time and effort the group puts into community building. I believe the core values and sense of purpose shared between ATTA and its membership is a good sign for the entire adventure category.

However that may be defined.

After several long tangents writing about orthogons and the chromatic number of the plane, I’m finally getting back to writing about primality testing. All along in this series, my ultimate goal has been to present some general primality testing algorithms and the math behind them, and now we’re finally ready to see our first (sort of!). As a reminder, and as a guide for anyone reading this without reading the previous posts, here’s the story so far:

• We first saw three different versions of Fermat’s Little Theorem (FlT), as well as a statement of Euler’s Theorem which is a generalization of FlT. Don’t worry if you don’t remember what Fermat’s Little Theorem says; I’ll remind you below. (As an aside, I recently learned there is yet a further generalization of Euler’s Theorem called Carmichael’s Theorem, but that will have to be another post for another time!)
• Just for fun, we saw three differenet proofs of FlT: by modular arithmetic, by combinatorics, and by group theory, as well as corresponding proofs of Euler’s Theorem.
• We then talked about three hypothetical machines for determining properties of a natural number : one to give the complete prime factorization, one to give a single factor, and one to say whether is prime. I also mentioned the (surprising) fact that it is possible to build relatively fast machines of the third type—that is, for doing primality testing—but as far as we know, any machines to find factors are much slower.
• Finally, we talked about what we really mean by “fast” and “slow” in the description above.

So let’s see our first primality testing machine! This one is actually very simple. Remember that Fermat’s Little Theorem (the first version) says:

If is prime and is an integer where , then .

We can turn this directly into a test for primality, as follows: given some number that we want to test for primality, pick an integer between and (say, randomly), and compute . If the result is not equal to , then is definitely not prime, since it would contradict Fermat’s Little Theorem. In that case we can immediately stop and report that is composite (though note that we have not found any factors!).

(In actual practice, we don’t bother trying or ; we only pick from . Can you see why it’s useless to test or ?)

For example, suppose we want to test . Let’s pick . We compute ; hence is not prime (but you probably knew that already). In this particular exampe is actually a factor of , but it need not be. For example, let and pick ; then computing proves that is composite, even though and share no common factors.

So what if is equivalent to ? Unfortunately, Fermat’s Little Theorem is not an “if and only if” statement! It is quite possible to have even when is composite. So if we do get a result of , we simply can’t conclude anything about . For example, with again, if we happened to pick instead of , then we get even though isn’t prime.

So suppose we pick some and get . What can we do? Well, just try another ! If we get for the new , stop and report that is composite. Otherwise, pick another , and so on.

In general, we can iterate some fixed number of times . If we ever find an such that , then we can report that is definitely not prime. Otherwise, if we get through testing different values of and they all yield , then we can report that is probably prime.

So this is better than nothing, but it’s not quite a primality machine, because it can’t tell us for sure that a number is prime. And it leaves a lot more questions: could we make big enough so that we could know for sure whether is prime? How big would have to be? What about for composite numbers; how fast do we expect this to be? Are there other ways to build on this basic idea to get better (faster, more certain) primality tests? I’ll write about all this and more in future posts!

Photo: Ben Arons Photography

Welcome to the Underground Railway Game, a saccharine classroom demonstration about slavery. Two teachers clumsily re-enact some scenes from America’s troubled past. You’re one of their pupils, but that isn’t the bit that’s going to make you wince uncomfortably (while simultaneously laughing, even though you’re not entirely sure that you should be). This is a witty play about race and the way that the past has influenced our present behaviour.

Photo: Aly Wight

It’s a rare skill to make a piece of bold theatre that, while shocking, is also highly entertaining. The piece soon descends into something darker and ramps up to become frenetically more disturbing: racial slurs form the erotic basis of a hot date, a man sublimates himself in front of a bare breasted slave and a woman sexually humiliates a naked man with a ruler while making him repeatedly shout out a racist word. All a bit too much? Not at all. It somehow never feels gratuitous and there feels like there’s a point to it all, one that’s made with tongues firmly in their respective cheeks.

Forget discourse, this is a sound way to make an audience sit up and pay attention and that’s something we need right now.

Underground Railroad Game, Soho Theatre, 21 Dean Street, W1D 3NE. Tickets £18-39.50, until 13 October 2018.

Last Updated 07 September 2018