Even though we just had pizza the other night I settled on Pizza again tonight.
I know Blogs aren't supposed to be about what you had for dinner or lunch and such.
But I felt that this was a good way to start the conversation on something what I just went through.
My Hotel here (Wyndham Garden) has a restaurant downstairs. However, honestly I am not that impressed with their breakfast spread so ordering up some room service didn't sound that good to me.
I Turned to their directory/book of info they give you (subsequently the same book with the room service menu) and didn't find any suggestion on local dining or delivery.
I was in the mood for Chinese food, except the only place nearby is a horrible, horrible buffet (literally next door).
So I turned my search to the Internet, oh yeah, I forgot to mention that usually at Hotels without room service they give you a list of places that deliver (and usually give you menus too). Now the Internet is powerful, but there Dallas is huge, hence why they call it the Big D.
This means simply doing a Google search isn't going to be very helpful. This means I needed to hit up sites that specialize in food.
My immediate thought was Yelp. I have used it before and the community review part is helpful, usually you get useful tidbits of info on what to avoid or what to try.
Unfortunately, Yelp was not very much help.
Then I turned my search of to CitySearch (ba-dum-bump), some good results. Unfortunately, while it was able to provide me more options than Yelp, I was left with the notion that aside from the place next door there were no places nearby (thus very unlikely there would be delivery).
That led me to look over Yellowbook.com and Yellowpages.com, oddly enough and yet not oddly enough, they both returned the same data. For some reason I expected a difference in the return of data, not so much more restaurants in one than the other, but more information about the restaurants in one vs the other.
Now, the one commonality across all of these was mapping. Some of them used MapQuest, some of them used Google Maps, another one used something I couldn't identify and the last used a Microsoft Live Search power map.
In the end I ended up deciding that Pizza was going to be what I would have to settle for instead of Chinese food.
But then, I ended up having to resort to the specific pizza websites. I haven't had Hungry Howie's in a long, long time. And I was thinking that their famous flavored crust would hit the spot.
But their closest one was about 12 miles away, so I didn't even bother calling.
When I was checking in, I remember the front desk telling another guest something about Domino's.
So In the end that is who I called.
The search went full circle.
I cannot fault the Internet, it isn't Google's fault (or Yelp, or CitySearch, or the IYP directories).
Anyway, the pizza just got here.
Just think about everything I went through, the next time your traveling.
Did you have a hard time finding something to eat, or worse yet delivered?
Laterz
