For readers from the States, I wish you a happy Thanksgiving! A few months ago, I was thinking about all the individuals who have helped shape the course of my life and the person I am today. I’ve been extremely fortunate to have the guidance of some brilliant minds and to surround myself with motivated, creative, innovative people.

They say your character and your achievements are influenced most by the people you surround yourself with. There have even been studies that show your income bracket is likely to be equal to the average of that of your five closest friends. So who are you surrounding yourself with?

Today I wanted to share my gratitude to my many teachers, mentors, role models, and friends who have influenced my life and given me their support. It’s important to acknowledge those who help foster your abilities and empower you to pursue the life you want.

Alec Hodgins

A French Canadian who taught English in France for years and then migrated to the US to teach French! I was lucky to be in his class for three years in high school. Alec was the most influential teacher I ever had in school, always advocating the unconventional path. He was the one who inspired my fascination with world cultures, languages, and travel. My first travel abroad was on a class trip with him to Cannes & Paris, France, and he first got me drooling over photos of Thailand when he took his wife and son there in 2000.

Lesson learned: You don’t have to color inside the lines all the time.

Alan Haynes

My photography teacher in high school, again for three years. In another life, I was a professional photographer (now it’s mostly a hobby, but I have a travel photo site coming soon). Alan connected me with my very first job, working in a darkroom, and showed me that it was possible to earn a great living if you split your time as an artist and as a teacher, to pass on your craft to the next generation.

Lesson learned: It’s okay to pursue your creative passion professionally.

Nicole Pefley

I met Nicole in middle school and our paths have intertwined ever since. She’s been a two-time Coachellian with me, we have a shared love for travel, French, music, and other assorted weird experiences. After high school, she lived in Paris for many months, and then spent a year studying in Brazil, so she was a great example for me to follow when I chose to live abroad for a while. Recently, she’s followed in Alec Hodgins footsteps and began teaching French at our old high school.

Lesson learned: We’ve both found you really can be a drifter for a few years after school, explore your interests, and eventually land on your feet.

Ramit Sethi

I’ve mentioned Ramit a few times recently. He was the first big blogger I reached out to when I started building my online presence in 2006, and I found out we’re from the same town! He’s a perfect role model for gen-y bloggers and entrepreneurs—he’s a year older than me, a graduate of Stanford University, and a successful tech startup co-founder. He’s worked with bigshots like Seth Godin and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, and now he’s a New York Times bestselling author!

Lesson learned: Nobody’s going to give you handout. But there’s no harm in asking for what you want.

Jeffrey Skoll

Jeff Skoll was the first president of eBay and founder of movie production company Participant Media (responsible for bringing An Inconvenient Truth to the world). He’s been an active voice at Stanford’s Center for Social Innovation, and took his wealth from his success at eBay to become a philanthropist and support innovative entrepreneurship and social change with the Skoll Foundation. I’ve never spoken to Jeff, but he has always served as a great social entrepreneur role model for me.

Lesson learned: You can make a damn good living and make a difference at the same time.

Warren Buffett

The “Oracle of Omaha” is known around the world as one of the world’s most talented investors and money managers, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and the richest person in the world (up until 2008, worth about $62 billion). Buffett started out with the money he earned as a newspaper boy to buy his first assets, and despite his now immense fortune, he still lives in a home he purchased for $50K in the 1950s and embraces a frugal lifestyle. In 2006, I had the opportunity to meet him briefly, just weeks after his announcement that he’d be giving away 85 percent of his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Lesson learned: If the wealthiest investor & philanthropist in the world grew his business from just a few dollars from his paper route, you can too.

Rajesh Setty

I connected with Raj through his blog Life Beyond Code in my early days of blogging. As a serial entrepreneur, he tends to be involved as a co-founder, investor, or board member in about eight companies at any given time. He shares his wealth of business experience and motivational wisdom through his blog, Twitter, speaking engagements, and his books, and he was a huge influence on me when I first started my freelance side business which later grew into Thrilling Heroics Consulting.

Lesson learned: Business isn’t about a product, it’s about the people you work with, the relationships you build, and the dedication you show to your customer.

Timothy Ferriss

My interest in coming to Southeast Asia was fueled by reading Tim Ferriss’ inspiring NYT Bestseller The 4 Hour Workweek. Ferriss noted that Thailand and Argentina were two of the world’s best remaining destinations where Americans can easily stretch their dollar, and that if you spend the time to build a business that you can run from anywhere, you can easily leverage the idea of geo-arbitrage—earning in a strong currency while you live somewhere with a low cost-of-living. Though I’ve never met Tim, his ideas and experiments have certainly influenced a lot of my business decisions since reading his book!

Lesson learned: You don’t have to wait until retirement to create the lifestyle of your dreams. Also, nobody ever said you have to follow the rules.

Jacqueline Novogratz

Founder & CEO of Acumen Fund, a nonprofit venture fund that invests philanthropic capital and trains the next generation of business leaders in South Asia and East Africa to build thriving businesses focused on delivering affordable healthcare, water, housing and energy to the poor. She delivers a few incredibly pursuasive TED Talks and is a shining example of some of the social entrepreneurs that are trying to lead social progress for the developing world. (Side note: Jacqueline is married to TED‘s founder Chris Anderson, another inspirational figure who has proven that that ideas can change the world. I’m excited to bring Chris’ vision to Thailand in Febraury with TEDx BKK!)

Lesson learned: Entrepreneurial approaches can be applied to solve the problems of global poverty.

Matt Mullenweg

At just 25-years-old, Matt Mullenweg has developed a company that is changing the way businesses interact with their clients online. His company created the WordPress blog platform, which makes it easy for anyone to get started publishing online, and which is what I have built my two businesses around—Thrilling Heroics Consulting and FreelanceWP—to help make online publishing more accessible to everyone and help innovators and changemakers spread their message to the world. Matt is a huge advocate of open-source development, which is making great software more quickly and easily possible, and transforming how we think about ownership.

Lesson learned: Share your best ideas with the world freely to empower the largest possible community, and it will come back to you many-fold.

Paul Dickey

Paul joined E*Trade after high school and became senior internal auditor, working around the world and overseeing a team of employees with advanced degrees. We met in college when he returned to get his own Bachelor’s degree, lived together for nearly a year, and traveled to Spain together with friends. Paul led a campaign to implement leadership studies at Sac State, was president of several student organizations, and together we attended many entrepreneurship conferences, organized monthly Saturday art walks in Sacramento, launched the U.S.’ fourth university Toastmasters chapter, and networked with tons of other entrepreneurs. He’s got a few business plans laid out, a submission with the patent office, and real estate property.

Lesson learned: Set your life goals and manage your time appropriately, and you can maximize your involvement in different entrepreneurial opportunities to guarantee your success.

Chris Guillebeau

After Tim Ferriss, Chris Guillebeau has perhaps been the most influential writer encouraging the masses to think differently and pursue unconventional, remarkable lifestyles. Chris is on a mission to travel to every country in the world (he’s already visited 122), and since starting his blog The Art of Nonconformity a little under 2 years ago, he has managed to create a full-time income for himself just from his writing projects. He even has great tips on how to travel to rogue states and “off-limits” places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Burma, Libya, Syria, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and North Korea. I got the chance to meet him on his way through Bangkok in February, and have often been inspired by his thoughts on entrepreneurship, success, and changing the world.

Lesson learned: You really can go anywhere you want, and create your own wealth along the way.

Dwight Turner

Dwight and I met briefly in college. When I learned he had taught for a year in Thailand, we became fast friends and eventually both ended up back in Bangkok together. Dwight’s In Search Of Sanuk is a grassroots charity organization that makes it easy for anyone to contribute their time or donations to make a difference for orphans and refugees here in Thailand. He housed me when I first moved out here, has supported me through a lot of the challenges of getting used to expat/entrepreneur life, and together we’ve done a lot of traveling, volunteering, and bringing cool people from different walks of life together for the monthly Bangkok Tweetup, charity mixers, and other social events.

Lesson learned: It’s easier than you might think to mobilize a community to create social change.

Vanessa Rubin

An incredible young woman I was lucky to meet this year here in Bangkok—Vanessa is an aid worker who has spent nearly a decade working on humanitarian projects (frequently as a food & hunger advisor) in places like Nepal, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, & Bangladesh—she’s full of life, an avid rock climber, and earlier this year she was filmed for the BBC’s TV series Extreme Dreams on an expedition to scale Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador. She came to Thailand to review progress made by Care International since the 2004 tsunami.

Lesson learned: Always reach for new heights and seek ways to improve the lives of others, but never neglect yourself either.

Larry McKibben

My dad has been the biggest supporter of my unconventional entrepreneur & digital nomad lifestyle. Though I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way, he has often been the one to encourage me and give me the pep-talk I need. Although he didn’t finish his college degree the first time around, he has had an extremely successful twenty-year career in retail sales and training and quickly worked his way to earning an envy-inducing salary. He’s always been dedicated to his family and a great example of a hard worker.

Lesson learned: With enough dedication, you don’t have to let perceived barriers-to-entry prevent you from being successful.

So who are the teachers that had the most impact on you? Who are your mentors? What supportive friends and role models are you thankful for?

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Show Thanks For Your Teachers, Mentors & Role Models

Last Wednesday was a long night racing across CA-41 and CA-46 in the pitch black, which was a very eerie experience with literally no other cars on the road for miles and miles. After downing two Rockstar energy drinks and six shots of espresso, and slaloming down US-101, I finally arrived at in Goleta, CA, at 11pm and spent a couple days enjoying Santa Barbara and Isla Vista with my friend Nicole Pefley and her roommate Benita Chow.

Nicole and I traveled east toward Palm Springs to attend this year’s Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in Indio, CA. Last year with Rage Against the Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Björk was great, but this year undoubtedly blew all my past live music experiences out of the water! Coachella is a three-day concert where you set up camp in the Southern California desert and get your pick from about 125 bands. Nearly 60,000 people attend the festival each of the three days. Indio is sort of an oasis out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by golf courses, palm trees, a few rocky ridges, and little else. The festival is held on the massive Empire Polo Fields, which provide a large, flat, grassy blank slate for the venue. The headliners this year were Jack Johnson, Portishead, Prince, and Roger Waters (of Pink Floyd).

We got a late start, and after sitting at a standstill in traffic passing through Riverside, we were about 3 hours late to the concert grounds. We struggled to get our tent up as the sun sank over the horizon, so finally we rushed to get into the event before dark. As Nicole and I arrived, we were just in time to hear The Verve perform their 90′s ballad “Bittersweet Symphony.” A powerful song to start off a great weekend with. (I’ll include a number of Dave Bullock‘s gorgeous photographs from the event. Bullock was live blogging from Coachella this year and wrote several articles for Wired magazine)

Above, a bird’s-eye view of half the Coachella venue, including the Gobi, Mojave, and Sahara tents. As the sun set, and as The Verve wrapped their set, we played in the Sonic Forest, an array of 8-foot-tall metal pillars that chirp birdsong at us as we interact with them. Then we grabbed our first drinks at the beer garden.

Later, the crowd filled in at the Coachella Main Stage for Jack Johnson’s set Friday night. This is just one of five venues that play simultaneously! Jack Johnson is always a fun act to see live, since he brings a carefree, upbeat atmosphere to the concert. It was an exciting surprise when he brought Matt Costa and Mason Jennings on stage to accompany him for a few songs!

Saturday was 103°, so we spent the daytime hours trying to keep out of the heat at the local Starbucks. The first big attraction of the afternoon was Death Cab for Cutie. We found a decent place to lounge for the duration of their show, and we were both pleasantly surprised at how many of their songs we knew and enjoyed. I guess I liked Death Cab more than I knew I did!

Next up was the German quartet Kraftwerk. The experimental group, part of a movement dubbed “Krautrock,” actually got their start back in 1970, and have had nearly two dozen members cycle through the quartet. They were some of the original pioneers of electronic music, and some of the earliest artists to give a voice to post-war Germany. Their show is an extremely powerful mix of aural and visual sensations as they perform their progressive electronica beats in front of a massive LED screen on Saturday night. Opening with “The Man Machine,” and continuing with “Tour de France” and their psychedelic “Vitamins,” the only way I could express it to someone who wasn’t there is that it was like the music reached inside your mind and wouldn’t let you turn away!

Being at these live music venues is an entirely different experience from any other music listening experience I’ve had, and I think it opened my eyes to the fact that with electronic music in particular, while many people don’t seem to “get” it at first, it is something that you fall in love with when you hear it live. Whether it’s because of the extreme volume, the energy of the crowd, or the intense audio-visual experience, needless to say this set the mood for the weekend.

Once we were able to shake ourselves from the mind control that Kraftwerk was exercising over us, we raced over to see M.I.A. perform in the Sahara tent. M.I.A. is an unimposing young woman from Sri Lanka, by way of London, but on the mic she puts out loud, thumping rap anthems with heavy African and Brazilian influence, and a lot of original Sri Lankan flavor. She brought Afrikan Boy out to help rile up the huge crowd with “Hussel” Saturday night, above—and when I say crowd I mean it. I’ve never seen the Sahara tent so packed—the audience was literally climbing three levels up the rafters! It was sort of unreal to step back, take a look around, and see yourself as a part of this huge unruly mass of people all dancing to the primal bass beats (Nicole appropriately called the experience “getting bassfucked”!) and sounds of gunfire as they cranked it up again with “Paper Planes.” The difference is, Nicole says, at the favela parties in Rio de Janeiro, the gunfire would be real.

Finally, we rounded out Saturday night at the Portishead show. The band is a trip-hop trio from Bristol, England, consisting of DJ/percussionist Geoff Barrow, guitarist Adrian Utley, and lead singer Beth Gibbons, who still croons her signature powerful, haunting high notes after nearly twenty years as the group’s front woman. The trio hadn’t put out any new songs together in nearly a decade as they each worked on their respective solo material, and Coachella was their first live performance in nearly as much time, on the U.S. tour to coincide with their brand new album release Third. Standing at the center of what felt like the world’s largest surround-sound system, Portishead’s classics like “Sour Times” and “Mysterons,” as well as their new songs like “Machine Gun” and “Silence” struck a powerful chord in the audience. As the last song hit its crescendo, I lay there in silent wonder—in a musical trance—enjoying what I can only call the afterglow of a night of music more perfect than I can describe, a musical experience akin to great sex.

You’d think Saturday night would be a hard act to follow, but Roger Waters was miles away from any sort of let down on the main stage Sunday night. The Pink Floyd bassist and songwriter played a full set that night that featured many of his solo works and several hits from Pink Floyd favorites like The Wall and Wish You Were Here. I hear they also released a gigantic flying pig covered in political graffiti, that somehow managed to disappear! After about an hour, Waters and his band disappeared for a set change and returned twenty minutes later to play Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety. Yes, that’s right, they re-created Pink Floyd’s entire 43-minute classic rock trip under the stars in the middle of the Indio desert. And they did it quite well, utilizing the gigantic Coachella main stage surround sound to its full functionality with all the album’s original voice-overs and sound effects coming from all directions. The entire set was also accompanied by some pretty cool visuals captured by one audience member over at Vicarious Music. All-in-all it was a great initiation into Pink Floyd’s music for me, and for other listeners outside of that generation I’m sure. Waters played for nearly three hours, as the audience just couldn’t get enough on the last night of this festival, doing an encore with “Comfortably Numb.”

Nicole and I stayed for the very last act of the festival, the French DJ duo Justice, who waited respectfully for Waters to finish out his set before they started mixing their signature thumping techno/dance music at about 12:30 AM. These guys really have energy; you can tell they really have fun with it, bobbing their heads to the beat while they mix up blaring electronica with a heavy rock flavor. The two perform on turntables and laptops alongside a giant lighted cross, and their up-tempo beats were the perfect thing to give the audience one last rush of energy before getting on the road back home.

This year’s event was beyond a doubt the richest musical experience I’ve had, and as long as Coachella continues to have great lineups each year, I plan to continue going regularly. It’s a fun road trip down to Southern California, and a beautiful natural setting for a great concert. If you’re interested in making the trip with me from Sacramento in 2009, get in touch.

All photos are copyright Dave Bullock/Wired.com

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Coachella Valley Music & Arts Fest 2008 Was Incredible!!

Jan 3: Thursday, while trekking across town for Paul’s misplaced passport, he and I met the El Diablo himself on La Rambla. The Devil first tried to fool with us, but then kindly gave us directions to the Picasso museum. However, as it started to rain, we retired back to the hotel for the night.

Jan 4: Friday, Paul and I enjoyed a café con leche across the street from the towering Sagrada Familia church, a Gaudi design that has been under construction for 125 years through the contributions of the public. Paul treated us to a fun bus tour that circles the entire city. But, it’s eye-opening how much of the city we had seen already with a few locals as our guides! We got off on Diagonal avenue for an €8 buffet (way cheap for 3 plates of food!), and later that night we met up with Tim and his French friend Nathalie at an Irish Pub in the Ramblas. Besides two others, there was a red-headed American gal tending the bar—turned out she was an expat from Southern California working to finance her stay here in Catalonia. Again, it’s funny how many people you find from back home when you’re half-way across the globe! Late that night, it was too late to catch the metro, so on our walk home, after all the Guinness had made my stomach rumble, I decided to give a Spanish Burger King a try. Can you believe a simple whopper will cost you the equivalent of about 5 bucks in Spain! No fries, no drink…just a whopper.

Jan 5: Saturday was Three Kings Day as the locals refer to it, the Catholic Epiphany. We completed the second leg of our city tour, scoping out Parc Guell again, the Palau Reial, the F.C. Barcelona Stadium (a.k.a. where BC’s soccer team plays, for you beginners), Montjuic mountain, the facilities built for the 1992 Summer Olympics, and the Palau Naçional museum.

I guess that traditionally, in Spain, Three Kings Day is when children would receive their Christmas gifts. It makes more sense really, framed within a Christian viewpoint, that the three kings would bring gifts, as opposed to a jolly old fat man in a red suit. I don’t really remember him in the nativity story! So, we joined a few local Catalonian gals—Meye , Iva, Joanna, Núria—that evening for the Three King’s Day parade that snakes through Plaça Catalunya. It’s more for kids really, but around here it’s apparently huge, and pretty fun to see, as a visitor.

Later, we all enjoyed the finest sampling of local Spanish tapas and wine that €20 can buy, at La Vinateria del Call in the Barri Gottic (Meye knows all the best local spots!), followed by a few drinks at the popular nearby DJ bar and disco.

Jan 6: Sunday morning was Tim and Paul’s time to say goodbye and catch their planes home. It was a pretty decent day, so I voyaged over to the beach near Villa Olympica for a while, then I strolled through the Museu Picasso, with great collections not only of his own work, but also many pieces from his private collection of other artists’ work. It was very interesting to see where he got his inspiration! Finally, I enjoyed some prime people watching in the nearby Parc de la Ciutadella. It’s a huge city park—the kind I only wish we had back home. There are people walking dogs of all breeds, lovers basking together, joggers, bicyclers, elderly men enjoying a quiet solitary walk, peddlers, ganja dealers, parrots, peacocks, and a city zoo! Parents playing tag with their kids, young men playing soccer in the wide alleys, a father playfully wrestling with his toddler son, hippies jamming in music circles, and street performers practicing their juggling techniques. It’s an interesting collage of people of all different demographics. Much like Balboa Park in San Diego, it’s the kind of peaceful, pretty, lively place you want to spend all your lazy Sundays!

Later that night, I met Meye at Plaça Molina near her home at north end of city. As a Barcelona native, she had said earlier that the lookout point atop Mount Tibidabo is the best place to see the whole city, so we made the drive to the top to see Barcelona glowing in the night. Tibidabo mountain overlooks the entire city, and has a glimmering church at its summit. It was a great spot to take some of my last photos of Spain. Afterward, we chatted more about travels and business (she operates her own business called MascotRaceClub) and enjoyed some warm coffee at the Mirablau cafe on the hillside overlooking the city streets below.

Jan 7: For my final day in Barcelona, I spent the afternoon sunbathing, reading, and trying not to stare at the topless runner that kept racing back-and-forth across the beach at Villa Olympica! Later, I continued my book from the park bench and did some more people watching at the vast Parc de la Ciutadella again. Not as many people playing and enjoying the sun’s rays as a Sunday, but still a great place to enjoy the good weather. But, I couldn’t stay long; I had to catch the Renfe train across town to get to the airport. It’s time to go back home.

Jan 8: Originally, I’d hoped to catch a friend or two as I passed through London on my way home, perhaps grab a pint with Sarah and crash with Farmer Tom. But, unfortunately engine trouble set us back two hours, and by the time I got through the customs queue in London, I knew it was too late. They have university and work in the morning, so I gave up and spent a long, sleepless night at a Heathrow airport cafe. I finally arrived in Washington, D.C., where my cousin Ian was awaiting my arrival at Georgetown University. We borrowed his housemate’s SUV, drove over to Capitol Mall, and checked out the Lincoln and FDR memorials by night.

Jan 10: I got the chance to meet my colleague Karen Seeh, a successful nonprofit and sustainability consultant who I’ve worked with online several times but never met in person yet. Later I joined Ian and his friends for a fun evening at the nearby Georgetown pub and piano bar with fellow grad students.

Jan 11: Ian and I explore Capitol Mall, including the White House, the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, the Nation’s Capital, and the Washington Monument. Later, we go for some great music and good vibes in the Adams Morgan neighborhood with Karin and Amanda, a few lady friends we made at the piano bar the night before. Nicole, who spent a year in D.C. as an intern for National Geographic, gave me all the hip tips about the nightlife and music scene in town, and the Adams Morgan is a trendy part of town with great dub music and lots of hoppin’ night spots.

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Also, I just couldn’t help but share Nicole Pefley’s awesome list of awesome things to do in Washington, D.C., because it should benefit others just as it benefited me! I didn’t have time enough to utilize the whole list, but all her hard work shouldn’t go wasted. Let me know if you try out any of these places and enjoy it! Signing off. Here it is:

Top 12 Badass Washington, D.C. Nightspots

by Nicole Pefley

1. Tryst – Adams Morgan (on the main drag 18th st.) -Chill coffee
   house by day with cozy furniture, hip bar with great dub by night.
2. The Diner – Open 24/7, great alternative if you still haven’t eaten
   (they’ve got whatever you’re craving, I guarantee it), cousin and
   neighbor of Tryst. There’s a whole slough of sweet brunch places on
   18th, as well as where most of the Ethiopian restaurants are. GO TO
   ONE. They’re cheap, tasty, and have amazing jazz. Just ask your cab
   driver.
3. Old Glory – Georgetown. Good atmosphere
4. Blues Alley – GTown. Solid blues joint with great jazz too. Show up
   in advance (1 day prior) to buy tix (See also Madam’s Organ in Adams
   Morgan)
5. 18th St. Lounge – Fruit Loop (Dupont Circle) – Tucked in a narrow
   doorway by a mattress store. The best lounge in D.C. Period. Dress for
   it.
6. Cafe St.Ex (as in St. Exupery, author of Le Petit Prince) – 1847
   14th st. NW. Great Belgian beer, Samba and Bossa Nova beats
   sometimes–great vibes always.
7. Cafe Citron – Dupont – nice happy hour that turns into a hot salsa
   club later
   (see also Habana Village in Adams Morgan)
8. Capitol City Brewing Co. – Cap. Hill – Great brewpub with a good
   happy hour, inexpensive and extensive menu, across from Union Station
   in the historic Post Office Building
9. Hawk and Dove – Cap. Hill – Free food at happy hour and good
   political buzz- need I say more?
10. The Front Page – Dupont – Waaaay too many nights here. Another
    killer happy hour hang.
11. Union Pub – Cap Hill – 201 Mass Ave NW, Where I got my first DC
    buzz. Every night has a different happy hour deal. The brews are
    great, like the food, and on thurs. when I was there any beer was $1
    for the ladies. Worth investigating!
12. Tune Inn – Cap Hill – 331 Penn Ave SE – My favorite D.C. dive, bar
    none. Which is appropriate, since it’s really not much of a bar.
    Dingy, with good late night burgers. And check OUT those bathroom
    walls! Scary, but good times:)

And would it be an email from me to someone traveling to one of my
favorite cities without recommending at least one (ah hell I can’t
help myself) restaurant?

• Mai Thai – my fav Thai place in D.C., in Dupont on P st if I
  recall. Lovely interior, bitchin drinks and ridiculously good prices
  for the stylish and beautiful Thai interior. Enjoy what tastes like a
  $40 dinner for $20.
• Les Halles – 1101 K St. – A French bistro place serving those
  working-class unforgettables, steak, fries, salad, anything else
  French you may be craving, and even the finer things like pate foie
  gras with calvados. Won’t break your wallet either. Did I mention the
  great wine list? I should.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Our Journey Through Spain Comes to an End; and a Brief Visit to the Nation’s Capital