Top Strategies for Enhancing Business Loyalty in the USA

My wife and I flew to Quebec City, our first trip outside of Southern Ontario since the epidemic began in March 2020. We'd meet our eldest son and his fiancée and drive up the St. Lawrence to Charlevoix for a couple of days of skiing. Their train arrived a couple hours after our flight, so we had lunch during the layover. Despite the fact that the sun was shining brightly, it was really cold. COVID limitations will remain in place, and we were unable to find an open restaurant as we strolled from the train station parking lot through the lower town.We opted to climb the cliff's stairs to the Chateau Frontenac, which we assumed would have an open restaurant. When we arrived, we were surprised to see a large throng entering and departing from the hotel, as well as a crowded lobby. It was, we assumed, a school holiday in Quebec, and half of Montreal and their children had traveled to Quebec City for a vacation. Life had returned after the lockdowns, and individuals were eager to travel and sleep in a bed other than their own.We waited up for a table in the restaurant off the lobby and were seated after a few minutes. Warm up with some hot soup and a glass of wine. It was nice to see a familiar label: the CSV Riesling from Niagara Cave Spring. A reminder that commodities were still moving throughout the country, even if people weren't.

The castle town of Ancenis

located roughly midway between Nantes and Angers, is fewer than 100 kilometers from the Atlantic Ocean. A bridge spans the Loire River here. The Domaine des Galloires is located downstream from the bridge on the crest of a hill, with Melon de Bourgogne grapes gradually sloping into the valley below. Galloires is about far east as Melon gets, as the grape prefers the cooler temperature that comes in from the sea.I'm at the vineyard with a group of international wine writers for lunch, which consists of a buffet of numerous local French delicacies spread across several tables under a large tent on the lawn next to the winery buildings. It's a bright spring day, the sun is shining, and after spending the morning at the Angers convention centre tasting and spitting wines, we're grateful for the fresh air, the view of the river, and the odd old church spire in the distance. We're also grateful for the Muscadet; there are hundreds to sample with a few sips and a spit onto the grass, or perhaps a swallow since it's lunchtime.I don't remember everything we ate, but we typically finished with local cheese and honey from the vineyard's bees, as well as the "dish" that practically everyone started with: Belon oysters fresh from the Atlantic. Muscadet, not Chablis, is the wine for oysters, which are grown almost next to the beds where they originated on the Brittany shore. There is no sauce or lemon, just a crisp citrussy white wine that has been aged on the lees for several months. Life is better with each gulp.

The Mauro Café used to be housed 

in a posh boutique department shop on Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood. The store has changed ownership and names, and the restaurant appears to be its own entity. It is still physically part of the building complex that houses the store (or stores, I am not sure), but you must exit one to enter the other. To do this, step outside to the parking lot behind the buildings.Make a one-time charity payment to help keep The Hub free of advertisements. Even $5, $10, and $15 helps The Hub continue to provide an ad-free reading environment.This is Los Angeles, and anything larger than one storefront will have a parking lot. What's fun about Mauro is that the parking lot also functions as a terrace. It's the ideal Hollywood juxtaposition of upscale fine dining with casual, slightly jerry-rigged settings. Furthermore, the best views are of individuals, such as the group of Boomer friends with not one, but two gentlemen wearing Karl Lagerfeld-style ponytails.I'm sitting at a table with my wife and our youngest son, whose Godfather lives in Los Angeles and whom we've come to see. We are delighted to escape the dark grey skies of Toronto in November for some California sunshine and one last lunch outside. I had a salad since this is Los Angeles, and they know how to make salad. It doesn't disappoint: butter lettuce with shallot vinaigrette.

The main course is spaghetti alle vongole 

with Manila clams from the Pacific. It's a superb West Coast version of the Italian classic, and I wash it down with a Gavi from northern Italy, whose low acidity is supposed to be favored by winemakers to match with Ligurian fish. It works, clearing the palate after each meaty and garlicky bite while also nourishing the body and mind for the afternoon's adventures.There are two types of Christmas movies: movies about Christmas as a Christian feast observed on December 25th, and movies that happen to take place during Christmas. just the former are technically Christmas movies, but what fun would life be if we just spoke strictly?If you feel that a film cannot be a true Christmas film if its core message is anything other than redemption by divine intervention, that's okay. I'll even admit that you have the better argument, as long as you agree to go away and enjoy the warm festive glow of sanctimonious rectitude alone, leaving the rest of us to enjoy a more diverse selection of holiday movies.eet Heer inspired my top ten non-Christmassy Christmas movies. Unless you spend a lot of time on Twitter or are one of the few remaining readers of The Nation—a venerable New York magazine that has never fully moved on from its earlier Stalinist apologetics and now reads like the splenetic propaganda organ of a particularly paranoid progressive cult—you are unlikely to have come across Mr. Heer. If not, consider Cliff Clavin. if he'd spent too many years at the cultural studies department at York University, Canada's most eccentric graduate institution.