Happy Monday, folks! Time to attempt to recap the second part of my wine-filled Saturday. Part one’s photo explosion was posted last night in order to avoid giving you all seizures from too many photos, and included visiting two delightful vineyards with Jen & the BroLo.
After sobering up from my vineyard adventures, I headed off to meet blog reader Kari for dinner. She was visiting her friends in DC and very sweetly extended an invitation to dinner, as well to enjoy cupcakes, games, and more wine at her friend’s house afterward! I couldn’t turn down an opportunity to continue my wine diet, so off I went!
Hi Kari!
I met up with a big group of new-to-me friends at Landini Brothers, a fancy Italian restaurant in Old Town Alexandria.
I knew from looking at the menu beforehand that it was going to be an expensive meal, but I don’t know if I was completely prepared for how much dough I was going to be dropping that night, haha. It just all happened so fast! Between there being a little confusion over the wine that was ordered for the table, the automatically included gratuity, and my failure to ask for the prices of the specials, I ended up with a $60 dinner bill. Urk. (budget? What budget?)
At any rate, the food did taste good, at least! I started with a small caesar salad:
And followed it with the salmon special of the evening:
Now, my salmon was cooked perfectly, and overall the food was very good. But I’m sorry, for $29.95 I really feel like I should be receiving more than FOUR FINGERLING POTATOES. I was satisfied with my portion from a stomach-size perspective, but considering how incredibly expensive the food was, I think there should have been more going on. If not by providing more food, then at least drizzle a little reduction-of-something on my plate to jazz it up, y’know? Ah well. The dinner conversation was perhaps a little more brazen than these delicate ears (HA!) are accustomed to hearing, but overall it was really fun to get to broaden my social horizons and distract myself from real life. And the night was only half over after dinner! (Well, to be fair, another quarter of the night went to figuring out how to split the bill, hahahaha.)
Next on the docket was the aforementioned cupcakes, wine, and games! Morgan and her husband Zachary were kind enough to invite me, a total stranger, into their home, hahaha. They have the most adorable little cats!
Er… who look like they want to kill me here. Hahaha.
They also have the niftiest wine bottle opener. I was a little intimidated at first, but seriously, it made shucking out that cork the easiest thing ever. If this newfound need appreciation for wine continues, I may just have to pick one these puppies up!
And the cupcakes. OH THE CUPCAKES.
They were NOT kidding when they said they had a spread! They had cupcakes from Red Velvet, Crumbs, and… somewhere in Alexandria. I forget the name, whoops. But they were all delicious!
For clarification’s sake, we didn’t eat ALL the cupcakes. I had one full lemon coconut (!!) one, and then slices of the red velvet and carrot cake ones. Nommmm. After we had our sugar buzz on, we played a new-to-me Charades-like game called “Celebrity”.
Morgan & Meera in the zone.
The game goes like this: everyone writes something down on slips of paper. This can be literally anything: celebrities places, events, topics, phrases, or just things. We then fold ’em up and toss them into a bowl. Then, in teams, players draw from the bowl and have to get their team to guess what is on the strip of paper. There are 3 rounds, and the same topics/strips of paper are used for each round.
Round 1: Like Catchphrase, the player has to get his or her team to guess the answer without saying any of the words on the piece of paper.
Round 2: Like Charades, the player has to act out their word/phrase without speaking.
Round 3: Like… something challenging, the player can use only ONE WORD to try to get their team to guess the answer.
The idea is that each round gets simultaneously harder and easier, since you already know what some of the answers may be from the previous round, but the methods of getting your team to guess are more challenging. That was terribly explained, but it was a lot of fun!
Morgan, Kari, Me, Meera, and Lauren.
I was fail at getting a group shot with everybody who was there in it, but even if I didn’t get a shot of you (Zach, John, Megan, Aaron!), rest assured it was awesome to meet you!
How do you feel about meeting internet friend IRL (in real life)? After having such great experiences with meeting up with readers and other bloggers, I’m all about it! Always in a smart, safe way, of course. No stalkers, plz! 😉
