Everybody's Drinking On The Weekends

Or maybe that's just us.

Friday Adam and I went into the North End to celebrate Boston Restaurant Week. We dined at Lucia's on Hanover Street and found that food, ambiance and service were all spectacular. Neither of us ended up ordering off the Restaurant Menu, though it looked divine, because other dishes caught our eyes. I chose the gnocchi el pesto and Adam chose a pasta, sausage and porcini mushroom dish. We also split a bottle of smooth, smooth Merlot.



After dinner we walked up the street for cappuccino and dessert - which was the perfect ending to a decadent pasta meal.


(I labeled this photo on Twitpic "Cappuccino and a douche".)

Divine. I love the North End. I wish we hung out there more. Then again maybe the reason I think it's so great is that we don't go there that often so it's special.

After our caffeine and sweets we headed to The Fat Cat in Quincy where although I didn't take a picture of my Tanqueray martini, we worked with the bartenders to devise the perfect playlist of a mix CD to be named "Awesome Jams". I will be putting it together this week and offering a few up for some lucky blog readers. Get psyched.

The next morning we awoke at the ungodly hour of 6:40AM to take Adam's car to get new tires. Instead of being normal and going home and back to bed afterward, we decided to run errands, get breakfast and eat it at the beach



and then take MY car to get an oil change. It was feeling left out of all the car maintenance fun.

After all that business-taking-care-of we packed up my car and drove up to Old Orchard Beach, Maine for a long overdue visit to see Adam's parents at their summer place. The traffic? It was ungodly. I got stuck at every toll booth and there are approximately 86 toll booths between Boston and Old Orchard Beach. By the time we reached OOB we were stiff and starving so we stopped at an interesting looking place near his parents' place, Jimmy The Greek's, for some burgers and brews.

They had a crazy selection of beer. Something like 50 on tap and another 50 by the bottle. I ended up ordering a Snakebite - a mix of Guinness and hard cider, something I have fond memories of from my Spring Break of '02 trip to London. Delicious!


We had such a good time at Jimmy The Greek's that we convinced his parents to come with us there for dinner as well later in the night and they agreed the food is awesome. It was the first time in a LONG time that I ordered a burger medium and actually got it medium and not medium-well. Hey, little things count a lot.

The next day we arose and headed out early. Destination: Portland!

Portland is the cutest city. Lots of brick buildings, cute shops, overlooks the water. What more could you want? Oh yeah - a brewpub. We found Gritty McDuff's, a place Adam had heard about a few times and was dying to try, and settled in for lunch.

I ordered the Summer Ale.



And Adam the Brown Ale. We were both thoroughly satisfied. We then walked off our lunch shopping in the cute city for a few hours before getting back in the car to wait in traffic for an hour or so at the Hampton Tolls.

Through all this sitting in toll traffice - we made up a game. This game is probably only funny to those suffering through the punchiness of insane traffic but who cares. This is how you play.

1)Pretend you are Eddie Money singing "Two Tickets To Paradise".
2) Come up with feasible reasons why you have to get rid of the tickets.

Such as:

"I've got two tickets to paradise...but I just found out I have to work so I guess I'll put them on Craig's List unless you know someone who wants them."
"I've got two tickets to paradise...but I'm sorry I can't bring you with me because I decided to trade them both in for one first class ticket."
"I've got two tickets to paradise...yeah, a client gave them to my boss but he didn't want them so he sent out and email and I was the first one to respond".

And so on...

So, in any case it was a great weekend!