And We're Walking, And We're Walking...

This past Saturday Scott and I grabbed two great friends, left the kids with a sitter and had ourselves a real, bonifide, middle-of-the-afternoon, grown up play date!

These are our friends, George and Gwen. Also known as Gus and Gusset. Also known as Aunt Gwennie and Uncle Gus to our kids.
Here the four of us are on our play date.
George and Scott grew up in Crawfordsville, Indiana and have known each other since High School. Gwen, also from Indiana, met George on a blind date when she was still in college. The rest, as they say, is history.

Scott was best man in their wedding and George was best man in ours 6 months later.

We moved to NC in 1996, they moved here in 1997.

Our first babies were born 6 weeks apart.

Yeah, good friends with lots of good history makes for a fun and relaxing day.

Anyhoo, back to what we did on our afternoon of freedom.

We headed to downtown Raleigh for a Triangle Food Tour.

Basically, we visited 7 restaurants in 3 hours. We walked to most and took the free R Line bus to a few.
Ooh, doesn't he look mean? You never know who you will encounter waiting for a bus downtown!
So the premise behind these tours (they have them for Durham, Chapel Hill and Cary, too!) is to highlight new and/or out of the way restaurants in the area. At each stop, we received a small sample of one of their menu items, often with a tasting of wine or other beverage.

As you might imagine, we had a fabulous time. Who wouldn't?

It was about 75 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. We got to wander around downtown Raleigh, learn a little history of the area and eat a yummy variety of foods.

We had pulled pork, cole slaw and a hush puppy at Coopers BBQ.
Bow tie pasta with a mushroom cream sauce at La Volta Italiano.
Red Beans and Rice (with Andouille sausage) at The Big Easy.
Shrimp and Grits at The Mint.
Another fabulous pasta & veggies dish at Sunflowers Cafe. I forgot the name of the dish but here it is. I ate all the veggies but set the jalapeno slices aside.
Warm goat cheese salad (sooooo delicious!) and a crisp white wine at Solas.
Then we wrapped up the day with spicy chipotle-marinated shredded chicken and a roasted red pepper margarita at Jibarra.
Highly recommend the food tour to anyone. We plan to do the Durham one in the Spring.

Thank you, Kris for recommending something so fun. Oh, and thanks to Kris's daughter Courtney, who kept the four munchkins in line while we were out!