Taste 5

Overall I would classify this week as a success! Except for my brief stint as a tripod... Friday we ran off to explore Valparaiso. First we went to BDubs and then walked around exploring the beauty of downtown Valpo. I had never fully appreciated the city's efforts to keep the main drag looking beautiful but wow they have done a fantastic job. On our walk we ran into a sign advertising a wine and food festival the next day to raise money for a park downtown. Mental note made. 

After our exploration it was miniature golf! I have not yet added up the scores, but after a particularly nasty incident with a hole on a slope I'm going to guess the BF will emerge the victor... 

Saturday we took a little trip to Lake Michigan, making a point to go to a beach we hadn't been to before. As usual, we never get beach weather, it was windy and chilly and soon the sky over Chicago started to darken and head our way. We narrowly escaped rain and it was back to Westville. 

After some grilled cheese and laziness the sun came out and we decided to check out Taste 5, the wine and food festival in Valpo we had seen advertised the day before and I have to say it was pretty great! It was smaller than we had imagined, Valpo is after all a rather large city, but still very nice. Five of the city's best restaurants teamed up to put on something akin to the Taste of Chicago. We bought tickets for a dollar apiece and each restaurant had a booth set up where they sold their most popular dishes for a set amount of tickets. We decided to split lamb from a spanish restaurant and a fantastic nut and berry cheesecake from either a french or italian restaurant, we don't remember which... The BF tried a new dark beer and I tried sangria. I am not a wine person, something about the smell bothers me, but this was actually pretty good, with big chunks of  orange, lime, and lemon floating in the dark red liquid. A success definitely. 

After Taste 5 we wandered around and took pictures. Well the BF did, my camera is still out of commission : ( Eventually we ended up at a South Bend Chocolate Factory Cafe where the BF got some coffee (yet another grown up drink I don't enjoy) and we read over some newspapers. 

The plan was to go to see Up later that night but we still had a lot of time to waste so we went to Barnes & Nobles for awhile. The movie overall was really cute and visually stunning, but we were both left wanting a little more. I thought the ending was a little abrupt and the BF just thought it was generally a little boring but oh well. 

Today was mostly just a lazy day. After hiking up dunes and running around Valpo we were pooped. We took Boomer and Wicket for a walk and that was about the extent of our day. Later, we fell asleep for a looong time and then watched a pretty snazzy dinosaur show on the History channel. 

So, one long blog later and I think that's the end of our weekend. The BF took off a few hours ago and it's always weird to go from seeing each other nonstop for a few days to being two hours apart again. Luckily a great weekend sent us off in good moods and looking forward to a weekend two weeks from now : )