11-13-11 D's Day

After a beautiful Saturday spent running errands, I was headed for Manitou to be with D for her girl's night out for her birthday.

Unfortunately I neglected to get any pictures of our dinner at The Loop, so named for being at the main turnaround spot at the end of Manitou's downtown. It was a chilly, windy walk down from D's house so we were very appreciative of the warm, tasty mexican food. Denise, another friend of D's joined us.

We were trolling downtown on a Chick Crawl night -- similar to the zombie crawl perhaps -- where groups of women pay $40 to hit all the Manitou's shops with a 20% discount and free goodies at each store. Since D is a local who has gotten to know a lot of the owners, we were able to pop-in in between groups at one store and enjoy their rum apple cider and get Max to henna tattoo D's hand while the next group came through. You can see the Chick Crawl bag of the shopper behind them here.

D and Denise with the finished product:

Then, another lapse in pictures as we walked, rather briskly thanks to the cold, further down to the wine bar and met up with another of D's friends, Rachel, and her buddy Jade. We sat and talked (and ignored creeper dude staring) until it was time to head up to the Ancient Mariner to catch D's business partner Ben and his band, the ManApes, performing for a Parkinson's benefit.

After their set, since Denise, Rachel and Jade had all called it a night early, the two of us walked back home for a tuck-in in front of the fireplace. I actually got to fall asleep in my sleeping bag in front of the fire with the windows open and the sounds of the creek outside. It was the most magical part of the night.

And I popped away a few hours later to see this looking back at me:

Boo Diddley gives two paws up on the sleeping bag, too.

So this morning before I headed back we enjoyed a slow breakfast at the Adams Mountain Cafe, who sports a manifesto on their front page about slow food. The restaurant is in the historic bath house built in 1920 and only recently renovated as a retail space. It's very pretty and sits right alongside the creek, which you can see outside the windows here.

And this is the amazing Orange Almond French Toast: Whole wheat sunflower bread dipped in cinnamon-citrus batter and "secret ingredients" with toasted almonds and pure maple syrup.  I would like to celebrate all my friend's birthdays this way :)