Vacay: Day 1

I have decided to try and entertain you with my recent trip to Virginia Beach. I am going to have to break up the trip into parts. I think a day-to-day retelling of the events will be best. I really don't know how it's all going to pan out so bear with me. I am going to make it as short and sweet as possible and only tell you the juicy parts. Nicole and I ate out every night so there is definitely going to be an abundant of food reviews. Hopefully I get all the pics that I want to put up, I know how all of you like pictures, if only I could make them pop-up for you. Enough back story, let's get to the meat and potatoes of this thing (mmm potatoes, anyone else hungry?).

Day 1-8: We had a lot of fun. The end. What? Too short? You want more details? Dammit I wasn't prepared for that. Give me a minute to get my thoughts together................. What do I tell you? What do I leave out? Here it goes.

Nicole and I stayed at the Ramada Limited last year when we went to Virginia Beach so we decided to book it again. Last year we had a problem with the micro-fridge, it wasn't in our room like the nice lady on the phone said it would be. Guess what happens this year? Same thing. I call 3 weeks before our trip to make sure that we would have a micro-fridge in our room, the woman on the phone assures me that it will be there. I am not satisfied, I call the hotel again on the way down there and once again someone else tells me that it will be in our room. We get there, go to our room and there is no micro-fridge. We check under the bed, in the shower, on the balcony, nope, screwed again. Pissed off, I go down to the lobby and they tell me that the one we had was broken and had to be removed. The woman offers me a discount. I don't need a discount, I need a micro-fridge (for those of you confused about what a micro-fridge is, it's a mini-fridge with a microwave attached to the top), we have perishables with us (yogurt and cold cuts for the beach). She then tells me that there is only one other room with a micro-fridge but it has two double beds. I tell her to take the fridge out of that room and put it in ours, she complies, all is well, crisis averted. Nothing like starting the trip on a sour note. Luckily that is the only real negative thing that happened on vacation.

Frankly I can't remember what we did until we went out to dinner. I remember taking a short, unsatisfying nap for about 45 minutes. I know what you are thinking, 45 minutes seems like a decent nap but we usually take 2 hour naps so 45 minutes is too short (we spoil ourselves). We go out to dinner to an Italian place called Il Giardino that we fell in love with last year, we liked it so much last year that we went back to back nights. Oh the food is so tasty, describing it to you won't do it justice but I will do it anyway. One of the reasons we went back to VA Beach was because of this restaurant. We were looking forward to dining here again for months. I would mention a dish to Nicole that she got last year and I would need a mop to clean up all the drool on the floor.

We start off our feast with some warm foccacia bread, free with a coupon we found. To further enjoy this exquisite bread, the waiter (Jesse) pours a mix of red pepper and garlic oil on a plate and tops it off with some fresh parmesan cheese. Hold on, I have to wipe some drool off the keyboard. For an appetizer we pounce on some eggplant rotini, just bursting with flavor. Your mom can't make it as good at they can and if she can then send some over to me via UPS. Even the salads we had were to die for, simple yet delicious and displayed rather beautifully on the plate. I'm getting so hungry right now. Now for our entrees, Nicole had the capellini piselli e proscuitto (angel hair, tomato cream sauce, mushrooms, peas, proscuitto ham) and I had the penne al gamberi (penne, shrimp, peas, arribiatta sauce).

My dish was suppose to come with a tomato cream sauce but the waiter had recommended the arribiatta sauce so I had to try it, I like things a little spicy. I wish I was eating these dished right now so I could describe how they taste but it's difficult to put it into words. How about, a masterpiece of flavors. Does that get your mouth salivating? We also got some warm Italian bread to mop up our excess sauce, mmm how I love extra sauce. I'm sure if I was a wine drinker it would of topped the meal off. I believe the bill plus tip came to about $74 but well worth it. I highly recommend this restaurant if you are ever in Virginia Beach. Hell, I recommend a day trip to VA Beach just to go to this place. I would drive 2 hours out of my way for some more foccacia bread. And if you live within 30 miles of this restaurant and you have never been there then shame on you. VA Beach is a 7-8 hour drive for me so I am considering staying the night after my dinner. We were much too full to get dessert but I did have leftovers for the next day, oh how I love restaurant leftovers. The food was amazing but the whole experience is what did it for me. Jesse, our waiter was awesome too. He was very knowledgeable and polite, an all around great guy. This post is dedicated to Jesse the waiter, you earned that tip.

After dinner we pretty much went to sleep. I only got like 3 hours sleep the night before and we were both exhausted from the drive so we hit the hay around 10 pm. My normal bedtime is 7 am because I work overnight so it was actually beneficial that I didn't get a lot of sleep before the trip. I am sure we dreamt of capellini and penne.

Cool obscure fact: 'Dreamt' is the only word in the English Language that ends in 'mt'.

Those were pretty much the events of the first day. More to come.