Monday, December 13

Holiday lights and more tapas.



Last week was a long and somewhat emotionally draining week. Albeit a very productive week as well. So on Friday evening, we decided that we wanted to go somewhere nice for dinner, some place warm and cozy and relaxing. We ended up deciding to check out the Chispa Tapas Bar at El Meson.

As we were driving over there, I asked Will to drive by the Plaza so we could check out the holiday lights. It's so rare that I am out in the evenings, I really haven't seen all the festive lights that folks have put up. So we cruise by the Plaza and it just looked so happy and festive.

I asked Will, "Have we ever been to the Plaza at night around the holidays before?"

No, I don't think so.

So yeah, this is our fourth December here and the first time we've seen the lovely lights on all the trees at the Plaza. We are so bad.

We parked near Back at the Ranch which was looking pretty festive as well. That's where I took the photo of the bull sculpture decorated with lights.

El Meson was hopping, but the hostess gave us a table in the bar that someone hadn't shown up to claim. Some older fellows were setting up to play some jazz and they turned out to be highly entertaining. We like jazz just fine and good lord, at least it wasn't more blues which is usually all we hear in this town. And these fellows, man, they made the best faces while they played, especially the drummer and the stand up bass player. It made me happy that these guys were still doing something that they obviously love a lot.

We started off with olives and manchego cheese which had some sort of quince from Chimayo sauce on it. Quite tasty. Will wanted the Patatas Bravas Con Mojo Picante which is basically fried potatoes with dipping sauces. Something I had a lot of when I was in Spain. Good but not super exciting. I picked the Sauteed Scallops with White Wine and Serrano Ham. The ham was pretty incredible, the scallops were fine but didn't taste particularly fresh. Will's next choice was a pork tenderloin with something or other that I can't remember. It was good. And then we decided to try the veal because neither of us have had veal since forever. It was Fried Veal Cutlet rolled with Serrano Ham and Manchego Cheese, served with a spicy tomato sauce. That was tasty. And for dessert, churros with chocolate sauce.

All in all it was a fine meal and it was actually exactly the kind of evening we wanted. A little wine, a little food, some jazz and no stress. But La Boca is waaaaaay better as far as tapas go.

Last Thursday was my last day for felting things and I'm pretty much done with work stuff, but the "things to do" list still doesn't seem to be getting any smaller. We ran around most of this afternoon and I am totally beat now. Rocky has been getting me up at 5:00am and while it's way better than 3:00am, it's still really disruptive to my sleep. I decided not to run this morning and I so wanted to sleep in, but after getting up 3 or 4 times with one cat or the other, I gave up and got up at the usual time. Those damn cats are lucky they are cute.

Hoping to have a little more time for photo taking and blogging this week!

1 comment:

  1. The bull is amazing! I want it for my house. And your meal sounds pretty tasty (especially after I just had sloppy joes for dinner, I could go for the veal and serrano ham right now).

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