Friday marked my five year anniversary with my fiance with a simple and comfortable celebration at home. A home cooked meal of steak, homemade mashed potatoes and vegetables while watching a silly movie. After five years, we find that just being able to enjoy each others company without interruptions is the best type of celebration possible!
We slept in a bit on Saturday, despite our plans to travel around CT to explore - hey, we are getting old and sleeping in was a treat! We got on the road around 11, with our first stop at the Dunkin' Donuts (what did you expect?) We were thoroughly amazed to see the line of cars for the drive-thru that continuously wrapped around the building while we enjoyed our breakfast inside with no lines.
After a late breakfast at Dunkin' Donuts, we finally got on the road...yay! It was off to Mystic, CT! We made a quick stop at Mystic Seaport, but decided that we really were not interested in paying $24 per person to wander around the seaport. I mentioned that I had read that downtown Mystic had small shops and a nice area to walk around, so we decided to find downtown Mystic, which wasn't too hard - follow the traffic.
Parking was a pain, but we were able to find a good spot off of a side road. People were everywhere, despite the cloudy overcast day. It was still pretty and we were able to get ice cream - which ALWAYS makes a trip better!
After walking around and browsing the over-priced shops, we decided to head off to Rhode Island. Providence, here we come!
About an hour later, we were still somewhat disappointed. Traffic and parking and just trying to figure things out got too complicated! We visited the large mall, which had nothing unique, however, I got a picture of the State Capitol Building - which was kind of cool. We did some more driving and ended up at India Point Park, which was tucked away in a strange spot. We walked down to the water and what did we see? Two white swans! Very cute! Then, out of the blue, what would show up but...drum roll please...the ice cream truck!
After hanging around the park for a bit, we headed back to the car to make some decisions - where to next? A few rounds of debating later, we decided to head back to the outlets near Clinton, CT to visit the Haggar store. One hour later and $80 lighter, dinner was calling our name.
Andrew's friend who lives in Clinton mentioned that the Chinese restaurant near the Log Cabin (which we visited last time,) was very good and pretty authentic. Since Andrew and I have been searching for good Asian food, we decided to give it a shot, and were sorely disappointed. While reviews for the
Taste of China in Clinton, CT on yelp.com and many other sites raved about how wonderful it was, I have to assume they were delirious. The service was terrible and it was very apparent. The food? Really not up to par - who DEEP FRIES scallion pancakes? What is wrong with these people? Not only were they deep fried, they were lacking in flavor - literally just layers of plain fried dough - gross. Andrew ordered hot and sour soup and it was terrible. Not only was it not spicy (and I tasted it and was like, wow, there is no fire here), it wasn't very flavorful. We ordered the twice-cooked pork and the chicken with black bean sauce and again were very disappointed. The twice-cooked pork was too salty and the chicken with black bean sauce was lacking - literally. The chicken was about as bland as bland can be - which was surprising given it was supposed to be black bean sauce!
So, we are back to the drawing board for Chinese food. I can only hope that something comes up soon! If you have any suggestions, let me know!
On the flip side, I've been taking some more photos of my bead work and testing out my skills, finding new "backdrops" for the pictures. One of my favorite photos is a pair of silver hoop earrings with hand-blown swirl glass beads that I took in the Stone Tower. I had to play with my camera to get it to focus, but I finally got a few good shots!
