How we spent our four-day weekend...

Friday evening:
We thought it would be fun to try to find a pizza place that I had heard about from one of the girls on my Relay for Life team. I'm sure she said it was called Red's and it was in Hubbards...but the only Red's we could find in the phonebook was in Upper Tantallon, which is only about a 20 minute drive from here, so we set out to find it. Upper Tantallon isn't very big, so we are pretty sure that we found the right place (it was actually a take-out fish n chip place that said it "proudly serves Big Red's pizza") but it wasn't the kind of place we were after so we decided to head back towards home. We were considering just heading into downtown to see what presented itself, but then DBF pointed out that I'd been wanting to try this place called The Armview that it right on the edge of the big rotary (Armdale Rotary) at the end of our main road. It looks like a total dive, greasy spoon from the outside...but we had noticed they got funky new patio furniture and there always seems to be a lot of people there...so we figured it wouldn't kill us. :) Well it turns out that it has recently been bought and turned into kind of a hip, upscale diner. Still obviously was a greasy spoon or something at some point, but reno'd and cleaned up with a yummy new menu. We each had a burger and they were AWESOME. We'll go back for sure. They must do a late night bar scene too....there were turntables on the counter and they had a good wine/martini/bar list. (They haven't finished their website yet, but here is a link from The Coast.) Then we went home and watched Definitely, Maybe....good movie.

Saturday:
The weather promptly decided to go south...Murphy's Law...but we still stuck with our plan for a leisurely drive to the South Shore. We loaded Mojo, his blanket, his dish and some water into the car and set off for our adventure (with McD's in our tummies and Starbucks in our hands of course). Our intention had been to go as far as Risser's Beach to check out the camping situation, but we ended up heading to Graves Island and then on to Mahone Bay instead. We would have needed to hop over to the main highway and just didn't feel like it. haha. We enjoy the old highway...more scenic...and I saw lots of cool places to stop to see when travelling that way with my Mom in the fall. If we had a truck, we would have had two brand-new, lovely handcrafted Adirondack chairs come home with us. :) The weather was grey and it tried to rain a couple of times, but all in all it was a nice drive anyway. Graves was a beautiful spot, but the campground was WIDE open with absolutely no privacy, so at least we learned not to book it for weekend getaway. We're still on the hunt for the perfect camping spot. :)

While perusing the internet to try to find a downtown pizza restaurant that I had heard about, I happened upon the website for another restaurant that we had wanted to try. Cafe Chianti. I showed it to DBF as a suggestion for a future date night, and he said why didn't we do it now? Well, OK! Twist my rubber arm for date night! So we got ourselves all dressed up (I swear I felt like I was getting ready for a first date...and was very pleased with the end result...and then of course forgot to get a picture!) and hopped in a cab for downtown. Dinner was awesome! The waiter was great, he offered us a great wine selection, DBF admired the man's crazy mustache, the food was excellent (although VERY rich!), and at the end of our meal DBF ended up befriending these two little old English ladies at the table beside us. They discussed the war and their travels...hilarious, he can make friends with anyone! We even walked with them for the few blocks to their hotel. So cute! After that, we carried on to the Shoe Shop for drinky-poos at the bar.

Sunday:
The weather turned total ass. Wet and gross. We basically hit up the grocery store so DBF could make us a yummy weekend breakfast and then hermitted in the house for the rest of the day. I don't even remember what we did for most of the day...haha. In the evening we watched a movie called Control, about the lead singer from Joy Division....good movie, terribly sad story.

Monday:
Weather was still a bit crappy, but at least it was warm. Windy and humid is an odd combination! We had a leisurely morning, then set out to do a bit of shopping and a few errands. Finally made it over to the MicMac mall in Dartmouth (it's the largest shopping mall East of Toronto apparently)....it's a mall...haha...a good mall, but just a mall nonetheless. Didn't buy anything, but did discover a Jacob Lingerie store so I'll be going back for that when DBF isn't with me. :) We stopped at Costco on our way home, where I picked up a new camera (just a little point and shoot digital...exactly the same as my old camera but brand new model) and we finally got the pizza that DBF had been craving. Turns out that $10 Costco pizza is pretty decent. Then we headed off to the movies to see Wall-E...which was cute, but honestly I was starting to get a bit bored...the storyline wasn't quite what we thought it would be. The graphics were Pixar's best yet though. When we got home we decided to have some wine (oh, after our DQ desserts...haha) and ended up staying up until 3am just chatting and playing Trivial Pursuit (90s edition...the questions are so bullshit...LOL).

Tuesday: HAPPY CANADA DAY!
Obviously we needed to sleep in due to our late night and wine consumption...and apparently Mojo was OK with that! The sun was shining when we got up...yaieeeeee...so DBF mowed the lawn and worked on trying to revive this weird dead patch in our front yard (the healthy part is sooooo green, but there's a dead patch that just isn't coming back!). I puttered in my flowers for a bit, then freshened up and just sat in the sun with my book and my coffee....very nice! We got talking to the neighbors while we were out in the yard, and they offered to have us over for drinks in the afternoon. We had planned to go downtown to check out the Canada Day festivities and to see our other neighbors' band play, so we thought we'd have the drink and then we could all head into town. Well, we ended up going for the drink, then the boys got into the video games while us girls chatted....and well, I didn't get to see any fireworks. :( haha, but we really like our neighbors so it's all good.

So, even though the weather thwarted us for the most part, we still made a good long weekend for ourselves. Thank goodness we only have three work days now, because we need a vacation from our vacation!!