our dear friends mike & wendy visited us in birmy last weekend! even with blake being on call, we managed to have a super fun time. great food (shocking for us, i know), a bit of touristy stuff, a little shopping, more good food, great friends. what more could you want?
friday night, we headed to
J Clyde for the extensive beer menu & fun pub food.
after dinner, we played some darts at our local downtown hot spot,
Rogue Tavern. even though it was our first time actually going out in birmy, it was definitely the best!
wendy, mike, & i spent our saturday morning walking around the
pepper place farmer's market. succulent peaches, huge watermelons, & tasty goat cheeses were just a few of the highlights of our trip.
mike & tanky decided to fit a short afternoon nap into our busy schedule.
all rested up, the three of us decided it was time to do the tourist thing in birmy & headed to
VULCAN, the world's largest cast iron statue & our city's symbol! you are impressed, admit it. birmy is so cool. this 56-foot tall statue depicts the roman god vulcan, god of the first & forget. it is, in fact, the 7th largest free-standing statue in the US. it sits on a 126-foot pedestal atop red mountain, which overlooks downtown birmingham and miles around.
ok, so it's a little touristy. but seriously, it was pretty neat. we will definitely be back.
do you spy mike + wendy?
the long red-brick building towards the bottom of the picture is UAB's women & infants center,
where blakey spends most of his days.
just past/above the WIC on the left end is a small cream facade & red brick building.
this is the phoenix lofts, where we live!
i am standing on our home in this map of downtown birmy.
after a being a good birmyite...bhammer...what is it called?...blake got to leave the hospital! we made a stop a the delicious
edgewood creamery &
saw's BBQ (which has quickly become our favorite BBQ in birmy. bold statement, i know) for our afternoon snack & blake's first meal in 20 hours.
a wonderful person told me about the cutest little downtown shopping area in homewood, & she was so right! our absolutely favorite stop on this adorable street was
penzeys spices. have you ever been here? if you are at all into cooking or baking, you absolutely should. it is an entire store full of spices. that recipe you've always been wanting to make but you can never find that one key spice, oh, you can get it here. when winter (is there winter in bama?) rolls around, i will absolutely be picking up some mulling spices here for apple cider. yum!
for our dinner on this night, flip burger won our hearts. yes, this is the third time blake & i have been to flip, and yes, it is amazing. first, the view! second, the fabulous food. & third, a little shout out to the wonderful head chef who came out to talk to us about how their food is prepared for allergies. pretty neat. we will definitely keep going back. what a fun evening.
for the goodbye breakfast saturday morning, we reluctantly tried
the original pancake house. i'm not going to lie, i had low hopes. but, let me tell you, it was so delicious!
fun fun weekend with wonderful friends. so happy you came to visit, kleinmans!
& if you want to visit...we would love love to have you.
love love,
kjp.
