Good morning!

Ben and I had ourselves a good ol’ fashioned evening out last night. We started with happy hour at our favorite British Pub, Royal Mile.

Royal Mile is chill, cozy and they have a great selection of beer.

TGIF – I say!

I ordered a Blue Chimay.

This is Ben’s favorite beer of all time and now I know why. It’s absolutely delicious! With 9% alcohol, though, you only need one.

Only one Chimay, that is. Other beers are not off limits!.  

I tried this Wells Banana Bread Beer next, and it was AWESOME! I mean, it didn’t taste exactly like banana bread, but it was fruity and banana bread-ish. Yummy.

After a couple hours, and a couple beers, we were STARVING. Lucky for us, the Italian American Heritage Festival was taking place just a couple blocks away. Wheee!!!!

I HEART the Italian American festival. You are always guaranteed some great people watching, great music and GREAT food.

This year it took place on one of the bridges downtown.

Iowa has suffered from some terrible, terrible flood damage this summer. Downtown has seen the very least of the damage, but you can see how high the river levels are.

Rising water aside, we were ready to chow!

We walked past the bocce ball tournament area, the music stages,

Crowd involvement!

past the neighborhood folks sipping on bottles of wine.

It was PACKED!

For an "appetizer," we hit up the Tumea & Sons Restaurant tent. The line was super long, and when the line is long, the food is usually good!

We asked what their specialty was, and the girl working said we had to get their seasoned, house rolls.

Whabam! Holy moly – flavor city!

Soft, chewy and packed with spicy, zesty Italian flavor. We gobbled.

  

For our entree, we located the Cosi Cucina tent for some pasta.

They were handing out samples of Zili Cucina Pasta, which I could have eaten by the bucketful,  it was so amazing,

but we decided to share a large order of the Smoked Chicken Pasta.

 

No words. Ok – creamy, but light. Smokey and savory. This was sooooooooo good!!!!!!!

We stayed and chatted with a couple friends we ran into,

then called it a night with, what else, mini doughnuts!! So necessary. So incredible. The best mini doughnuts I’ve ever had, actually! Like a mixture of a cake doughnut and a fried, un-glazed one. Spectacular!!!

It got to be about 8:30 and Ben and I felt ourselves turning into pumpkins.

So home we headed! What a great way to wrap up our week!

Well, I’m on the hunt for breakfast, then I literally have nothing to do this morning. Love it!

See ya!