Ice Queen

Ice skating was so so much fun! We headed downtown late afternoon to the ice rink at Millenium Park and had a blast. Neither The Beanpole or I had been skating in the past couple of years but spent plenty of time on the ice back in the day in our own little unrealized "Cutting Edge". He was pretty sure he was going to show me up on the ice, so I won't mention who wiped out a couple times, but I will say that I was upright the whole time! Both of us had so much fun that we've decided to buy our own skates and go as often as possible. They charge a fee for the skate rental but the actual time is free! I'd forgotten what a great lower body and cardio workout it can be. We were there for about two hours and by the time we left were pretty much spent!


After wearing ourselves out we decided to walk up to our favorite tapas restaurant for dinner, with a brief stop to warm up with a glass of wine at a local wine bar. I had a 2006 Carmenere from Casa Silva Rivera in Chile. It was described as being like drinking a milk and dark chocolate covered plum. Now how am I supposed to resist that? I really enjoyed it and will be picking up a bottle soon! Sorry for the horrible picture - the lighting was bad and it was a little crowded and I'm still getting used to being the weirdo in the corner photographing her food!


We didn't linger as long as I would have liked over the wine as we were both HUNGRY and wanted to beat the dinner rush as best we could and took another brisk walk up to the restaurant. Here's where things got fun! We were both famished by this point an ordered 3 tapas to hold us over until the paella arrived - my favorite, the patatas bravas; his favorite, the mushrooms (there's a lovely fancy term but I've forgotten it); and our favorite, the gambas al ajillo (shrimp in garlic). YUM! Every single bite of it was delicious!!! Oh, and I had a couple slices of bread as well:


The tapas:


The paella:


Annnnnd, a giant dessert crepe:


It was an early evening and we came home straight from dinner due to some last minute pre-travel tasks The Beanpole needed to finish before waking up at 5:30 this morning to head to the airport. After all the fun we decided that we're going to make more of an effort to have real date nights. Yea!