The Gulf Coast - Louisiana

Saturday morning we were surprised with the most delicious donuts ever, TatoNut donuts. I had joked about the fact that they have Krispy Kreme donut shops down there and Diana and Jason insisted we try these donuts instead. They weren't wrong. So much better.

After donuts, we hopped in the car and headed to Abita Springs to tour the Abita Brewing Company. Diana said her friends had gone before and said it was fun, so we figured we'd stop on our way to New Orleans. I love their Strawberry Harvest beer, which I had for the first time in Pittsburgh. We waited outside on the patio for a few minutes before being called inside for the tour.

This is how we spent most of our weekend. Kids these days. :P

Inside, the tour guide told us to grab a cup and start filling. Basically, we grabbed a cup and got in line behind the bar. It was a fill your own glass tour, which was pretty rad (PS. The tour is free). I hadn't been on one like this yet - all you can or want to drink, basically.  Diana is showing the different ingredients that go into the brews.

Behind the bar, they had suggestions of how to mix the beer on tap to get some different flavors. There were about 7-8 different beers on tap (including the Christmas Ale, we were ahead of the seasonals, since I had a glass of Fall Fest the day after I got back to le 'Burgh), plus their Oak Aged Pecan Harvest ale (it was delicious), and the very last tap was Abita's own root beer (perfect for the non-drinkers in the group).

After we grabbed a glass (I got Purple Haze for my first go-round), we hung out and took some photos. The red bottle cap in the Louisiana cap map shows the location of Abita.

About 2 minutes after this, someone comes inside and says to the tour guide, "There's a group of 80 bikers making their way inside now" and then the place was packed. Diana and I ran up quickly before the group came and got more beer. I went with the Christmas Ale and then grabbed a taste of the Turbodog. We hung out and waited for the tour to begin, they showed us a short video, we ran up and grabbed more beer after we saw the line dwindling and before we knew it we were on our way into the brewery.

Yup, that's us.

After the brew tour, we drove over Lake Pontchartrain to New Orleans. We parked in the French Quarter and walked over to Ralph & Kacoos for some lunch. We shared blackened alligator for an appetizer. So if you're counting, I've both eaten and held an alligator on this trip. After lunch, we walked over to Jackson Square and just wandered around the French Quarter a bit.

We made our way down to Bourbon St. and had a hurricane from Pat O'Briens and then attempted to walk over to Cafe du Monde for some beignets. Took us a little while to get there, but we made it and the beignets were delicious. 

After our beignets we decided to call it a day. Jason and Diana drove us around the city for a little tour before we left.

The last place we stopped was the entrance of the old Six Flags New Orleans. It was abandoned before Hurricane Katrina hit and never reopened. Diana said they've been using the location to film a few movies. Must be pretty cool.

I'd love to be able to visit New Orleans again someday. There are so many more things to see and do, it was definitely not possible to do them all in just a few hours. Plus, how can we resist going back for more beignets? Not possible.

Happy Independence Day!

We hope that you're all having a great day today however you're spending it! Last night, we checked out a fireworks display on top of the Wyndham Hotel at Point State Park in downtown Pittsburgh. The best part of the show was when they set of a waterfall firework the scaled the wall of the hotel. It was such a beautiful effect!

Have a great 4th of July, now go out and enjoy the fireworks show in your town!

Father's Day in Cleveland: Part 1

For Father's Day, Adam and I drove out to Cleveland to spend it with my dad. My mom was in NY visiting with family and my dad was going to be alone and we couldn't have that, so off to Cleveland we went.

We had planned the night before to go downtown and check out the Cleveland Wine Festival. The tickets were $29 in advance/$35 at the door and you got "10 wine sample tickets"(i'll explain why this is in quotes later), 2 tickets for a full glass of beer, and a "souvenir wine glass"(ie. a plastic stemless cup). Adam and I had gone to a wine festival in the Berkshires, it was my prize for winning the Tanglewood photo contest in 2011. At that festival they gave us actual glasses imprinted with the wine fest logo, which was totally awesome. I was kind of bummed that the Cleveland one didn't do something similar, considering you pay quite a hefty entrance fee.

Anyway, we started off at the front where there were free mini pulled pork sliders and chicken legs courtesy of Garland Jack's BBQ sauce. I didn't get a pic of the food, but I did get a pic of the wet wipes you pulled from a pig's butt. They were also giving away free t-shirts if you challenged your friend to a sumo match wearing a pig or a cow costume on a giant grill. I also noticed some inflatable chicken legs, which I'm guessing you'd use if you were trying to go all American Gladiator on your friend instead.

We decided to save our beer tickets for after the wine tasting, so we headed into the fenced off wine tasting area next. We didn't really have any game plan other than trying to find a Spanish wine vendor. My dad had just visited the country and wanted to see what was being offered at the fest. We basically walked around and just tried things that sounded good. I mainly stuck with the white wines, occasionally throwing in a mead (mango flavored) or a hard cider (cherry flavored). One vendor I visited was from the Finger Lakes and had a brambleberry wine. To be honest, I was intrigued when he handed me a dark chocolate hershey kiss and told me to eat the kiss then drink the wine for a "delicious chocolate raspberry experience". He was right, it was delicious. We didn't even end up using all our tickets, because most vendors didn't even bother collecting them. I'm guessing they were meant to be a way to keep people from getting totally plastered.

There were a few demonstrations at the fest, including one by Barefoot winery on how to make sangria.

 By 5:30 PM it was getting overcast, wicked hot out, and super busy and we were ready to head out (the fest finished at 7:30 PM). We got in line at the Stella Artois booth to get our free glass of either Stella, Hoegaarden, Leffe beer or Stella hard cider. I got a Stella beer, dad got a Leffe and we just sat and enjoyed the evening for a while. I forgot to mention, we bought Adam a $10 designated driver ticket, which gave him 2 free non-alcoholic drinks. He's not a big drinker and this worked out well for us, we had a DD to drive us home.

On our way out, dad took a photo of Adam and I in front of Lake Erie.

We ended the evening with dinner at the B Spot and a Bruins loss (womp womp). On Sunday we visited Chagrin Falls, OH, so stay tuned for part 2!

Washington DC Trip

I just got back from a quick trip to Washington DC where I met up with my lab mates and attended the AACR conference. We didn't really have much time to spend walking around the city, but we did get to go out for a couple of hours one day and see the cherry blossoms (which happened to peak while we were there) and the Smithsonian museums.

Our first night, after the conference was done for the day, we decided to go check out the cherry blossoms down by the tidal basin. We stayed at the JW Marriott, right next to the White House and the mall, so it was a quick walk to get there. On the way, we passed the White House and the Washington Monument.

It was such a gorgeous night and the sunset was spectacular.

The next day, at 11 AM the conference shut down so everyone could go across the street to join the Rally for Medical Research. They handed out t-shirts and signs and we were joined by a number of other groups that were rallying for a specific cause, like breast cancer, heart disease, lung disease, etc and listened to speakers who talked about why medical research was important to them. We hung around just long enough until the sun started beating down (it was ~90º) and we were getting hungry. We did have some fun taking pictures though.

Best helmet ever.

Our last day, my lab mates Beth and Ashley and I decided to quickly check out the Smithsonian museums, we only had time to run through the Museum of American History and the Natural History Museum, before we headed down to the tidal basin again to see the cherry blossoms, which we read were in peak bloom that day.

The museums were much better than I remembered from 10 years ago, the were so packed though, lots of school groups out that day.

We were so fortunate to be able to see the cherry blossoms at peak. I don't know if there will ever be another time that I'll be able to get down there to see them like this again, but if I do, I'm definitely going to be bringing my tripod along for some early morning photos!