This post is being posted over a week late...

*Yawn*

I’m worn out guys. Remind me to go to bed right when I get to my hotel tonight cause I seriously need to get some sleep. However energy-consuming though, this was a wonderful weekend.

Christian took a little trip up to the DC (that means District of Columbia everybody, not Drip Coffee) this weekend to visit one of his best friends ever. Second Lieutenant Nicholas Joseph Halsmer. Legitimacy incarnate.

We did lots of tight stuff like going camping on the Quantico Marine Base during the sub-freezing temperatures (it snowed…) with Nic’s friend Allan, his wife, and a 50 year old Belarusian who teaches Russian at the marine base. I feel like I could probably spend some serious time talking about this whole experience with a large amount of the time being consumed by stories about Igor (the Belarusian), but sadly, I’m not feeling like going there right now.

Skip to the next night. Lots of stuff happened between camping and the next night but that’s why I used the word “skip”…we’re going to skip it.

Saturday night, Nic and I had planned to go to a concert near DuPont Circle in DC (again, the District of Columbia), and we decided to go down to the city early enough to get a nice dinner. I was ready to have a legit meal that would give me a taste of the culinary prowess that DC (…) seems to possess. So, as I will probably always do from here on out when I’m looking for a new, legit restaurant in an area that I’m not familiar with, we consulted the iPhone app “Urban Spoon”.

It took us a good 30 minutes while we were on the metro to figure out what kind of food we wanted. We finally decided on a Mediterranean place though that was fairly close to the concert venue. It came highly rated. When we got there, you could immediately tell that it was a pretty swanky place. Most people there were full-on adults (35-50 yrs old) and seemed to be dressed a little better than we were. The hostess informed us that, unfortunately, tables were available by reservation only. However, due to the powerful presence of a Marine Second Lieutenant, they consented to give us a table that wasn’t reserved for another hour and a half and I guess just hope that we got out of there in time.

So we sat down at our table. First thing I did was open the wine list (it was immense). I flipped through it looking for a wine that wasn’t the cheapest they had but that wasn’t 100 bucks. I finally found a nice little Pino Noir that was “in our price range”. I’ll go ahead and say that it was one of the best wines I’ve ever had. Apparently Moldova knows how to grow some good Pino Noir grapes. Good on em.

We then opened the menu. We were informed that the way to do it at this restaurant was to just order like 5-6 different items. They were all made to be eaten with the never-ending (and delicious) flatbread.

The things we ordered are as follows (I don’t remember the actual names of these items, they were all in some other language):

1. An incredibly rich and creamy yogurt with walnuts and tart apples on top. Then it was surrounded by some sort of large, edible flower petals (yeah, we ate them), and then covered in a very virgin olive oil. This is the one you can see in the picture.

2. Pan seared Gouda with a tomato/basil glaze and a thick fig jam. It was an amazing mix of salty and sweet.

3. Goat Milk cheese with honeycomb. This cheese was insanely rich. You couldn’t eat more than a little bit of it at a time or it would freak your taste buds out (olas found this out). But then, if you got some of it and put it with the honey (maybe the best honey I’ve ever tasted) in the honeycomb, it was…aaaah I don’t even know how to describe how good it was. Luscious. It was luscious.

4. Ground lamb with tomato, onion, basil, and olive oil dressing. Pretty awesome lamb.

5. Last, but not least for sure, we had Kalamar (squid) stuffed with shrimp, mozzerella, and a bunch of green spices. Then it was sprinkled with lemon and olive oil. I’ve never had anything like this.

In the end, I feel pretty confident saying that it is easily in the top 5 meals I’ve ever eaten in my life. It might even take first place; I’m just not going to say that because I might be forgetting some other awesome meal that actually deserves the blue ribbon. I’ll give myself a little time to remember the other great meals I’ve had before I hang the gold medal around this meal’s neck.

So, after dinner we went over to this place called The Black Cat or, as the stamp on the back of our hands said, El Gato Negro. It was a pretty sweet venue: the type of place that you just don’t find anywhere in OK. We rocked the show with The Luyas first:

And then with the band we came to see, The Antlers:

All, in all, it was a wonderful night. On the metro ride back home, we made some “life-long friends” (their words, definitely not ours) who were kind of annoying, but at the same time were very entertaining. They were very very confused as to why Nic would be going to flight school if he’s not in the air force and also seemed to have some strong opinions about how lame Oklahoma is. Don’t worry though, we stood up for our state.

They also made lots of fun of my tweed blazer that I was wearing. They have no idea what they were talking about though. That jacket is the shiz (or at least I like it a lot).

Ok. Well…now I’m at a crossroads. I have a decision to make. I have about twice as much to say as I have said so far…meaning I’m about halfway through my material. I’m trying to decide if it’s a better idea for me to cut this post off here and start a second one or whether I should just make it one long motherload of a post…

I think, for your sake, I’ll split it into two posts. If you read both of them in one sitting though, then I’m impressed with you. Heck, if you read one of them in one sitting, I’m impressed.

Oh yeah, one more thing. I wasn’t going to mention this just because of all the people who it would make jealous, but then I realized that none of them will probably read my blog anyways. So I’ll go ahead and brag that I got to go to lunch and get coffee with THE Katie Deaninator on Friday. It was AwEsOmE. That girl is legit. Somebody swoop in and sweep that girl off her feet. You will be lucky you did.