Leave a Happy Plate: Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer

Hubs and I have been travelling for 2 weeks straight: Charleston SC to Virginia to Detroit (for work) to Vegas to North Carolina to Virginia. I'm tired just thinking about it.

We stumbled upon (not literally) my old college roomy/bff/best lady and her husband in Charleston which was a huge wonderful coincidence. We went to our most favorite happy hour ever, where we eat amazing homemade chips with blue cheese dipping sauce and drink lots of wine and house-brewed beer! (See exhibit A below - a few glasses in... Joe tried to eat Meghan's ear! What the he#$!)

We went to SNOB for dinner, where I had the most amazing meal ever. I mean ever.

Fried-ish Pulled Pork with Farro, Veggies, and amazing sauce!

We then went to this prohibition-esque Gin Joint for fancy cocktails. Just look at the fancy ice.

Mike's scotch... Loved the giant blocks of ice

Good thing we switched to water.

Mike and I went a-hunting for ghosts. We found some.

Oh, and we saw the biggest tree of all time. But you CAN'T climb on the tree. You just can't. All the signs say so. As much as I wanted to try to climb to the top of this gazillion-foot tall tree, you are NOT allowed!!

OK, on to Vegas.... First let me tell you: it was 117 degrees. Somewhat warm.

So, I went to the pool. I heard this [really loud] guy ask Siri, "Find me a buffet in Vegas." Really? Do you know where you are? Siri came back with 3,402,124 buffets near Las Vegas. Come on dude.

We made some money playing Roulette, so we felt pretty darn cool. It will also most likely never ever happen again. I almost gave myself a heart attack from all the stress of gambling. True story.

And this was a big highlight: some weird cot sitting in our hallway outside our room at Caesar's Palace. Ummm OK? So we took some funny pictures.

And the rest of the time we ate and drank. A lot. Starting with China Poblano where we had shu mai topped with gold! Gold is tasty.

We also had a late night snack at Gordon Ramsey's Pub and Grill. I heart Gordon. And who woulda guessed, but you can bring your own cocktails [that you got for free on the casino floor] into his restaurant. Win! My free wine went really well with Pub Crisps and Pub Burgers.

Oh my goodness, we at at Noodle 9 TWICE; it is that good. I had HAND-PULLED noodles mixed with fresh veggies and pork sauce.

Dear Noodle 9: I will miss you and see you in my dreams.

Making hand-pulled noodles

After all of this food and booze, I was happy to get home to reality. We had to board Stella while we were gone and she was all pitiful and lonely. She had managed to make herself very sick from stress while we were gone, which turned me into a hot mess! But I am sooo happy to report she is doing better now, and is getting more TLC than she can handle.