Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Downtown, Music and Ale





We kicked off the weekend with the Greek Festival downtown at the Greek Orthodox Church, where there was music, many painted wooden toys and a 45 minute line for gyros that we definitely waited in.





After our bellies were full of lamb and pita, we walked Main Street for a little bit and enjoyed the cool night air. We stopped to listen to the dude who seems to always be playing his guitar by this statue on weekends. Let me tell you, this guy can seriously sing. He's awesome. And I probably owe him like $40, because every time I see him I seem to have no cash on me to put in his tip drum.





After getting some snarkiness and house work out of my system on Saturday, I went to the previously mentioned beer festival, Top of the Hops. While I was there, I sampled 28 beers from my tiny souvenir mug and let me tell you, I'm happy I sampled some of them there instead of buying them. That being said, there were some really tasty new beers I discovered as well as some old favorites that I just had to get while I was there. I know, I probably should have skipped the old favorites to try some more new ones, but I just couldn't help myself.




The whole day wasn't just about wandering aimlessly from beer vendor to beer vendor (although it could have been, had you wanted it to) and we took a break from our wanderings to take some classes at the 'Brew University'. One was on beer and cheese pairings, which was a delicious class! The other was on homebrewing 101, which while it lacked cheese and crackers gave me the opportunity to try some unique brews, like bacon stout and a beer with peanut butter cups in it.

After the festivities came to a close, we all met up back at a friend's place for swimming, pizza and conversation which included the meat of my last post and several visits from a toad who was hell bent on getting in the pool. We relocated him to a storm drain where there was plenty of non-chlorinated water, so hopefully he decided that was an improvement and didn't attempt to get into the pool after we left.

Cheers to a weekend well spent!


9 comments:

  1. Beer with peanut butter cups?? erggh. Anyhoo, sounds like a very fun time; and you saved a toad!

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  2. Can you believe I've never had a Sam Addams??! Oh I'm jealous, looks like you had a bad-ass time

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  3. I need to find the cool stuff to do in my town. I'm in a fairly large metropolitan area, there's gotta be stuff like this to do! Beer tasting and Greek festivals sound amazing!

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  4. There is a big beer festival here in Toronto every year, and I HAVE NEVER BEEN! This year for sure. Angel, I'm sure Samuel Adams makes some excellent beers but what they export to Canada isn't anything you would be sorry to have missed. Bla-a-a-and. But they are the Starbucks of beer, meaning that no matter where you are in the US, even if there are no decent local beers, at least you won't have to drink Bud Lite.

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  5. Hahaha, I love Samuel Adams. They have so many varieties that there's bound to be something you'll like, personally I like their Cherry Wheat and Irish Red varieties but a Boston Lager is ok too. My favorite of theirs is definitely Octoberfest though, I get excited for it once Summer starts to end. That's not to say it's the only brand or even my favorite; I'm partial to Wytchwood's Hobgolin and Wytchcraft. They're imports from Britain and have many more then that, but even those two are hard to come by sometimes.

    Oh boy, I'm rambling. I could talk about beer all day. Hah!

    And Wulf, let's be serious. There isn't much that isn't better then Bud Lite! ;-) I hope you go to your beer festival and report back!

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  6. looks like so much fun... nothing is better than a good beer festival... brings out the german in all of us... ommpah

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  7. What an absolutely fabulous way to spend the day! Good times, good friends, good food and beer. What more can a girl ask for?

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  8. You always find the best stuff to do, reading about your weekends makes me feel so boring! I love the sound of the beer festival. They don't hold things like that round here, mainly because every stereotype you've ever heard about the Irish and drinking is 100% true! They wouldn't be able to keep the place stocked if they held it here! On the subject of beer, my favourite has to be a wee Belgian one called 'Kriek' or something like that. It's made from cherries and is super tasty.

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  9. I just saw the picture of the Greek Orthodox Church and I was shocked to find that it's the very one I live ten minutes away from! I'm very pleased to know there's another Pagan in S.C. Of course I do know there are some, I've just never seen any evidence. ^_^

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