Monday, March 16, 2015

John and JoAnna Visit - St Patrick's Weekend - March 2015


Green, Green, Green!
Now that JoAnna's job provides more flexibility on when we can take our beach vacation in the Spring, we decided to resurrect our tradition of celebrating St Patrick's Day in a fun city.  This year, we decided to do it in Denver which worked for Keith and Shawna since we didn't have to travel anywhere!  During the weekend, we decided that since this year will be our last FUCAT trip (visiting Shawna's home in Louisiana), we needed a new tradition and thus we will start with yearly trips to festivals within the US.

Avery Brewing Company
John and JoAnna arrived late on Thursday evening.  Once home, we had a few beers and caught up.  Sadly, we had figured out that the beer had expired about 6 months ago but John, being the connoisseur that he is, determined that it still tasted fine.  We guess it must not have been too bad because we are still alive to write this blog.

Left Hand Brewing
On Friday morning, everyone went to the park to walk except for Shawna who is still recovering from her hip/back injury.  We then drove up to Boulder and Longmont to try out a few breweries.  Our first stop was Avery Brewing Company which recently moved to a new, large and quite nice facility.  Keith and Shawna had visited their old location.  It was lunch time so we sat in their restaurant and tried various beers while also munching on some lunch.  They are famous for their Rumpkin beer which we all tasted but found it quite strong!  Our next stop was Oskar Blues which is a fun place to go - they have a great tasting room that opens up to the outside and usually have a band playing (although not while we were there).  We sat outside and tried a few more beers while munching down on peanuts.  Our last stop was Left Hand Brewing which is a small brewery famous for their nitrous beer - we tried a few beers here as well but this time no munching!  Both Duke and UVA were playing in the ACC tournament that evening in separate games so we drove back to Denver to watch the games at The Tavern near our house, allowing us flexibility to walk home at the end of the evening.  We managed to overcome our sorrows that both Duke and UVA lost with more beer drinking and munching (there is a theme here)!

Evidence that we did in fact munch!
After another walk in the park on Saturday, we went downtown to celebrate St Patty's Day at Fado's Irish Pub where there was a huge block party with bands, beer tents and food trucks.  The weather was amazing - sunny and warm so we hung outside all afternoon drinking and munching (yep, it still continues) and doing some people watching.  John's friend Craig came by later in the day to meet us.  We left Fado's and went over to Vesta Dipping Grill for dinner but after we sat down, we decided we had drunk and munched enough so we went home instead, stopping first for some yummy ice cream at Bonny Brae's (ok, maybe we had not munched enough).




Sunday was a very lazy and leisurely day - we watched Unbroken in the morning and then met up with Margaret, Damon and the kids for lunch at Kaos Pizza.  They had been in the mountains all week skiing and were on their way to the airport to fly home.  We sat outside, shared a few pizzas and heard all about the ski week.  After we said goodbye to them, we went back home to nap and then took John and JoAnna to the airport for their flight home.

Margaret, Damon, Owen and Josie at Kaos Pizza



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