[A Year of Dates] February.

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

I had originally planned our February date for Valentine's Day... but then we decided to do the Whole30 and I knew there was no way we could do what I planned. So I contacted the company and asked if I could re-schedule and they were super nice about it and had no problem. So we postponed until this past weekend and had a little belated Valentine's Day weekend together.


Back in December, when I was trying to come up with fun, new things that Seth and I could do together, I came across a walking food tour on Living Social. We had such a good time on our walking food tour of Santa Barbara in November that I thought this would be the perfect thing for us, so I bought it.

The Living Social deal gave me the option to choose between 3 different tour options and I chose the walking food tour of Old Town Orange. We showed up on Sunday morning at our meeting spot inside a local Starbucks (meeting at Starbucks - always a good first impression!). We met our tour guide and started off the tour with a little sampling of the new Starbucks caramel flan latte (delicious! - but very similar to a caramel macchiato I thought). The tour guide, Linda, told us a little about what we would be doing, prayed to the rain Gods to let it stop raining (it worked!) and we were off to our first location.


Our first stop was a place that Seth had been wanting to try for forever - Felix's. Felix's is a Cuban restaurant and something I wouldn't typically go for (which is probably why he still wants to try it and hasn't had it yet - oops) but it was delicious! We had an empanada and a fried plantain and it was so good. Seriously, I am excited to go back and try something else!

Our second stop was to Francoli's Italian Restaurant. We started off with an amazing caprese, some wine (which we had to pay extra for - lame), and then some pesto pasta. Everything was delicious but your typical italian restaurant. 

Our third stop was to Paris in a Cup. It was a tea place that served tea, tea sandwiches, macarons, and apparently soup because we had baked potato soup there. It was good. Creamy, potato-y, and warm. I bought some macarons to bring home (because duh, I had to get French macrons to try!) and we were off to our next stop - Watson's. Watson's is a little antique store/restaurant. I had been there before, once, to get a cookie one night after dinner and it was super good so I was excited as to what we would be trying this time. I was surprised to find out that we were trying rice pudding. I always envisioned rice pudding to be warm, but this was cold rice pudding, and honestly, it was so good!


Our fifth stop was to a place called Grinders. Grinders is kind of a place that you could describe as a "mut" (like they say about dogs). We taste tested some sarsaparilla, a turkey sandwich, and some sweet potato fries with chipotle dipping sauce. Everything was super good! Except personally, I don't like root beer, and the drink tasted like that to me, but Seth was happy to finish mine. We went inside to check out the place and saw that they sold Thrify ice cream, homemade fudge (the dark chocolate caramel with sea salt was amazing!!!), burgers, fries, sandwiches, and mix and match sodas. 

Stop number six on our tour was to Zitos. Zitos is a New York style pizza place that we sampled margarita pizza at. Again, the pizza was good, but nothing overly special. After pizza, we went to stop number seven, our last stop, Cafe Lucca. Ahh, Cafe Lucca. We had the most DELICIOUS gelato to end our tour on. I ordered the chocolate hazelnut and I was not disappointed. The portion looked kinda small, which was to be expected on a tour with a bunch of samplers, but the portion was actually a very decent size. I am still thinking about that delicious gelato!

Overall, we had a really great time and just enjoyed being out together for a date during the day. We met some really nice people who were from a city nearby and were surprised to find that everyone on the tour was from nearby cities (I totally thought we would be the only ones from here on the tour!). I was so happy to be able to spend the day with Seth and just have it be us two. As much as we LOVE being with Mason all the time, it is important for the two of us to connect on an adult level every once in a while, hence my gift to him for Christmas, the gift of time together through a year of dates. We often get so wrapped up in daily life and get into such a routine that we forget that we need to get out alone, and this weekend was perfect for that.


Happy belated Valentine's Day, Seth!



You can find our January date here.
Introduction to "A Year of Dates" here.





18 comments:

  1. A walking food tour sounds awesome!!! I love all the foods you got to try and yup mtg at starbucks is a perfect start! A day date sounds like a nice fun alternative too. I'm always so beat at the end of the day. The last few times we got a sitter we had her come at like 3pm and were home by 8pm! haha lame but we were much more awake! :)

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  2. This sounds amazing!!! I'm going to have to try and find something like that around here. I'm loving all of your date ideas, so creative!

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  3. Wow what a great date! A walking food tour sounds amazing! I love sarsaparilla but I love root beer ;). I'm gonna have to see if there are any walking food tours in my area!

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  4. That is a great date idea! I'll have to see if we have any of those around here. Love that picture of the two of you :)

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  5. That sounds like so much fun!! What a great thing to do as a couple.

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  6. walking food tour?! this is GENIUS. seriously. you've had some fun dates up your sleeve. and i LOVE IT.

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  7. What a fun date! I love that you are documenting these...what fun memories!!

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  8. Oh my goodness that sounds like SO much fun. I wish we had things like that around here. Oh for there to be more culture in this town.

    That Dark choc caramel with seal salt (fudge?) my heart in food form, lol.

    Glad you guys had fun!

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  9. That sounds amazing! I wish we had that around here - an opportunity to try some fun places. How cool!

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  10. This is my kind of date; how fun! I love trying out new places. We rarely do that anymore now that we have Liam, so good for you two for getting out!

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  11. So fun, and YUM!! I get so excited to hear each month what you guys are doing. :)

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  12. Oh I love this!! I am defiantly going to have to do this.. Looks like you guys had a blast
    Happy Tuesday

    Chelsea @ thewilliamsjourney1.blogspot.com/

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  13. Sounds like a fun (and filling!) date! I'll have to see if there is anything like that in our area. We've been making an effort to do one date a month too, definitely so nice to get out.

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  14. I. Love. This. Idea!!! Tell me more about how the pricing works. Do you pay for the food tour, and then the food items are additional? Or, does the sample food come with the price of the tour? I'd love to do something like this with Scott - and Old Town Orange sounds like a fun place for us to explore.

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  15. How fun!! I love that picture of you two. Your hair is so long (and pretty!) Everything sounds and looks delicious. What an awesome date! You guys went to a lot of places. Where you super full afterwards?

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  16. A walking food tour?! I've never heard of such a thing. It sounds amazing though! I should see if they have anything like that around here cuz that would be something fun/different to do. :)

    Mandie ~ http://badbrewpack.blogspot.com/

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  17. That sounds like so much fun! I'm definitely going to see if anywhere around here does this!

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  18. Love the idea of a year of dates! So cute! Thanks for sharing & thanks for linking up for Tuesday Talk with us :) www.simplyfreeblog.com

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