Newport Weekend!

Last week was pretty awesome!  I got back into the Pilates groove, had taco Tuesday dinner with my friend Jen, went to Del Mar opening day races and on Thursday, had a really great gym climbing session where I did two 10c routes!  

Del Mar races opening day was pretty crazy.  It was fun and I'm definitely glad I went.  At the same time, I think I had my fill of opening day craziness.   If I go again this Summer, I'm either going to pay for a box or bring my folding chairs and cooler!  That would be fun but Summer is flying by and I'm not sure if we'll make it again.

On Friday, I headed up to Newport with SMS for the weekend!

We brought the surfboard which was a pain-in-the-ass to bring in the car.  Fortunately, I made really good use of it.

We hit up several restaurants on Saturday, which made me feel like a piggly-wiggly by the end of the day but food was really good.  We went to Eat CHOW for breakfast and split a breakfast salad (a riff on Eggs Benedict, really) and lemon mascarpone French Toast that was incredible!  It was almond-coated baguette with thin layers of lemon mascarpone and it was phenomenal!  The Breakfast Salad was good too- multi-grain toast with avocado, poached eggs, smoked salmon and pesto.

I was shocked we were hungry for lunch but time worked it's magic and we were excited for Santa Monica Seafoods which was delicious!  I had lobster tacos that were awesome and generous with the lobster.  SMS had a tuna melt and we split oysters.

Lobster Tacos, yum!

Dinner was pushing it but we went to Wildfish.  The absolute highlight was the pineapple upside down cake that they flambeed table side and it had a cream cheese center.  Amazing.  I also had the lobster bisque and the Chilean sea bass, which I felt guilty eating since it's not sustainable.  But it came highly recommended and practices have changed so I felt a little better.  It was good but honestly, a bit much after a day of epic eating!

Sunday started with a run that went from a planned three miles to six miles!  I felt good about that!  SMS got my rear end out the door (it fit!  ha, ha!) and we started running to the first pier.  I looked at the second and wanted to hit that as a landmark so we continued on.   We also took the last half mile or so at a pretty quick pace so we felt pretty great.  Then we went to Alta and had a comparatively light breakfast- split a piece of coffee cake and a bueno bowl.  We did some laundry, I did the aforementioned surfing, we picked up the place a bit and then headed home.  We stopped off at Seaside Market, VG Donuts, Rip and Linda's house and finally home.  I went to Mesa Rim for a lead climbing class but I was told the wrong time.  I swear I was told 6:30 and I even showed up at 6 to warm-up and the front desk folks said it started at 5.  What!?!?  Since most of the classes start at 6:30, the best we could figure out is I was given the wrong time.  Anyway, I'm now scheduled for the 12 August class and SMS taught me some lead climbing skills tonight so I recovered.  Unlike me on a surfboard.