Longmont for Lovers

Oh, did we ever have a lovely one-day-cation!  I just want to get down the details while I'm remembering them, so I can look back on a busy day and recall what it was like.

We quickly stopped by Flatirons Mall on our way to Longmont- a sentence that would be a joke if we had the child with us - to use a really good coupon at a shoe store and then eat burgers at Red Robin.  We hadn't been there in such a long time, and it was a real treat!  Plus, we got a nice pair of sandals for me and work socks for Daddy for a mere 2 pennies, a great start to our shopping!

After a nice, quiet drive to Longmont, we got started shopping on main street.  Our Spidey senses honed in on a very thorough, well-organized used bookstore, where we whipped out the list we'd made of books we wanted, and found quite a few.  We hit a total of two bookstores and three thrift stores, and got about twelve books, plus a few for Maeve.  We don't often have the luxury of slowly, methodically looking at these kinds of places, so we really enjoyed it.

Hands-down, the best find of the trip was the Cheese Importers store.  It's a fromagerie, boulangerie, and charcuterie all at the same place, and who doesn't like cheese, bread, and meat?  We got some French garlic sausage, some chipotle hot sauce, some Parmigiano Reggiano, and some Gjetost, a Norwegian cheese, as a special gift for my parents.  We definitely want to go back to that store!

After all that shopping, we needed a break, so we ordered some gelato at Perky's Coffee and read some of our new books for awhile.  Oh my gosh, salted caramel gelato, totally heavenly!

We met our very kind, very interesting B&B hosts for the evening at their lovely home, then headed out for dinner at The Dickens Tavern, named so because the land was originally owned by a member of Charles Dickens' own family!  It also used to be an opera house, and had a very lovely, antique interior.  We had an unbelievably yummy thing called a mushroom duxelle, which is basically just sauteed mushrooms pureed in cream, and spread on toast points.  And for dessert, chocolate bread pudding!  We were absolutely in hog heaven!

We had breakfast with our B&B hosts in the morning, and learned about their lives a bit, and they served us broiled grapefruit and eggs Benedict!  It was really delicious, and we had fun chatting with them.  After a quiet drive home, we were so ready to see our girl again, and it turned out she had done just a wonderful job with Grandma and Grandpa, and wasn't too upset that we were gone.  But she sure was happy we were back!  And today, we get back to life as usual.