Although you may be reading this on a Friday, I am actually writing it on a Wednesday, because my East Coast trip (MA/RI) is this week and I will not be bringing my laptop with me. I've been awaiting this trip for a while—95% of my extended family lives on the East Coast so I try to visit at least once a year, and this is the first time to MA/RI for my boyfriend, so it should be a fun trip ... I booked a Freedom Trail tour (Boston) this week as well as a Newport trolley tour + Breakers (mansion) tour.
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| Yelp perk: sweet bun at The Custard Co., Dearborn |
What I've been up to this week:
- Dining out. Last Friday, a friend and I tried Pastaio, a new pasta place in the old HopCat space in Royal Oak. It was definitely a bit pricey—my cocktail was $15 and the pastas were like $17-22—but everything was delicious, especially the complimentary bread, which was soaked in olive oil and cheese. I had a cannoli cream martini, and my friend and I split the pappardelle with pesto and a lasagna. She also got a spaghetti carbonara to take home for her husband so I got to try that as well. We split the tiramisu for dessert which was good but I've also had better tiramisu. The only thing I disliked was that they tack on a "service fee" aka a credit card fee of 3%; if you pay in cash, you can have it removed, but high-end restaurants really shouldn't do that, IMO.
On Sunday night, my boyfriend and I had dinner at Baba's, in Dearborn, since we were there for a Yelp pick-up event (more on that below). For $6 you can get a sandwich—I like their Shish Tawook, with grilled chicken, garlic, and pickles—and they also bring you bread, though it's no longer the homemade puffy pita bread. Don't forget to ask for some (free) garlic to dip the bread in, too. - Yelp pick-up event at The Custard Co. The reason we were in Dearborn was to try out The Custard Co. courtesy of Yelp Detroit. The event was open to Yelp Elite and non-Elite Yelpers, so my boyfriend and I both signed up, although as of last week he is now Yelp Elite too. The choices were an ice cream cone, a sweet bun with ice cream, or a "wowffle" (waffle) with ice cream. I had heard the waffle wasn't as good as the other two options, so I opted for a sweet bun with custard, and he had a sweet bun with hard ice cream (Guernsey), as pictured above. Both of our buns was delicious—however, you can see in the picture above that they made his look very nice, with Yelp sprinkles and a Yelp skewer, and mine didn't have any of that, which makes me think they didn't know mine was a Yelp freebie when they made it. Definitely NOT complaining about free, tasty ice cream, but his was definitely more photogenic, as you can see above (you can see a pic here if you're curious, and see my reel here).
- Watching movies and TV shows. Originally on Saturday I was going to try to see Fall, at my usual AMC (John R), but then I saw AMC Livonia was showing Grease, and it was too tempting to resist (plus I had to be on that side of town later anyways), so I trekked over to Livonia to see it. I think I've seen it *once* before in theaters, a long time ago, but it's one of my favorite movies, so it was a fun time. Yesterday I watched Look Both Ways on Netflix, which was cute—I love "parallel reality" movies and books, and I'd give it 3.5/5 stars. I also watched Not Okay on Hulu, which was pretty fascinating, and I'd give that 4/5 stars; it's about a girl who fakes being in Paris on social media, and then there's a bombing that happens there that week, so she just continues faking like she had been in Paris the whole time. I started s2 of Indian Matchmaking on Netflix, too, and I watched one of the new Locke & Key episodes as well.
- Planning for my MA/RI trip. It has a lot of moving parts to it and I'm sure some things may change, but right now the itinerary is:
-Thursday: arrive, check into hotel/get rental car, lunch with aunt + cousin, possibly the beach, dinner at one of my fave Narragansett restaurants
-Friday: Newport day, including trolley/mansion tour, dinner with cousins
-Saturday: MA day, lunch with my MA cousins and dinner with an old friend
-Sunday: Boston day; Freedom Trail tour, maybe lunch in North End/Little Italy, dinner at a fish place (for my boyfriend, not me, haha ...)
-Monday: 2nd Boston day, no plans yet though
-Tuesday: Lunch with aunt, then back to DTW - Cutting the cord. Xfinity finally enraged me enough price-wise that I got rid of my TV service ... honestly, I had ten HD channels plus DVR, and although I loved using the app to watch my recorded DVR shows, they are all on Hulu anyways, with the exception of my CBS shows like Young Sheldon. I was paying $110/mo. and they raised it to $140/mo., which for TEN channels is ridiculous ... I got them back to $110 but then decided to cancel. For only high-speed internet, I am now paying $74/month, with discounts for autopay, paperless billing, and a few other things. I'm fortunate in that I have "access" (ahem) to Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, Starz, Disney+, and Peacock, so I definitely won't be lacking in entertainment options.
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| L to R: cannoli cream martini, spaghetti carbonara, pappardelle with pesto, at Pastaio, Royal Oak |
