This morning, we woke up bright and early (which, to me, means at 8 am) so we could meet
Jen and family at the
Victorian Cafe for breakfast. We've been here five months, after all (how time flies!!) and had yet to make it to what we'd been told was the best breakfast place in Bend. Well, the verdict is in -- the food was fantastic! I had the classic Eggs Benedict (as did Mr. Jen), which was fabulous (although I was somewhat envious of Jen's choice - I don't remember what it was called, but it was basically eggs benedict with spinach, roma tomatoes, and asagio cheese. To make it even better, Jen asked them to add avocado to it. It looked amazing and I think I'll try it next time!). Mr. LT had the country fried steak, one of our favorites. It was good, but not great. I think it needed more pepper or something. It was still good enough that he cleaned his plate (as did I).
Zippy had the children's french toast and scrambled eggs. I took the liberty of putting the boysenberry syrup on her french toast (because I love boysenberry syrup, and she doesn't care one way or the other) and had a few bites of it. YUM. Burger also had french toast and did an admirable job of finishing most of her food. Stinky was with us too and had blueberry pancakes. They were apparently good, but weird - the blueberries were placed between the two pancakes instead of dropped into the batter. This did not make Stinky a happy fellow. He still ate a fair amount, though! All in all it was a great breakfast.
All of the adults had bloody marys - I had the spicy one, everyone else had the regular ones. Let me tell you that "regular" generally means "wussy", but not at the Victorian!! The regular were nice and spicy - and my "spicy" bloody mary was really hot (but oh so good). I can only imagine what the "very spicy" version is like! I got about halfway through my drink before we were seated for breakfast and was a little loopy. Sigh. I've turned into such a lightweight!!
The only complaint we had was that the hot chocolate was watery. Really, it kind of sucked. The presentation was very nice, it was served in a glass cup with a nice topping of whipped cream and either cinnamon or nutmeg (Burger had the topping GONE before I thought to check which), so it was very pretty. But the taste was blah. It's not that hard to make good hot chocolate, even if you do use a mix for the base - add a dollop of whole milk or half and half, a squirt of hershey's syrup and you're good to go. Anyway, this certainly wasn't a deal breaker and we'll be back again!
After breakfast, we all went over to
REI, where they were holding their annual garage sale - basically, things that have been returned (REI has a lovely, liberal return policy) are marked down and sold as-is to REI members (the REI membership is SO worth it). The place was a ZOO, and there were a number of people who were seriously out of control and a little rude (most folks were nice, though).
We scored - Burger got a nice North Face fleece jacket she's been coveting, I got a pair of Marmot gloves I'd lusted after but couldn't justify the cost of (the tag says there's a tear in the liner, but I can't find it for the life of me - so I bought them at about 40% of the original cost. Whee!), Mr. LT got a pair of hiking shoes, and Burger and I will share the pair of skis (with bindings!) we found for $100 - you can't beat that.
Before this year, I hadn't skied since Burger was a baby - I used to ski whenever possible, but it just seemed like such a hassle (and expensive) for the years when she was growing up. I learned to ski when I was three, so I used to be pretty good, but I pretty much suck now, so sharing these skis with Burger until we don't suck is at least a temporary solution. I couldn't see passing them by - I have no idea if I'll ever get back to being a good skier, and Burger doesn't yet have much experience - she's been skiing three times this year and LOVES it, but we're going to wait to invest in good skis until after we see how she does with some time on the hill.
We looked for skis for Zippy, but the kids skis apparently were snatched up very quickly - there was only one pair of kids alpine skis that I saw in the bin (and they were too short for the Zipster, who's the size of most 7 year olds, instead of most 5 1/2 year olds - I guess she received some genes from my 6' aunt), but I saw multiple people walking around with other sets of kids skis. Sheesh, we were there at 10:15 and it started at 10! For some reason, the whole event reminded me of the
bridal gown frenzy at Filene's Basement, although there was no clawing and pushing in evidence. But I'm not a great crowd person unless there's alcohol involved. In any case, the deals were great and I'm glad we went.
Labels: Bend, food, friends, fun
