Just Call Me A Wino
As far as favorite pastimes go, somewhere in my top five involves enjoying a sunny day, drink in hand, with good music and good conversation. In other words, Saturday’s Art & Wine Festival in downtown Rapid City was sheer perfection in my eyes.
One of our friends lives downtown so we all met up to catch the tail end of the farmer’s market and the beginning of the festival. Vendors from wineries all across South Dakota showed up, and local hotels and restaurants sprinkled the area with their culinary specialties.
We fell in love with the very first wine we tasted. New to me, a sparkling red moscato called Baci Dolce, or Sweet Kiss. Considering the heat was sweltering and beads of sweat were already forming at our brow, the cold, sparkling fresh taste was just what the doctor ordered.
On the stage happened to be someone we met the very first weekend we arrived in Rapid City. A sweet couple that sat beside us at The Corn Exchange and welcomed us to the area with a plethora of information of things to see and do, and all the people to know. It was so nice to see them again now that a few months have passed and we have settled. The night we met them we were still trying to figure out our housing situation, were exhausted from the drive up, and pretty stressed in general from the simple fact that we were somewhere so new and far away from everything we knew. Hopefully we seemed a little more pulled together this time 🙂
A few glasses of red later, with a repeat of the Baci Dolce, we talked the vendor into just letting us buy a bottle of the already chilled vino. Much to our pleasure they did.
When that bottle was finished we stepped into the coffee shop there to shed our afternoon laziness, and soak up some A/C with a few espresso shots.
The we stopped by Independent Ale house to take a beer break before heading to our friend’s house for a feast of homemade italian food. Mike is an authentic Italian who lived in Italy for a while before his family landed in New York.
Three words…homemade, pasta, carbonara 🙂
With pot bellies stuffed to the brim, we finished the night with a few cigars (for the boys) under the stars and then called it a night.
