saturday night, the blue light edition

the plan was simple - dinner at rustico then drinks at px. didn't work out so well, though. we finally made it to rustico at 8:30 and they told us it would be up to a two hour wait. ugh. this was a major problem since we had reservations at px for 10:30. we started looking at the beer list (which was quite impressive, by the way) before deciding we would never make it to old town in time and decided to just grab dinner elsewhere.

we ventured down king street and miraculously found some parking not far from the stretch. it was after 9:00 at this point so we decided that we would go into the first restaurant we saw and if they could seat us immediately that's where we would eat.

las tapas was first - and they had a table just waiting for us! we started with the important stuff and got a pitcher of sangria. and luckily they immediately brought out bread (they must have known how we get when we're hungry). we ordered enough food for an army - and finished every last bite. about mid-way through dinner a live band started playing some lively spanish music. i'm just sad we had to leave before we had a chance to dance along.

we made a quick stop across the street at murphy's to say hi to some friends. but then we had to go around the corner so we wouldn't be late for our reservation at the bar. (yes, we made a reservation at a bar).

we arrived at the corner of king st. and s washington st. good news - the pirate flag was us!(weird, we have a pirate flag up at our house too - i guess our bar is always open for business). we walked around the side of the building and noticed the blue light was lit by the door. the girls sent me ahead to ring the doorbell (something about the jeans i think). a moment later the slit in the door opens and a man (clinton) stands there staring at me.

i said "hi, i have a reservation." and then he shut the slit. yikes. but, a moment later the door swung open and he asked for my name and told me to wait there for a minute. so we took a few pictures and waited for our turn to go upstairs. a few minutes later the door opened again and this time a woman (in a skirt that was way beyong mini and tall silver boots - and her name was jessica) was at the door and took us upstairs.

we were led to the back room (there's only two small rooms, and a few seats at the bar). the five of us settled in on one of the blue couches (well we had to overflow onto the ottoman, but whatever). we took a look at the drink menu. everything sounded delicious - it took us a while to decide. we ended up getting two grogs (some sort of rum drink made with a homemade tea concoction - served in a silver "pirate" mug with a glass bottom), a mule (a spicy homemade ginger-ale based drink served in clay mug), a champagne cocktail (with a champagne soaked cherry at the bottom), and i settled on a sweet basil (a deliciously sweet mixture of lillet blanc, orange water and a homemade basil syrup - with a large basil leaf floating on top of the glass of course).

while waiting for our drinks to arrive (which takes a while since their all made from scratch) i decided to venture to the bathroom. plus, that's really the way to judge a place - by how nice/cool the bathrooms are. not sure where the bathroom was, but the place was so tiny it couldn't be hard to find. sus and i walked out of our private little room and clinton appeared out of thin air and said, "restroom?" freaky, but cool. he immediately pointed us in the right direction.

once in the bathroom we noticed the rules of the establishment. from the top of my head:
- dress appropriately (jackets for men, classy for ladies)
- keep your feet off the furniture
- when a woman says no, she means no
- don't ever just order a vodka tonic

i already loved this place - and we hadn't even gotten our drinks yet. we ventured back to our couch and when we got back we noticed there were three other people in the room - one of which we knew. what are the odds??

finally jessica returned with a tray (with a candle lighting the way) of our drinks. we toasted to our fun night, and got to sipping. we passed the drinks around (good thing we're all done with mono) so we could all get a good taste. let me tell you, they were definitely worth the $11+.

unfortunately there was another group of three in the back room with us, but they must have gotten annoyed with us quickly because they didn't stay long. (i'm sure they were amused with our random conversations though, since i heard them repeating a few of the things we said). after they got up and left we figured it would be a great idea to close the silver curtain and it a true private, vip room. let the craziness begin...

clinton and jessica kept randomly coming back to check on us (and i think they were a little frightened that we had closed the curtain - "what's going on back here?" - but whatever). we ordered another round of drinks (a few more grogs, a yin and tonic, and a mojito) so that our new drinks would be there by the time we finished our first drinks. jessica also brought us some homemade (mesh-like) potato chips to munch on. (like we needed any other food after what we had just consumed, oh well).

obviously there was music playing in the background. nothing you would have recognized, but some nice tunes nonetheless. since we had been unable to partake in the dancing at las tapas, we decided it would be great to do some dancing up here at px. (luckily the curtains were drawn). and i had remembered that earlier in the night shannon had mentioned she's been taking ballroom dancing classes - score! so we did the rumba. well, kind of. i mean a drunk shannon trying to lead when she's used to being led didn't lead to a very pretty dance. but hey, we had fun.

we didn't want to overstay our welcome, so we asked for the check and figured we'd be on our way. jessica went down to grab our jackets and clinton invited us back during the week when he bartends (sweet!). then we were led down the stairs and back onto the street. wow, what an experience.

but, clearly the night was not over yet. we meandered down king st. (some of us on piggy back, some just walking) in search of some karaoke bar. when we finally (read: 10 blocks later) made it there the bouncer was on an ego trip and wouldn't let us in because "it was too crowded." after enough people streamed out he finally let our group in. i do have to say the song list was impressive (at least to our standards), but after feeling like we were in blacksburg (yuck) we figured it was about time to head home. we just moved to party back to our car where we had our own karaoke party to the crucial cd sus and i had made that afternoon. (let's be honest any cd that has haddaway, whitney and stevie on it must be a winner).