Our First Free Weekend
After two weeks of unpacking boxes, building furniture, and adorning the walls, our apartment was officially complete and we had an entirely free weekend to ourselves. Although we’d visited Charlottesville many times before moving here, we feel like we’ve only dipped our toes into all the things this beautiful town has to offer. This weekend we chose to find a dog park for Ruby, visit a UVA art museum, and sample a couple drinking holes in town, and we had a great time.
Charlottesville has two public dog parks, and although we visited both only Darden Towe Park was open. This large park has a variety of sports fields, trails, and a Lewis and Clark Exploratory Center in addition to the dog park. About ten or twelve dogs were already there when we arrived, and Ruby had a blast sprinting around and riling up the other dogs. The park staff mulched old Christmas trees and spread that around a large portion of the park area, which smelled amazing too.
In the afternoon we made our way to Grounds to visit the Fralin Museum of Art at UVA. The museum had been hosting a Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit for several months and would be replacing it soon, so we couldn’t miss the opportunity to see a collection of her work. I learned that she was a resident of Charlottesville for some time, and it was really interesting to see her paintings of iconic UVA buildings that still stand over one hundred years after she painted them. The museum is two stories and includes other exhibits in addition to their rotating selection. It was really easy to enjoy all of it without feeling worn out or like we were missing something. Afterwards, we bought Laura a “Dabo-style” UVA sweatshirt and got coffee at a local favorite, Shenandoah Joe’s.
To cap off our day we went out after dinner for drinks at a classy speakeasy-style bar called Lost Saint. It’s located in the basement of Tavern & Grocery and they limit the number of patrons to as many as can be seated. The bartenders pride themselves on making classic and creative cocktails, which showed in their extensive menu of standards as well as a separate menu of delicious sounding concoctions themed on Alice in Wonderland. As always I had an amazing time with Laura; It was so nice to have some time to be together in a cool part of this great town without worrying what we had to build or hang next. After a pair of drinks each (my second was an incredible beer… their beer selection is fantastic too), we turned in for the night.
The next day our newfound freedom had still not yet sunk in… we realized that we still had all day to do whatever we wanted! We took it a little easier on Sunday, and we went to a brew pub right off the downtown mall called South Street Brewery. They offer a beer flight of all twelve of their beers on tap, and we couldn’t refuse. The atmosphere is warm and inviting, and the beer selection spans the entire spectrum from light pilsner to dark stout. We had fun discussing the merits of and rating each beer in the flight. Afterwards we went home to prepare for the upcoming week.