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December 30, 2007

Good Food, Good Beer, Good Kids

Tim: It’s been great having Christmas week off. Sleeping in late, having lots of wife and baby time, watching Frank Capra movies, etc… On Thursday we had an unquenchable taste for fish and chips so we spent almost an hour looking for a place in Athens that had it. We are still adjusting to small town America where everything is not at our finger tips. In Pittsburgh we would have had our choice of a dozen or so establishments that would have fixed us up with our desired Pisces, potatoes and potations. We finally found it at The Globe in downtown Athens. This place may be our substitute for the Sharp Edge in Pittsburgh. An old world pub kind of place with great food and over 80 European beers to choose from. Anyways, the fish and chips were excellent – we felt like Frankie in Angela’s Ashes – if they were wrapped in a newspaper, we would have even licked the grease off the editorial page. We washed it down with a Belhaven and a Highland Oatmeal Stout. The twins snoozed away in the booth seats while we our consumed our vittles.

Tim and Jo: Yesterday we decided to take a trip to Helen for a dose of Georgia-style Bavaria. It’s as close as we’ll get to München in at least the next several years. As soon as we got there, we needed to feed the kids. We provided many passersby with free entertainment as we sat on a bench with bottles and babies in hand. The cats were out of their bags, so to speak.

For lunch we went to Altstädter Weinstube & Biergarten so Tim could get his own bottle. We had an olive and gherkin appetizer and for the main dish, three kinds of wurst –weinwurst, smoked bratwurst and rindswurst.

It came with a gigantic pretzel that was more bread than pretzel and we drank an Aecht Schlenkerla Urbock Rauchbier (smoked beer) which Joanna said was like drinking a stout by the fireside, except the fireside was in the beer! The kids dozed away on a nearby chair. Looks like a nearby gnome wants to wet his whistle...

We strolled through Helen going into shops we hadn’t been in before (like the live tarantula exhibit and the leather store--Das Ist Leather--a mishmash of faux-Bavarian, redneck and biking cultures) and stopped for some apple strudel and funnel cake. There was a big tree decorated for Christmas and a Santa or two leading horse drawn carriages through the streets.

We stopped at Nora Mills and got some stone-ground buckwheat pancake mix, pickled okra and berry preserves. The kids were getting a little restless being in the slings all day long to so we left for home. When we got there they were really cranky! They must have realized we were having all this fun and leaving them out!

'Way Down South , Pittsburgh , deux bebes , fun | By Tim and Jo | 5:36 PM

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Comments

Posted by: funke at December 30, 2007 6:21 PM

Posted by: Jonathan at January 3, 2008 2:30 PM

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