Weekend favorites

This last Saturday was the first Saturday in a long time that hasn't already been planned with obligations... ok, just one. I had to go to a "meet my new Primary teacher" breakfast first thing but then we had the whole day free... what a treat! I have been so anxious to take Paul to see the shop where I bought his Christmas banjo so we decided we'd go there. We live in the south end of our city's valley and don't have much occassion to go "downtown" so it always seems like we are going on a little adventure outing when we head off in that direction.

The Intermountain Guitar and Banjo shop is very unassuming. It just sits there where it has for many many years and is known to the real folk and country music artists around here. The photo really doesn't convey it's authenticity and quirkiness (in a delightful way) completely but you can get somewhat of a feel. There is just so much packed into such a small space. It looks all cluttered and in disarray at first appearance but as you spend some time there you can see how much love and devotion and passion is what is really behind the scene. There are vintage and collectible instruments all over the walls. There are dozens and dozens of microphones from numerous eras gone by. The mixture of old and new inventory is impressive. Paul thought he might like to strum a few other banjos and make sure he had the one he would want to play for a long time. I got him about the most basic banjo there -- it didn't even have a resonator attached so Paul wanted to try a banjo with a resonator. After strumming on 3 or 4 different instruments, inexpensive to very expensive ones, he decided to keep the one I had given him.

By the time we had finished the banjo jam session, we were hungry. One of our favorite little spots to eat downtown is a wonderful restaurant, meat and cheese shop, and authentic German foods grocery store all in one location called Siegfrieds. We were so excited to go there on a Saturday because during the week, especially at lunch time, the lines are out the door. We loaded our trays up with wiener schnitzel, rot kohl, kartophen salat and spitzela (I'm sure most of that spelling is not correct) and of course, apfel strudel for dessert! Yummy! So authentic ... we felt like we were back in Salzburg or Bad Reichenhall for a few minutes.

After lunch we strolled down Main Street which on a Saturday feels like a ghost town in addition to the fact that downtown has become a giant construction site --- which will result in good things in about 10 years! We made two stops. The first one was for another meal... not to eat right then, we were already stuffed, but to make reservations at the Vienna Bistro for Valentine's day dinner. We are usually too late with our plans to get into an excellent restaurant on that day so now we are ahead of the game. Then we popped into Sam Weller's New and Used Bookstore and spent a very enjoyable 30 minutes browsing the shelves and picking up some new reading material for our upcoming escape from winter!

Oh, I lied, we actually had two obligations on Saturday. We met some dear friends for dinner. They live in Orem and we typically try to go to dinner once a year. In the past we've driven down there or they have came up here but this time we decided to meet half way so we ended up at a little restaurant in Draper and had a delightful catch-up over some really good food. So that was our Saturday and it was definately spent doing some of our favorite things, eating some of our favorite food and hanging out with some of our favorite people!