It’s getting more and more rare to have a date night with Andy, as we are usually with a few other people when going out for dinner, but every once in a while we get to enjoy the company of ourselves as we did a couple of weeks ago in Saratoga. I’d gotten us tickets to a show, but we carved out some time beforehand for shopping and dinner and cocktails. Saratoga is somehow more quaint in the off-season, when there are no lines or waits, but ample parking.
We started at one end of Broadway and worked our way through the shops. I found some basil oil and fennel salt; Andy found some healing crystals. The day was crisp, but there was always another store into which we could briefly enter and warm our hands and feet. We need to bring back that almost-tradition of a holiday movie here, something that didn’t happen this past season.
When our shopping was done, we sidled up to the bar at Morrissey’s in the Adelphi Hotel. They knew their way around Andy’s Hemingway daiquiri, coming as close as we’ve gotten to his preferred original at The Hawthorne in Boston. (We’ll stop there for our anniversary next month.) As we relaxed into the afternoon, I looked around the space. A rowdy group of women sat at one end of the bar – they’d clearly been there for a while. Two gentlemen to my left were decked out in suits and finishing a business day. We made room for a couple who stopped in for a drink. I looked behind me and saw a similar scene across the way. A cozy-looking bar mimicked the one we were in, but it somehow looked more inviting. I tried to see if there were more available seats there in the event that we had enough time before dinner.
As I strained my neck to see more of this enticing scene across the hall, I realized it wasn’t a window I was peering through, it was a mirror. The warm and inviting tableaux was the one in which Andy and I were already sitting, enjoying a pre-dinner cocktail and watching the world around us. I needn’t have looked beyond my own seat. A little life-lesson over a Last Word.
Dinner at Salt & Char lived up to its name (but you’ll have to find my TripAdvisor account to read that review in the near future). The night was frigid, even if it was technically spring, but the company kept me warm.
We’ll have to do it again soon.
