Happy St. Patrick's Day!

It's been a busy weekend here in Philadelphia. First Will and I went out to breakfast at Friendlys.  I'm absolutely loving their new menu.  They now have 50% off the entire breakfast menu Mon-Fri.  After running errands, we decided to wander downtown a little early before the St. Paddy's Pubcrawl.  We have been wandering neighborhoods lately trying to decide where to buy a house and decided to look over at Old City this time.  Unfortunately everything currently for sale is too small for the three of us.  Maybe when there is only two of us....

Then onto the most important thing the St. Paddy's Pubcrawl.  If you're not familiar with this area, there is either a different pub crawl or beer festival somewhere every single weekend.  I made an agreement with my liver to only go to some of the bigger festivals and pub crawls.  But I think my grandmother would be upset if she were alive, if I didn't make the most out of this weekend.

We started at Infusion Lounge around 5ish pm, picked up our wristbands and traveled onto Triumph Brewing Company.  Love the beer here, we found an amazing Amber Ale there.  I would definitely come back to this bar, if they weren't in the process of changing owners.  Little upsetting to find a place like this and know it won't be there for much longer.

We headed across the street to Eulogy Belgian Tavern next.  Very cool little place, typical beers and lambics, but love the decor!

Sign says "Soup of the Day, BEER."

Then we went onto B Side Hookah Lounge.  This is by far was my favorite place of the night.  Loved the DJ and the other staff, loved the food, loved the beer and loved the shisha.

I promise we were not upset, at anything but my camera phone, lol.  Coolest thing was they paired your tobacco to your food if you wanted.  We had heard they had some of the best wings in Philly.  So they suggested Watermelon Mint shisha to go with it.  They paired perfectly!  These were the first spicy wings we have had in Philly since we moved here.  Even Will ended up using the blue cheese dressing.  They had the perfect balance of butter and habanero hot sauce.  But the watermelon mint shisha seemed to cool everything down.

After finishing up here we realized we hadn't eaten anything except the wings since breakfast so we went onto Nick's Roast Beef Bar & Grille.  Amazing Roast Beef Hoagies here.  But they are huge!  We decided to split a sandwich and I think we still had 8-10 inch half sandwiches.  So if you go here, make sure to drag someone along to share a sandwich.  As for their fries those are probably the worse.  Really soggy and greasy.  Next time we plan to skip them.

  

I love this cider!  Probably one of my new favorites.  Great live music.

Unfortunately I don't remember where we went after this, lol.  I know we were home just before midnight because I remember being worried about missing our bus and being stranded, lol.  I guess we had fun, lol.

It was an absolutely beautiful night though!

Saturday we headed out of town and traveled up to the Mount Hope Winery to check out their Murder Mystery Dinner they have at the mansion.  Will and I almost figured it out, but there ended up being a really interesting twist to the story.

The murder mystery was paired with a four course dinner.

Taste

Fresh Fruit 

Topped with Sorbet

Melange

Mixed Greens

Tossed with Assorted Vegetables and Chef's Choice Dressing

Fresh Baked Rolls

with Whipped Butter

Debut

Chicken Kiev

Cutlets with Herb Butter and Crumb Crust

Roasted Fingerling Potatoes Medley

Candied Baby Carrots with Dill

Confection

Cream Puff

filled with light Vanilla Bean Custard Cream and topped with Dark Chocolate Ganache and Raspberry Drizzle.

I paired the meal with their Pink Catawba wine and had coffee with dessert.

 Everything was wonderful except the cream puff for dessert was a little dry and hard.  We restocked our wine and found an interesting insulated wine bag that I'm adding to our picnic basket.

Sunday was the big parade here in Philly.  This year was the 244th year of the parade.  Only NYC's parade is older.  It was awesome Blackmore a local celtic band did all the music aside from the marching bands.  I was shocked at how many  talented dancers in the area.

Best part of the parade was when Blackmore started singing The Old Dun Cow and thousands of people sang along.

These were some of my favorite dancers.  I couldn't believe how many Irish flew over to take part in the celebrations this weekend.  Overall it was a fun weekend.

My grandmother use to say this:

For each petal on the shamrock

This brings a wish your way-

Good health, good luck, and happiness

For today and every day.

-- Unknown