Country Came To Town

Cody and I wanted to go somewhere before I started work. We knew we wouldn’t have another opportunity to go somewhere for a very long time since I was starting a new job and all my PTO needed to be saved for maternity leave. We planned on making a trip to Houston and to San Antonio to visit some friends and spend some time being lazy and enjoying the freedom from changing diapers. As it turned out, a nasty stomach bug ran through our house that week(end) so we had to cancel our plans.

We still wanted to do SOMETHING (without spending much money because by this point I had run out of student loan money and still hadn’t started working) so the next weekend we made a trip to Fort Worth.

Our first stop was to visit my sweet new nephew, Dylan and my bro and SIL.

Later that night we made it to a Rangers baseball game in Arlington.

We picked the perfect night to go! The weather was perfect AND it was a Friday night so they had a fireworks show after the game (which was one of the big reasons we chose to go to a Friday night game rather than Saturday afternoon). It turned out to be a good game (we saw an inside the park homerun)! After it was over, we waited for the firework show to start and finally this is what we saw…

…a bit of a disappointment for me. Cody laughs at me because sometimes I’m such a kid and get overly excited about little things like fireworks, Christmas lights, Zoo’s, etc. Needless to say we missed most of the show but the grand finale was large enough to see and did not disappoint.

After the fireworks show, they aired the rest of the Angels game on the jumbotron (the one that confirmed that the Rangers had clenched the division title). I decided that since I was so tired, we could just watch the rest of that game from the comfort of our hotel room. Had I known all the Rangers would be out on the field watching it too and then celebrating in front of everyone, we would have stayed. Oh well.

On Saturday we were pretty lazy (and I loved it). After eating lunch we strolled around the Stockyards. It’s a neat area but nothing exciting for us. In my opinion the shops are WAY overpriced, or just filled with little truck stop like souvenirs. The cattle drive and petting zoo is more like a lifestyle for us, nothing we cared to go see.

After walking around the stockyards, we made it back to the hotel for more laziness and a long nap, but only after stopping at a convenience store for an ICEE and a scratch off lottery ticket. Bingo, of course, because it keeps me occupied longer.

That evening we had plans to go to an improv comedy show at Four Day Weekend. We didn’t know anything about where this place was, how early we needed to show up, where to park, etc. So as we were driving by, I noticed a sign in the window right next to the Four Day Weekend sign that said something about “rooftop dining open”. Perfect! I assumed it was Four Day Weekend’s sign that I saw (because I knew on the inside they had a bar area).

This pic is just to show that we weren't completely crazy... This was on the corner of a block and the neon sign on the left there said something about "rooftop dining open".  The very first door next to sign is Four Day Weekend, which is where we went in to get tickets and to get some food (so we thought). 

After many almost wrong turns on to one way streets, we finally were directed to the parking garage. Throughout the night we walked ALL over that parking garage. We made it down 8 flights and realize we forgot to lock the car, back upstairs but forget which level we parked on, etc etc etc. Sadly, it was one of the best workouts I have had since being pregnant.

Cody and I then walked into Four Day Weekend and picked up our tickets for the show. The ticket lady handed them to us and never said another word… so we awkwardly went upstairs not knowing what we were doing. Once we got upstairs we saw a room with a bar and a few tables. No one else was up there except the bartender. I told him that we were there for the 7:30 show. He said we were about an hour and a half early and asked if we wanted a drink. I then went on to tell him we were hoping to eat a bit before the show and asked if they had a bar & grill upstairs. He said there was and pointed to an elevator on the other side of the room. Well we took the elevator to the top floor and found ourselves on the roof with several tables and chairs. A man then approaches us and asks, “Are you looking for someone?” I politely told him “no” and that we had never been here before but were hoping to eat. He replies, “Oh, well let me see what I can do”. He then came back and led us to a table.

We were feeling pretty awkward about our whole downtown experience… sadly yes, it was a whole new world from the lifestyle we know. Now at this point, we are still under the impression that we are at some bar and grill that is part of the comedy club. I’m expecting to order nachos or some other “bar” food. I thought it was strange that there was no obvious way to get to the grill from the comedy club but I just summed it up to be something that the locals knew and we were going along with it. This should have been clue #1 that we weren’t where we thought we were.

While I was admiring our view of downtown Fort Worth and the amazing weather, our waiter brought our menus. I was expecting something like Chili’s 7ish pages of food filled with sandwiches, appetizers, burgers, etc. We were given 3 menus, each just one page covered in a leather casing. Kind of fancy for a place like this isn’t it?? We start looking at it and slowly begin to realize that we weren’t just at some bar & grill. I started looking around a bit more and realize we were in the reserved section at the Reata! (Prior to this, I didn’t really know what the Reata was, or where it was, but I had heard of it before and only knew that it was a nicer restaurant that what Cody and I usually go to).

Once we get over the surprise of where randomly ended up, we became a little embarrassed that we just appeared on the roof in the reserved section stating that we wanted to eat. We laughed it off for a minute, and then decided to figure out what to eat… Our server came by and we had to apologize for our ignorance—then explained that we didn’t know which one was actually the menu. It was a bit of an awkward conversation. I guess the fact that there was a separate menu for appetizers and only about 10 meal options on the actual menu really threw us for a loop. Maybe I was still looking for a cheeseburger or a grilled chicken sandwich.

Once we saw the prices on the menu (keep in mind, I hadn’t had any sort of income for a few years) I told Cody I would just chew on a napkin. (You know, like Steve Carell on Date Night?? That’s really kind of how we felt when we first sat down that the restaurant). Cody decided to go for the $42 buffalo steak. With me being pregnant, I wasn’t in the mood for new and different foods like duck breast, etc so it was a caesar salad for me.

Buffalo steak

Bread pudding

We ended up having a great time. The weather was perfect and I loved eating outside on the roof! The food was a bit fancier than we usually like. We tend to like the simple things better—a good rib-eye steak, loaded baked potato and a salad with ranch—or even a greasy hamburger. We had a lot of laughs at our random appearance at the Reata and our slightly embarrassing ignorance. The comedy show was great! I love all comedy shows but I really like improv. The only downside was that we were out of the show by 9:30 and really didn’t have anything to do afterwards… Normally we would have sat on the porch of some place we had never been and had a drink BUT once again the pregnancy thing got me. :) Maybe next time Cody and I can actually go on a real vacation!