Bagels, Donuts, Pancakes... the South?

We got to Charlottesville and stayed with a friend of Laura's from college. The first night it rained for the first time in months, ending Charlottesville's drought, and ending our hopes to explore all day the next day. We went to a tea room on the pedestrian mall, which, I later found out, the manager of the Dave Matthews Band owns about half of (bc the DMB is from Charlottesville), and I didn't find out until we were leaving that my [new] phone had fallen out of the car and spent the whole time in the rain. That was upsetting, to say the least. Because of the rain, we spent the next day relaxing indoors, watching the movie HOLES (which, if you haven't seen, you should). But I should skip to the exciting things. After 2 days of staying at Tamar's, we were supposed to leave, but hadn't yet been able to see any of Charlottesville. Tamar's friend needed a dog sitter for the weekend, and Tamar was unable to do it, so we picked up the gig, and the house, for the weekend. Which was great.

the friend who's house we invaded is named Alix, and she just finished a 3-month tour of the U.S on a scooter. check out peacescooter.com. it's actually a really cool thing, so she had a lot of tips for us.

at alix's i made mashed potatoes from scratch, and yes, i find that important enough to put in here.

i need to sum up Charlottesville in this way: everyone wished us well on our journey and the postal workers were uncomfortably pleasant, the man who owned the only Hallmark in town had small birds in his store, and knew every card he had in stock; there's an Adventure Social Club, and a biking drive-in-movie club, and lots of smiling; the town has a community art project, and clowns as street performers, and there's a little place on Avon St. called Spudnuts that you must go to if you're ever there-- (the special part about that place being that the DO-nuts are made of potatos... i.e- SPUD-nuts. they are very delicious and do not taste like potatos, though i wound't have been disappointed if they had. when in charlottesville one must go to BODO's bagels (there are 3), and one must steer clear of the pretentious credit card bearing UVA "elite" that swing their SUV's around like... well... like the swing their plastic, one must also make a visit to the Bluegrass grill and try the buttermilk pancakes-- if you can appreciate good taste, they might just make you weep.

yes.