Probably our favorite restaurant all time is Rose Angelis in Lincoln Park. I shouldn’t say probably because this would have absolutely been top on both our lists. I can’t even tell you how many times we’ve been there. Even when we moved to the burbs we still made it a point to make specific trips just to eat there or to stop by when we were already in the city.
Cari’s favorite dish was Mezzalune al burro- spinach pasta half moons stuffed with ricotta and pesto served in a seasoned brown butter sauce with sundries tomatoes, toasted pine nuts and parmagiana. My favorite weekday dish (because they only served it Sun – Thurs) was Aged New York Strip medium rare, peppercorn crusted 16 oz steak finished with gorgonzola and sautéed onions served with grilled asparagus and sun dried tomato mashed potatoes. My weekend dish varied. I would always wait to hear the specials and would often choose the Manicotti. But the Lasagna is great too. Oh yeah, and their seasonal specials with pears, apples, or pumpkin are always top picks.
And then there’s the desert. Besides the amazing food and ambiance are the deserts. We never (well maybe just once) went there and didn’t save room for desert. We always ordered the chocolate and carmel covered strawberries. Sometimes we would get more, especially for Cari if there was something with a brownie or a tempting chocolate dish. She definitely had a sweet tooth. I think one of the first times, if not the first time, we were there and the service was a little questionable. The waitress ended up giving us two deserts for free. I think we were sold without the extra length they went to make sure we were happy, but it certainly didn’t hurt.
And then there’s Maeve, the bar across the street. We, as well as many others, would walk over to Maeve while waiting for a table. Rose Angelis doesn’t normally take reservations so the wait is around an hour or more at peak times on the weekends. Maeve made it so that the wait didn’t matter. We’d hang out for a martini or two and would just sit and chat til our table was called.
We really loved going here.
We went sailing and took in some snorkeling. B rented a car and we drove around st. thomas and st. john islands, nearly hitting a pig or two along the way. We also snorkeled at that beach on st. john … amazingly clear water and equally amazing scenery. We drank those volcano drinks at that random restaurant we happened to stop at for dinner. Wasn’t it an all-u-can-drink event at the hotel that made it an early night for at least one of us after that same person got up off the chair and made a halfass effort at diving into the pool? Good thing someone was there to catch her:) I believe what followed was a cold shower and some microwave mac & cheese in the hotel room. 
(The first of MANY self portraits … we’ve gotten pretty good at this) And oh yeah, and didn’t we almost buy a timeshare?? It sounded awesome at the time and we had the paperwork sitting there right in front of us. I can’t remember which one of us balked or if it was something else that got us out of there, but thankfully we didn’t go through with it. Although I think we got a bottle or two of rum for sitting down with them.
And then there was shopping … where we bought our first digital camera. For some reason we felt that we each needed to buy one. Maybe that’s because we were early on in the relationship and weren’t quite sure where things were headed. Is this the camera that one of us eventually lost? I think so. Needless-to-say, this was the beginning of many great things to come.