Weekending Around Columbia

Comin' at y'all a little bit late this week because let's be honest, I was way too busy enjoying my lazy Sunday to get around to writing a blog post. Oops, my bad.

So y'all already know how my perfect Saturday starts in Columbia: a morning run {preferably on the River Walk} followed up with breakfast out somewhere and a trip to Soda City Market.

This weekend was no exception to the rule and I spent my Saturday morning happily enjoying all three. Has anyone been to the new Panera in downtown Columbia? I've never been the biggest fan of Panera but this new location has changed my mind about that - great spot downtown, excellent service, and the perfect bagel.

Saturday afternoon, we continued the birthday week celebrations by meeting up with some friends at River Rat Brewery for a few beers. It was unbelievably hot outside, so we ended up moving indoors for most of our time there.

A few of us did choose to take a tour of the brewery and I'll tell you what, if you're going to take a tour of River Rat, do not take that tour during the summertime! It was oh so hot inside their brewing area and the best part of the tour was when they opened up the beer cooler for us to go inside and check it out. I may have been the first one to dart inside the freezing room.

I do want to go back and take the tour again when it's a little cooler outside so I can enjoy the tour and pay attention to what's going on.

I love being able to get a larger than normal flight of beer here. Their flights are 6 beers instead of the usual 4, so it allows Patrick & me to split it and get 3 beers each to try. I chose these three:

American Kolsch Story {a tried & true favorite of mine}

Kristallwei Bbeir {a new favorite}

Patersbier {& another new favorite!}

There was a brief stop at Conquest where we took cover from the massive rainstorm that popped up {hello, Columbia in the summertime!}

We went to one of my favorite restaurants in Columbia for dinner {Sakitumi} and then over to Rocket Man for the dueling pianos and a little bit of shag dancing. If you were out on Saturday, you may have noticed that downtown was a ghost town thanks to certain activities happening a few blocks away at the statehouse. No worries. We still managed to have a fantastic time!

On Sunday, I decided to put my birthday present zoo membership to good use and Patrick and I went to RIverbanks for lunch. Wanna know how pumped Patrick was about walking around the zoo in 100+ degree heat?

Yeah. Not so much.

Riverbanks has changed so much over the last few months! I'll be doing a little bit more detailed post tomorrow about the changes that we saw yesterday plus a look at where we at lunch while we were there.

Hope everyone had a great weekend & Monday!