Sunday night we suddenly got the absurd idea to go downtown. We wanted to see a movie, there isn't a whole lot to see, I didn't feel like seeing the pirate movie and it was kinda too hot to rent a DVD and watch on the couch. The only option seemed to be the cinemas downtown.
After scooping up our lamb steaks and corn we drove downtown in a lightning. And it only took us ten minutes from when we left the house and until we walked up to the theatre after parking the truck. Downtown was buzzing with live: cars everywhere, tourists, restaurants, late night shops, taxis, bars, the sidewalks filled with scenery, people walking, action.
At the theatre we saw the devil wears Prada with a brilliant Meryl Streep. After movie we went for a drink at La Strada across the street. It suddenly dawned upon how "outlandish" the place felt, sitting there outside on the terrace having a prosecco on a hot summer night in a foreign city. Yet, it's only ten minutes from home and we go there so rarely that it almost feels like going abroad. Well, if it doesn't take more than that we should definitely go there more often.
Which we did again yesterday. Left work early. Went home. Hung out. Then drove downtown for dinner at the indian restaurant Monsoon. Which did in fact send us back home in our thoughts (to our favorite restaurant, the East India Company). In that sense, the meal didn't quite live up to it. But the food we tried was good, even if the servants were kind of frazzled. We ordered one lassi, we got two. We waited a while for our food. When it came, the naan didn't come with it. We started serving ourselves and when I tasted my sauce I was surprised to see that my Moler Murgh had big chunks of mango in it. Even more surprising was to find that C's lamb dish was made of tofu. When I cut up my chicken it came apart like fish. And it was indeed fish. After a while the waitress came with OUR food. What we had on our plates was what the couple sitting across from us had ordered. Only, they had already received their food. "We got it mixed up somehow", the waitress said. "We seem to have made a double order for them." So she took the fish dish and the vegetarian dish away from our table, then appeared again with our bread as she scooped away our plates. We thought our waitress was gonna bring us new plates, since she took away the ones we had already served ourselves on. She didn't though, and as the wait got longer we started nibbling on our bread and I used the naan to dip into my Moler Murgh to try the new sauce. We'd almost finished our naan when we finally got hold of the waitress to remind her about bringing us plates. By that time, I was somehow kind of full. I had of course been drinking the lassi I didn't order and eating my naan bread. The couple sitting next to us got impatient from waiting and they suddenly stood up and walked away. A couple of minutes later the waitress brought the drinks they had ordered and left them at their abandoned table without a clue. All in all the food we got was fine, except that it was cold when they finally brought us plates to eat it off. And I found the naan a bit lacking in flavor. The menu is very enticing. However, we'll probably check out some of the other indian restaurants of San Diego before we'll be back.
After dinner, we wandered into Borders where we spent a while paging through books. I mean, it's not that often we get out of the house to do stuff like that ...
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