I did something tonight I’ve never done before.

I dined out on Christmas. I’ve always been one of those stay home with your family people. But we were very grateful that places were open for our drive down and for dinner tonight.

We stopped at McDonalds at a service area for lunch. The place was packed. The line for the drive through had to be 20 cars deep.

That being said, almost everyone was masked. People were spaced out. Everyone was being patient as it was about 20 minutes from order to food.

It was not the experience I might have expected from hungry tired people.

We got into the city, found our vacation home for the week, freshened up, and headed out.

I have to say the first fifteen minutes were funny as neither me nor Adam had any sense of direction. Which when you live here a sense of direction is implanted in you when you sign your lease.

We walked from the village down to our restaurant, wandering along, shocked at all the changes.

I suggested we have a drink on the way and we found a cute Mexican restaurant that was open. A margarita would not have been my first choice but when in Rome.

It was delicious. Hit the spot. And Adam and I both thanked the server for working on Xmas.

We then headed to the restaurant.

One of mine and Adams favorite restaurants is Balthazar. It where we had our first fancy meal out. Where I are steak tartar for the first time. We’ve celebrated there many times over the year.

I actually suggested Balthazar because I knew it would cheer up Adam who has been stressed out about this trip for three weeks. Are we going? Should we go? Will the shows be canceled? What should we see? Where should we stay. He did all the heavy lifting for the trip.

I knew the restaurant would be a good alternative after our shows for today were canceled. And I was right. He was super excited for dinner and even happier while we dined.

So we arrive at the restaurant.

We were greeted quickly. They sat us almost 15 minutes early. And we were off to the races.

The experience was great. Our neighbors on both side of us in the dining room were great. And the best part, after we got our drinks the server asked if we wanted to order or relax a bit with our drinks.

WHAT???? I’d kill my servers if they did this.

So we asked for a couple of minutes which was closer to ten which was perfect.

The rest of the meal, service, experience were exactly what we needed.

We both decided it was the perfect Christmas meal.

We thanked our server profusely. Tipped him extra.

Thanked him again.

And took our leave, where we wandered back up town from SOHO.