DailyPhoto 06-06-09 (ballet)
Saturday June 6, 2009.
My sister and I have a tradition- every year for Christmas I buy us tickets to a ballet. She loves the ballet (and took dance lessons for far longer than I did and was far better at it than I ever was!) but her husband won’t go with her, so it’s become our awesome girly outing tradition. We get dressed up and go to the ballet and then go out for food and drinks. This year we saw La Sylphide with Barber Violin Concerto. The Barber piece was first, and the choreography was great. It was performed by two male/female couples. One couple’s movements were very classical and smooth, and the other couple’s movements were more modern and angular. La Sylphide was a nice, simple story about a man who falls in love with a magical sylph on his wedding day and chases her off through the woods.
After that we had a late lunch at Monk’s which I adore for it’s fantastic beer selection (Monk’s Cafe Flemish Sour Ale and Geants Goliath Tripel this time around) and also because they always have at least one vegan entree on the menu (I got chipotle polenta with sauteed vegetables and tofu cream sauce, which was delicious.)
Then it was off to my new favorite dessert spot, Capo Giro, which always has at least five kinds of delicious vegan sorbetto in addition to a multitude of gelato flavors. It’s a little on the pricey side, $4-something for a small cup, but it’s the kind of thing where a little goes a long way since there’s a lot of flavor packed in there. I’d rather have a small amount of something that is obviously crafted with care than a giant tub of corn-syrupy partially-hydrogenated god-knows-what. Quality over quantity. This time I got three flavors- Pompelmo Rosso con Campari (grapefruit), Espresso, and Green Mango with Chili. I love grapefruit, and that flavor was lovely, but it was quite subtle and was overpowered by my other two choices. I’ll have to get grapefruit on it’s own sometime. The Green Mango with Chili was interesting just for it’s sheer weirdness. I don’t know if I could eat a whole cup of it. It was sweet and spicy in a good way, but reminded me a bit too much of a thai green curry I made recently. The Espresso was my favorite- pure coffee frozen delight!
We headed over to Rittenhouse Square to eat our gelato/sorbetto (crouching in an un-ladylike manner on the curb, since it was a lovely Saturday afternoon and no benches were left unoccupied). Coincidentally the Rittenhouse Square Fine Art Show was going on, which was a nice surprise. I always intend to go to it but forget when it is. I’m considering applying for it next year, although they don’t accept digital work, which means I better get busy on some paintings and collages. It’s a fairly traditional show, lots of flowers and landscapes and barns, but there were a few things that really caught my eye. I bought a beautiful etching of a bird from Marina Terauds. It was a tough decision since she had so much that I loved.