out and about – Page 6

Alpaca Magic USA

June 20, 2016 by KTgreen

I’m addressing this post to our locals that don’t go back off to their Summer homes in the north.

Cause I’m here to help!

Are you getting company this summer?

Most likely you’ll get somebody stopping by for a few days. Since Citrus County is like 99.9% over the age of 60 and we have a lot of kids, grandkids and great-grandkids wanting to visit us. And friends. Yeah, we have a lot of people that live outside of the sunshine state. And they seem to want to visit in Summer. When it’s 99 degrees with 99% humidity. Cause they have the time off and school is out.

Disney and Sea World and Busch Gardens and Universal are GREAT! But they are all about 1 1/2 hours away and WAY expensive. Your guests will want to spend a few days there. And then they are going to come back and want to be entertained.

So let’s look around us and find some inexpensive local fun.

Like Alpaca Magic USA.

Open EVERY DAY from 10 – 2.

And they have so much more than Alpacas.

Although I have to say that Alpacas would be enough for me.

This is Maverick. Adorable. A walking stuffed animal. What child (or adult) could resist?

Besides those adorable Alpacas, there are cats….

Chickens….

A butterfly house….

And so many beautiful and healthy plants.

Succulents are growing — I bought most of these succulents at the open house they held. Happy plants!

While Piper and I were there I picked up a vine to embrace the fence and some parsley for the swallowtail butterflies. The vine is already twining around and making itself at home, waiting for the swallowtails to find the parsley.

We went into the Alpaca store and watched a demo of turning alpaca fur into yarn.

Alpaca Magic USA — This is just a SMALL part of the shop. Lots of other Alpaca items in the other rooms.

Piper wanted to see the Alpacas one last time.

Alpaca Magic USA is a unique place and the owners are so friendly and eager to show you the farm and shop. Piper loved it.

I have more places to show you. Not always free but not Disney-esqe pricing. I’ve had lots of company over the years and we’ve done our best to find fun and unique places to show our guests.

I’ll have another spot to share with you next week!

Two Guys from Italy

May 19, 2016May 19, 2016 by KTgreen

We try to give restaurants two chances before we say, “never again”.

But……

Our first visit to Two Guys from Italy–over 10 years ago–was so bad we swore we’d never be back. I’m not going into all the issues because I try to be positive. It must have just been a bad moment in the universe because…

NOW I want you to go to Two Guys from Italy.

Two Guys from Italy is a restaurant on US-19 south of Homosassa Springs.

Recently many of our local friends have been surprised about our past experience. They keep telling us that it’s really good.

So we took their recommendation seriously. And tried it again.

It was FABULOUS!

Seriously. Our very favorite Italian restaurant is Papa Joe’s in Brooksville. But I gotta say, our lunches were equally good. Maybe better because the price was MUCH lower.

Okay. Let me tell you about our experience.

As we walked in we could smell fresh bread baking. Turns out, they make all of their own bread plus bread for many other area restaurants, right there at the on-site bakery.

We ate in the dining room. There’s also a bar and an outside deck. I ordered eggplant parmigiana and Terry had Alfredo Linguine with Chicken. The dinners came with salad and garlic rolls. The rolls were wonderful. Warm with a melted butter and garlic topping. The salad was a little wilted but came with lots of black olives. A joy to me since Terry won’t eat the little slimy things, I get doubles!

twoguysfromitalyhousesalad

My eggplant parmigiana had to be one of the best I have ever had. Not exaggerating. It’s one of my favorite dishes and I usually order it at all Italian restaurants. This was fresh. And delicious. And a huge portion. This was easily enough for two meals.

two guys from italy eggplant parmigiana

Terry loved the Alfredo Linguine with Chicken. He said the chicken had a different and great flavor. He cleaned his plate up–no leftovers for him.

Two Guys from Italy salad

It took a little longer than a normal lunch time service but everything was made fresh. Totally delicious and as Terry told our server, “The food was worth the wait!”

Yum.

Oh yeah, and the prices were good! Did I already say that?

I do think we will be back!

Springtime in DC

April 27, 2016 by KTgreen

One more post of photos from DC.

We missed the peak of Cherry Blossom season by about 2 weeks on our visit, but there were so many amazing flowering trees. This post started out to just be some of the snaps of the trees but I had so many other good photos, I’ve gone beyond flowers.