My friend Crystal invited me to spend the day with her family & some friends in Virginia Beach on Saturday! Since the cold rain and gray skies of Richmond were less than appealing, I was happy to head east for a bit and drink up some sunshine. She has excellent taste in beer, so I was pretty excited to find her with a cooler full of assorted Sam Adams waiting for me. Assorted! The ocean was freeeeeezing, but we had a great time catching up, playing in the sand with her adorable daughter Hailey, and watching all the surfers.
Unfortunately I did not realize my beach coverup resembles a maternity shirt. Anyway, we had dinner and drinks at Waterman's, which had great service despite the abundance of of prom-goers, vacationers, families, and wild wedding parties. Very crowded, but very FUN.
While we were waiting for a table, we sat on a bench just off the beach near some cheesy dolphin statues with signs that read "PLEASE DO NOT CLIMB ON THE ARTWORK." We entertained ourselves by watching people ignore the signs and straddle the dolphins for photos that would no doubt replace their current facebook defaults.
The next thing I knew, some huge guy with ridiculously manicured facial hair and a fake tan hauled himself on top of one of the statues. He seemed pretty drunk, so I was just waiting for him to come crashing down... but something far worse happened. His lady friend decided to hop up on the statue as well, but because she was too drunk/clumsy to hoist herself up and over the dolphin, she just stood there posing with one leg as high up in the air as she could lift it... this was a particularly windy night and this girl was wearing a particularly short dress. You guessed it... we had a front row seat to the bearded clam exhibition. This wasn't just a flash. It was several minutes of watching her struggle and climb and kick spread eagle. Finally her friend ran over to her and tried to pull her skirt down, but our clueless commando friend just pushed her away and out of her limelight. At some point some one told her to "put that thing away" and she scampered off.
We had dinner on the patio and met some really [drunk] interesting people, the kind who plop themselves down at strangers' tables and buy them drinks and tell dirty jokes. This group of 3 couples from North Carolina decided they wanted to be our new friends and kept shoving drinks in our faces, which happened to be Waterman's signature drink, the Orange Crush: orange vodka, triple sec, sprite, and fresh squeezed orange juice.
The next thing I knew, our entire tab (5 seafood dinners + cocktails) had been paid for and one of Crystal's friend's got handed $100 bill.
Only in Virginia Beach.