From Brooklyn Beer to Argentine Tango ...

Having dinner with friends.

Slowly sipping and savoring some great wines.

Dancing barefoot in the living room.

Wait ... is it Friday? This is waaaaaay to much fun for a weeknight?!

Last night we walked over to our b&b neighbors, John & Arthur at the Adora Inn. I never pass an invitation for dinner when Arthur is the chef. He can make something as simple as pasta and have the flavors dancing across your tongue. But, then again, he is Italian, so I shouldn't be surprised that his pasta is the best I've ever tasted.

Anyhow, Arthur's lifelong friends Gayle and Tom were in town visiting after spending the past year traveling. Last time we saw them, we were all in Italy celebrating Arthur's 60 birthday. In fact, I don't think they've been back to the states since that birthday party. Gayle explained her reason for coming back was she needed her "Arthur Fix."

These are my favorite kind of evenings. Sipping wine while exchanging travel stories and moments of inspiration.

Tom's most recent moment of inspiration included spirits ... of the liquid kind. Making gin and whiskey. The conversation reminded me of my grandmother's stories about making booze in their basement to survive the Great Depression and the risk they took to do so during prohibition. But Tom's vision is much bigger than my grandmother's basement. And, unbelievably, will be the first distillery in NYC since prohibition. As co-founder of Brooklyn Brewery, the idea has already garnered a lot of press.

So we spent some time contemplating catchy names for his gin and whiskey. Unfortunately, every name we came up with was already taken. Creative AND original is hard to come by. Ah well, we'll keep deliberating.

Every once in awhile the conversation would lean into the heated discussion of politics. But we always seemed to bring it back to our shared passion for traveling.

After the name-that-gin game we graduated to planning more trips around the world. You never know where a conversation might lead after a couple of bottles of wine.

We ended up deciding to meet again in Argentina for 2010 and dancing tango in the living room in anticipation. And that's where my inspirational spark ignited. Brian and I are going to learn Argentine Tango.

T ... A ... N ... G ... O

Brian and I actually met in a Samba class. He was competing in ballroom and I was just looking for good looking guys that could dance. That was my excuse anyway. We used to dance 3 and 4 nights a week, but since moving to Mount Dora and taking on being Innkeepers there has been little room for dancing between the many loads of laundry and the fact that the space in our small cottage doesn't leave much room for a spin without knocking your knuckles into a wall. Now we mostly just impress our friends dancing at weddings and events. Nothing formal.

But that's all about to change. We're going to learn Argentine Tango for our trip to Argentina. I've often thought it would be fun to learn the dance of each country. Last year, I joked with my friend Beth that we were going to learn some Irish clogging for the sole purpose of dancing it on a bar in an Irish pub.

I think this dancing theme will probably make it's way into all of my travels!

--Rachelle
Tremain Street Cottages