What a way to spend a Saturday night…on the beach, perfect temperature, with live music to set the ambiance. So this is how you do it in Virginia Beach on a Saturday night. We were on Atlantic Avenue, along VB’s famous boardwalk, to check out the annual Festa Italia. You got it! The first thing that comes to our mind is great food.Sponsored by local radio station 93.7 BOB FM, it’s only 2 bucks a person, at the threshold of a large white tent and the first thing they say is, “You can’t bring your dog in.” I am used to hearing this all the time, it just isn’t fair that this isn’t a more dog friendly world, but we figure that this would be the case with this event, with all the food (little did we know). So, we decide to leash her up against one of the barricades, as the nicer ticket collector assures us that she will keep an eye out.
As soon as we enter, high school is the immediate déjà vu, with the stage at one end and rows of tables. Where in high school the stage was used for public embarrassment purposes, this time the epitome of the Italian American male was on stage singing “Spanish Eyes”. We’re definitely going to need some wine for this, and so we did - a $15 dollar bottle of 2008 Centine, a pinot grigio, produced by Banfi.
We find a seat at the end of one of the rows and the Italian Don Juan, Detroit native Aaron Caruso, has something to say to pump up the crowd, “Is this Saturday night? (With the red collar popped dress shirt and black high waist slacks, I didn’t think he could channel John Travolta any deeper.) The more wine you
drink, the better I sound.” That’s enough encouragement for us, and so we did.Seeing that the line up to the single restaurant, La Bella Italia was much shorter, it was the perfect time to get us some Sicilian fare. A slice of pepperoni from Stoneheads for $3.00, quick side track, ricotta and mozzarella stuffed pasta, $10, with a side order of one meat ball, $3.00. In all honesty, we are big Italian food fans, but this was a disappointment. The pasta should have only been priced at $5, it wasn’t anything special, and the portion was like an Italian appetizer, and for a 3 bucks, this meat ball wasn’t even the size of my fist! Needing a little bit more for our pallets, we decide to go for some gelato, vanilla, and that saved the meal. It really did!
Feeding gelato to one another, a tap on my shoulder from the woman who promised to watch our dog, we have to move her. Seems that the other ticket holder is having a bit of a power trip, so we plant ourselves at a table closer to the outside of the tent and move our dog to another barricade, but he won’t let us even do that, so I did what any true Italian would do, I did not let the good wine go to waste. I poured our two full glasses back into the bottle, threw the bottle into my purse and hauled ass out of there.
We headed down the board walk onto the beach to finish the rest of our bottle as we unleashed the dog to run fanciful and free by the ocean. She was loving it as she went mach 3 up and down the sand.
Tonight’s accommodations were at First Landing State Park, complete with our own water feature – a small pond of stagnant water, and sleep machine, the sound of whooshing vehicles on the interstate in
front of us. No hook ups either, but the fact th
at we were a two minute walk to the beach, was not too shabby. You can’t have it all, but believe it or not, that evening we felt like we did. After a 12 pack of wine coolers we headed to the beach. With nothing but the waves in the background, underneath a blanket of stars with the small dipper in full view, fresh, sweet air, no one else but us, how could we ask for anything more? The morning was a rude awakening to the sound of crows hawking down for scraps. As we step outside of the tent the smell of campfire is about and we remind ourselves of the beach that a waits. A healthy breakfast of cold cereal, a hard-boiled egg and two Johnsonville Brawts cooked on a stick, gives us enough sustenance to pack up our site and head to a day at the beach. As soon as our feet hit the hot sand and we hear the waves hit the shore, I let out a huge, “I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS IS THE END OF SEPTEMBER!!!”
