An Athens-Themed Weekend

Every week, I show you to a different business in Athens and attempt to describe the feel of each place in two blog posts.  But with this week’s second post, I’m stepping slightly out of topic.  Only slightly.  Instead of another post on Athens Underground, I want to take you through my Athens-themed weekend with my parents.

Ohio University has quite a few weekends each year dedicated to the family visiting—Parents Weekend, Sibs Weekend, Moms Weekend and Dads Weekend. Not only do our families have an excuse to visit us and check out the town and our lives as students, but we also have the opportunity to bring money to local businesses in Athens.  But does it really bring money to the little shops, or does it just provide more business for Applebee’s or Bob Evans?

In my attempts to stick it to the “corporate” man, I took Mom and Dad to the little Athens wonders, which I’m in love with. During the 27 hours they were with me, we jumped from place to place, starting with the Athens Farmers Market, an outdoor market located on East State Street, where local producers and businesses sell fresh produce, fruit, breads, pastries, salsas, jellies, flavored coffee and so much more.

At the AFM, Mom and Dad bought me necessities to get me through the next four weeks—pumpkin spice coffee, pineapple hot salsa and Fuji apples. After roaming through the crowds for a bit and getting me a blueberry muffin for breakfast, we left to get any remaining food items from Kroger (OK, I didn’t completely stick it to the corporate man, but you get the point). 

From there, we hopped to Brennan’s for a soup-and-sandwich lunch and some chatting. Then to Donkey for some hot, non-fat vanilla chai drinking, some Pastimes board game playing and chatting (I had to take Dad to Donkey since he’s never been there).  Because of the hours of chatting, we were hungry again, so we left for Casa Nueva, where we ate our share of local veggies with a Mexican kick and did some more, you guessed it, chatting. Sorry, no habanero salsa this time.

We finished up the rest of yesterday by sitting in the lobby of my dorm playing 500 Rummy, and … chatting.

This morning after church, we traveled to the Village Bakery on East State Street to feed our appetite for healthy, local foods yet again. Sitting on high stools next to the window, we enjoyed our slices of quiche Lorraine and fresh, sweet apples and pears. Oh, and we did more chatting.

If you haven’t noticed, we do a lot of eating and chatting.

Although my throat is still a tad bit dry from all the chatting I did this weekend, I wouldn’t have traded that time for anything.