Where can you get good wings in Raleigh? At the wild, Wild Wing Cafe …well not real wild, but very happenin’ on a Saturday afternoon.  I’d driven by the Wild Wing Café on Brier Creek Parkway many times since they opened last year. But this was my first time stoppin’ in.  Being a big sports day we went to watch the Tennessee and Baltimore football game.   The bar with the megatron TV screen was packed with sports fans with beer in hand and eyes glued to the screen.  I had a feeling the same crowd would be there for the Panthers and Arizona Cardinals game later that night…

Who would’ve thought a 5 star hotel would come to Raleigh? …I sure didn’t, but good for all of us it did.

When I first heard the news that The Umstead Hotel was being built, I was especially excited because that struck a chord with me. I had a previous grueling working life (that’s an oxymoron!) with a hotel catering sales career for several years after I graduated college. No I didn’t work in a 5 star hotel. I’d give that Doubletree Hotel at the time, a 3 star rating at best. I put in demanding 60 hour work weeks including weekends. I made very little money when I divided up all the hours…partly the admission price I paid for being ‘green’ in the business. But, I learned the ins and outs and the behind the scene details of how hotels operate.  Not sure how that helps me day to day today, but when I stay at hotels and my husband says something like ‘well why don’t they have our online reservation?’… I gently explain that hotel reservation systems are as sophisticated as the ticking clock on the wall and remind him of my hotel torture, I mean, good ‘ol hotel days…LOL.

Teavana sounds like a heavenly place, doesn’t it?  Well it actually means Heaven of Tea.  And it is… the Teavana store in Raleigh recently opened in 2008.

This place is paradise for tea lovers like me.  I’ve always loved teas and the idea of teas (see my cabinet collection pre-Teavana photo). 

I had my first tea party when I was 4 and got my first plastic tea set…it was that awful 70s Kermit the frog green that was so popular…and I think making a comeback today.  My teddy bears and I in the late afternoon would sip our favorite imaginary tea.  Perhaps we were dreaming of flavors back then.  But it didn’t end there, I had my bridal shower or I should say my bridal tea shower at the Ritz Carlton.  But that’s a whole ‘nother story.