A Night Downtown

Our real anniversary was back in July, but since it was our first anniversary, and we think that's pretty important, we wanted to take a small trip to celebrate. Nothing huge, just a fun night downtown. Since our anniversary fell around the time we were buying the house, we decided it would be better to wait to take our special trip - so we took it in October!

Lan, being the awesome husband he is, planned a visit to the King Tut exhibit at the Museum of Fine Art during our trip. He was less than interested in the exhibit, but I was really excited about it. I have a weird interest in Egyptology, and some of the items in the exhibit had never been to the US before!!! I was bummed when I found out that the actual King Tut and his iconic burial mask would not be part of the exhibit. They are too "old" and "fragile" to travel or something. LAME. But the exhibit was still awesome, by my standards. Lan even enjoyed himself a little.

We stayed at Hotel ZaZa. It's in the boutique hotels of the world top ten list, and in the top 20 hotels in Houston (out of 425 on Trip Advisor). It was very trendy and chic. It was a really fun place to stay. It was one of those places with a stacked mini-bar but the cheapest candy bar available was, like, $5 or something ridiculous. We were very careful not to eat those! Hotel ZaZa is right next door to the museum, so they had a special partnership with them - get VIP tickets to the exhibit and a special deal on a room through the King Tut Package. So we did that. Lan got a great deal on a suite, which was awesome. You could rent movies through the hotel's movie service through the TV, which was cool, but really pricey. They even had movies that weren't out on video yet! I thought that was neat, but those movies cost what you would pay for two movie tickets to see them in theaters.

For dinner that night, we ate at a Brazilian Steakhouse we had a Living Social coupon for. Lan had been to a Brazilian Steakhouse before and LOVED it. It's a very manly place. You pay an all-you-can-eat price and get an unlimited selection of meats. They have hot sides and a yummy salad bar, and your waitstaff comes around with different meat selections for you to try - lamb (actually, this was my favorite), bacon wrapped filet, various types of steak, sausage, chicken, etc. They also served fried bananas and grilled pineapple - YUM. It was very good. We always said we didn't think it was worth the money for me to go (and pay full price... all I can eat is not all that much), and we were right. Lan said he didn't think I would like it any more than other fancy restaurant, and he was right. I enjoyed it, but for the money, I'd rather go to the Melting Pot or a nice steakhouse.

Pictures of the Hotel Lobby:

They had these posters up all over the hotel - notice the quote at the top from Steve Martin's SNL King Tut song, haha.

(I was sharing this with my coworkers, and they had never heard of this skit before, so in case you're in the same boat, you can watch it here)

Pictures from our suite:

Mirrored dining room table and chandelier - fancy!

LOVED that mirror (ya'll know how I feel about mirrors in decorative frames...)

Living Room area (with Lan lounging in the background)

That doorway leads to the bathroom and bedroom

I just thought this was a cool piece of furniture...

The bathroom

TV in the bedroom

King-sized bed. What a treat!

Me with the statue of Anubis outside of the museum.

All in all, it was an awesome weekend! We had so much fun :)

I have a lot of blog catching up to do!!! I have lots of recipes and pictures I want to share, so expect lots of updates soon.

Lots of love from Houston,

L and J