One of the best things about Blacksburg in the summer is the number of festivals. There seems to be one pretty much every weekend. This weekend was the first Virginia Tech Cheese Festival. Thankfully it was held indoors at the Moss Art's Centre as the weather this week has really heated up - 90 F with ~80-90% humidity (I wish I was joking about the humidity level). I have been working from home as much as possible as my office is generally in the summer 10-20 F hotter than outside and like a sauna.
I decided to go to this one on my own as it was easy than trying to organize people so I got the bus down there.
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| Outside the Arts Center |
With the ticket, you get a free drink. Someone warned me that I should get a drink first as the queues inside were long and it would be more pleasant with a glass of wine. You don't have to tell me twice. So I grabbed a glass of Riesling and a bottle of Sprite (which turned out to be an excellent decision). Unfortunately the lady was right about the queues and the wine didn't make it to the first tasting!
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| Cheese |
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| My favorite (they even gave me extra free cheese later!) |
Overall it was not very well organized. They had about 15 vendors split over 3 floors. But each floor only had one queue, so you had to wait in that one queue to try any of them. Even if you didn't want to try some. And they only had 2 drinks vendors, both on the ground floor. Hence why I was very happy to have the extra drink. If you are in a group, you can send someone on a drink run, but I would have lost my space in line and have to start again. Not going to happen.
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| Very long queues. |
Also a lot had bread or crackers with the cheese on, which makes sense. But for someone who can't eat wheat, it sucked!
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| Looks good |
At least VT can make fun of itself. That the only explanation I have for the amount of cheese related merchandise.
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| Cheese everything |
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| Cheese hat anyone? |
The Moss Arts Centre is very nice and though I was standing in line for a long time, the view was pretty good at times. And, when not so pretty I had my book. That is when not eavesdropping on the sometimes bizarre conversations around me.
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| Cathedral style windows |
They also had live music outside which was good (though they must have been melting), but as everyone was inside and couldn't hear it, I was a little confused as to why.
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| Music |
And they had a little petting zoo. Well, some cows and sheep. The calves were so cute. :-)
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| Chilling in the sun |
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| So cute. |
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| teenagers! |
On the way home, I stopped by the UPS store to buy boxes. I am starting to organize my packing. However it was not fun getting them home on the bus!
On the evening, I cooked dinner (the cheese and broccoli bakes sort of worked) with a cheese platter of my recent acquisitions for dessert.
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| Gouda, Fetina and cubes of horseradish cheese. |
Sadly I was woken up in the middle of the night by a bug bite on my leg. It didn't seem bad during the day. Now it is roughly the size of my palm. :-( And the itching is driving me crazy!!!!
On Sunday I attempt to sell some of my clothes at a consignment store. Apparently my style is too old. Very insulted. But they only want clothes for teens and considering the clothes they had, I think I should be happy to say I don't have any of those. But I did have a nice meal at a friends house on his deck to end the day, so not a complete loss.
