Spending a weekend in Boise, Idaho isn’t anything out of the ordinary for me, but sometimes it offers a few surprises!
This time, the surprise was spending an abnormal amount of time discussing cultures and ethnicities.
Also, being, like, 500 feet from Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston without realizing it.
To sum it up, we ate at two different Asian restaurants, tried (and fell in love with) halva from a Middle Eastern market, discussed Pedro Pascal and his Chilean roots, had a conversation about South Korea with the nicest woman ever, and listened my grandma tell us all about the cultural accuracy of the musical Hairspray.
I’m by no means an Asian food connoisseur, being raised in a state where the specialty dish is potatoes, but one of the restaurants we ate at was DELICIOUS and I’m still craving it almost a week later. You can check out their website here and then go get some yourself.
Also, on the topic of food, halva is probably a snack of the Gods, and I can’t believe I’ve never had it before. It’s like, fudge consistency almost, and made from tahini. It’s different from typical American desserts, but once I got used to it I ate almost a whole package of them myself.
Later, we visited a cute little nail salon, where we got manicures. The woman doing mine was from South Korea. I told her that it was beautiful there, and she replied with incredulity, because apparently Idaho is better. By the time my nails had dried, we had decided to agree that each is beautiful, in very different ways.
After meeting up with family over lunch and catching up with a cousin I hadn’t seen in more than a year (you can read about the last adventure we took together), my mom and I headed to Downtown Boise to watch the musical Hairspray. As we walked into the Morrison Center, music was pounding from the nearby City of Trees festival.
But I forgot about it as soon as the lights went down and Tracy Turnblad wished Baltimore good morning. Broadway never fails to make you forget about reality and get lost in the dancing and music.
The thing is, after we returned home at the end of the evening, I saw a news report that Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston were visiting the City of Trees celebration that had been blaring the music in Downtown.
Not that I’m devastated over the loss of getting to meet them, but I really would have enjoyed hearing a (probably intoxicated) Jesse Pinkman yell, “I love Idaho! I love all of you!”
