Today was a very awesome day. Allison and Eva and I have been looking forward to our visit from Dina Riccobono ever since she mentioned coming to see us a little over a week ago. Dina was in New York all this week for AdTech and Audience. I missed out on a couple very good conferences from what I heard and I really would have loved to have seen Ted Murphy, Ashley Edwards, Murray Newlands and John Raser again. Well, there is always Affiliate Summit West 2010.

Our day started by picking up Eva from Aunt Corrine’s. Eva was a dream child there she went to bed and slept till 7:30am. When was the last time she slept past 6:00am here? We buzzed home to clean up for Dina’s visit and for Allison’s Silpada Party? Then it was off to Providence to the Train station to pick up Dina. Dina caught the 7:00am train form New York to Providence. I can’t believe that she woke up at 6:45am and made it to the 7:00am train, that is crazy! We are glad she did make it because we had a day of non conference things to do. We figured that Dina has been just going along conference after conference and maybe a day of taking things slow would be a nice change of pace.

We went into the Providence Train Station, I love that place it is so easy to travel by train. You walk in buy a ticket and get on, pick your seat and have tons of space to stretch out, feel like moving around… go right ahead no problem with that. Such a nice way to ride. The sound gets to you after a while but noise canceling headphones and some Gary Vaynerchuk videos help pass the time. Well, that is how I pass the time on the train.

When Dina arrived we drove over to the Roger Williams National Memorial. There we went into the visitor center and met up with John MicNiff, we watched a brief video about the life of Roger Williams and then John gave us a map with some quick directions to walk to some historical places in Providence. I think that there should be an audio walking tour on MP3 that you can download and John needs to narrate it. That would be something I’d download and use to to a self guided tour of the city.

So we walked along Benefit street looking at the old colonial houses and when we got to RISD we turned towards the river walk and Waterplace Park. Once there we took a few photos:

And then I ran back to get the car while Allison, Eva and Dina walked to Providence Place Mall. About 20 minutes later I caught up with them at Fire & Ice.

Fire & Ice is one of my absolute favorite places to eat. Whenever I got there I cannot eat for at least 8 hours. The way it works is that you select everything that you want to eat, you put it in a bowl and you then add sauces (I always add more than 3 of them) to a sauce bowl and bring everything to a round Mongolian grill. There a couple of cooks take your bowl and lay everything out in a long thin strip to cook. The grill is huge and I bet they can have at least 50 strips of food laid out and cooking at one time. Watching the cooks grill your food is half the fun. They do everything with such skill and a sense of fun, not as interactive as Benihanna but fun none the less.

The selection is also impressive. You can pick from tons of vegetables and types of noodles or pastas. Meats range from Hamburgers to Salmon and much more in between. Sauces go from mild to wicked hot and then there are things like the habañero fries and the Chocolate Tower cake. The Chocolate tower cake was delicious and the four of us split that. We also got some habañero but they were not as spicy as I would have expected so I’ll pass on them next time, or maybe not. I picked out shaved steak, chicken, bacon, noodles, pepperoncinis, banana peppers, corn, and a few other things. For sauces I usually start my base as fajita, then I did the fruit sauce and a couple of firery ones. I finished that and got a cheeseburger for Allison and I to split. Yeah I didn’t eat again for over 8 hours.

After our lunch, thank you Dina, we went back to our house and planned to show Dina around North Attleboro a bit but Eva took a nap. The kid doesn’t nap for an entire week and the day we have someone over to visit she conks right out. So we had a nice peaceful afternoon where we could chat together and really have a good conversation. I love being able to do that. We had such a nice time With Dina. Eva woke up about 5:00pm. She was able to spend an hour with Dina before I had to take Dina back to the train station so she could return to New York (visit so wasn’t long enough). Dina and Eva did get to play though.

I took Dina back to the train station and Allison set up for the Silpada party. Dina and I had a nice conversation all the way to the train station (a quick 30 minute ride, still visit not long enough). I dropped Dina off and headed home by way of the store and then back to the house to drop off the milk I had just bought. I did that quickly and ran down town to the Preservation Framer, the custom frame shop that my cousin Matt and his friend Rob run. They had a gallery event tonight celebrating their 1st year of business. The place was packed, jammed full with artists, family and friends. Said hello to Matt, Annie, Keith, Aunt Cathy, Uncle Roger and Neil and Andrea (Andrea had two framed photos on display and for sale, they were beautiful). I spoke with my Grandpa for a little while. My Grandpa and Grandma Bennett are celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary this Wednesday, one day before our (Allison and Me) 4th Wedding Anniversary. We decided that we’re going back to Providence for our anniversary but this time to the Melting Pot and then to the movies. I hope that Where the Wild Things Are is still playing.