Ice, Ice, Baby

Rob and I left the boys at home alone one evening a couple of weeks ago. It was the first time we'd left them at night.

We headed downtown to the Ice Bar in the Peace Plaza near the Mayo Clinic. One of the local bars (a swanky one, from the looks of it) was serving Effen Vodka at a bar made of ice. There were ice barstools, ice glasses (which they ran out of quickly) and an ice loveseat where you could sit and pose for a photo (for a small fee, of course). There was even a live band in the skyway above, so we could see them and hear them but they were warm and toasty whereas we were, well, not.

It was sponsored by the local Chamber, I think, and for 3 nights they invited the community to come down, hang out under the heat lamp thingies (which work great on those cool California evenings but it was under 20 F, people -- they were a joke), and see and be seen.

I had an Effen Blizzard, which made me giggle, and it was good -- creamy and chocolatey with a hint of coconut. The vodka is strong but very smooth. They were sold out of the fancy ice glasses but there were a few sitting around on tables in the area so I got a picture of one.



The tall ice thing pictured below had tubes in the middle of it that turned like a corkscrew through the block of ice. Bartenders poured the liquor into the tube and when it landed in the glass at the bottom it was perfectly chilled. Frankly, we were all perfectly chilled.



We headed home past Lasker Jewelers, a Rochester institution, where we saw the biggest piece of ice I've ever seen. Bigger than that ice cube ring Liz Taylor got from Richard Burton. (Have you seen that? It's like, ginormous. Stunning.)



So we got home and everyone was fine. We'd only been gone an hour and a half, and we declared the evening a resounding success. I still prefer swim-up bars in tropical locales, though, just in case anyone was wondering.