A beautiful fall day for shopping

We woke up to a beatiful warm fall morning.  What a great day for a drive.  Our first stop for today was L.L. Bean.  The store was practically empty and on top of that, it was 10% off of the entire store.  Just the motivation I needed to shop.  In the span of an hour, we each managed to walk out of the store with large bags full of purchases.  By now it was lunch time so we stopped at The Olive Garden for some soup, salad and breadsticks before heading back on the highway.

We convinced ourselves that we should stop into the Waterloo Premium Outlets since it was on the way.  We did not spend alot of time here but it was really nice being able to drive from store to store since there were not alot of people there.  On the way back to the highway, we stopped at Burrell’s Navarino Orchard where we actually went into the orchard and picked fresh Honeycrisp apples.  The drive to Newark, New Jersey was uneventful and five hours later, we were checking into the Fairfield Inn & Suites Newark Liberty International Airport ($544.92 USD).  We dropped our stuff off and headed out for dinner.

We were trying to find a place to have dinner that would be close to the hotel.  We did some research (Chowhound) and discovered Spiritos Italian Restaurant.  Everything that we read about this place, made us very intrigued to try it out.  Many people talked about the cranky waitresses.  Many people also mentioned that you should not ask for butter for the bread since for the last 75 years they have never served butter and they were not about to start.  Finding parking was a real challenge but after many trips around the block, we managed to snag a spot.  As soon as we walked in, we knew we were in for a real treat.

The restaurant was an old school Italian restaurant.  The place was dimly lit, the waitresses have been here forever and it’s the kind of place were Tony Soprano would dine.  We got a table right next to the door which was good in case gunfire erupted.  All I can say is that is the best Italian meal that I have every had.  We started with the Garlic Salad and true to it’s name, it was garlicy.  Karen went with the Cheese Ravioli and I had the Spaghetti with Meat Sauce.  We ended up each taking half our of meal home since the portions were large.  After a very confusing drive, we got back to the hotel to call it a night.