Steeps

Our neighborhood (or rather, our neighbourhood) is fantastic. We live in a part of Edmonton called Oliver, adjacent to downtown, and filled with stores, museums, galleries, restaurants, churches, and bus stops where we can catch a ride to any other part of the city. I love this neighbourhood.

One of my favorite places here is a delightful little tea house just blocks away. Steeps is an "urban tea house" with several locations in Western Canada, but the original is the one near us. Steeps is steps from the best yarn store around and our insurance agent. It's one of those places filled with eclectic, mismatched furniture, artwork by local artists, and floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with hundreds of varieties of tea (three entire shelves dedicated to varieties of Earl Grey). Tea is served in a french press, and you must go to the sideboard to pick out which tea cup you'll drink from. While you're at the sideboard, you can pick up a scrabble board, or as we did, connect four.

On Friday nights, there is live music, of the mellow, coffee-house variety. Still recovering from my cold, I wasn't up for a wild night on the town. So Steeps was absolutely perfect. My Beloved and I played games, read the paper, talked, laughed, listened to a school teacher from Ft. McMurry sing, and drank delicious tea (mine was a fruity blend called "Creativity", and Craig chose one that smelled like a campfire).

I think this is the perfect beginning for a marvelous weekend.