Sometimes it's better just to walk.

We had a fabulous idea for supper last night: we would take Eric's two colleagues out to Xapuri, our favorite restaurant of Comida Mineira (food from our state). The restaurant is up in Pampulha, a neighborhood in the center part of Belo Horizonte. I checked their website and they were even going to have live music last night. It would be perfect! Plans were set and we would pick them up at their hotel at 7:00 pm.

Before we went to supper, we thought we'd cruise up to Praça do Papa. The night view of the city is awesome from up there. After a brief stop to take in the sights, we continued on towards Pampulha.

Traffic started getting heavy and slow. It was only getting worse the closer we got to Pampulha. Finally, it occurred to us what was going on: soccer. Of course. Besides being home to one of our favorite restaurants, Pampulha is also the location of the city's soccer stadium. We were slap-dab in the middle of game-night traffic.

Luckily, we had our handy dandy GPS with us, so we decided to try and detour around the stadium and all the traffic. Every detour took us right into more traffic though. Then we considered that about the time we finished eating, the game would be over and we'd have to deal with all the post game traffic too.

Finally, Eric and I decided to scrap the original plan and take them to a different Restaurante da Comida Mineira. After almost one and a half hours of driving (thanks to a heck of a lot of traffic), we arrived at our new dinner destination: exactly 1 1/2 blocks away from their hotel!

After a delicious meal and a whole lot of keep-you-laughing conversation, we were getting up to leave when one of the visiting Americans said to Eric with a grin, "You know what, as much as we appreciate the ride, I think we'll just walk home."

Hey guys, we enjoyed your company last night for supper. And, um, no extra charge for the city tour.

Important Note to Self: In the future, check the game schedule before attempting to take anyone to Xapuri.