The Annapolis Food and Wine Festival

Damn you LivingSocial for having über awesome discount tickets to the Annapolis Food and Wine Festival, so that against my better judgment, I decided to grab tickets and go… daaaamn you!
Fortunately for my husband and I, I’m highly suspect of any festival. For many people, the word «festival» conjures up images of fun frivolity… like Woodstock. But for me, the word «festival» always conjures up long lines, not enough port-​a-​potties, and annoying hipsters out to drive me batty.
The Annapolis Food and Wine Festival got two out of the three.
Because I’m so suspect about festivals, I urged my husband to get us there early. He thought I was insane for dragging him there by 1 (the festival started at 2)…but half way through our day, he had to agree… I was right.
But I’ll start off positive — the things that went right:
— a delicious variety of different cuisines with (generally) nice wine pairings;
— introduced to us a few restaurants in Annapolis that we never knew existed;
— gave us an opportunity to walk around Annapolis on a fairly decent (if windy) day.
— there was a «shuttle» that would drive up and down the length of the festival to give tired people rides.
Here are the things that didn’t go right:
— there was no map of where all the restaurants were, on their website, prior to the event… so I *almost* showed up in heels (note to the ladies — DO NOT WEAR HEELS… you’ll be walking about 5 miles from end to end and back again, and it’s all hilly and cobblestone roads);
— to pick up tickets, you had to go the hotel, which had a line of cars about ½ mile long. Fortunately, we were smart enough to just pull up, have one of us jump out to grab the tickets, and parked elsewhere;
— after 2:45, the lines at all the restaurants were just RIDICULOUSLY long. I mean, we waited at one of the lines for 20 minutes, only to have it budge 4 ft. We quickly bailed after that;
— some of the restaurant servers had NO idea what was going on. When we went to Ram’s Head, the servers had no idea that they were even participating in the festival, so they couldn’t tell us where to go (this was around 1:50, right before the festival official opened);
— many places didn’t have anyone describe the wine that was being paired with the food. It was almost like the wine and the food were two totally disparate items… which was odd;
— the festival ran out of badges early on, so they started handing out bracelets to some people. Quickly, we realized that a lot of the people in line at the various restaurants didn’t have either badge or bracelets… and the restaurants weren’t checking. So why did I pay for my badge again?!
— the «shuttle» that was supposed to drive around the length of the festival to give tired feets rides, was actually a golf cart. Needless to say, very few people got to ride it (we did, because we tipped the guy and tipped him LARGE. I think he actively looked for us — which is the only reason why we didn’t end up walking a billion and a half miles).