40 Pearl Street NW #100AStarting “Winter Break” was pretty appealing to me.
I don’t formally get a winter break but I did have enough vacation time that I could take the week of Christmas off. The kids and J were going to be home so it would give us some time together and some time to knock some projects off the list that we don’t have time for with our busy schedules.
I should have worked until 6:30 the Friday before my vacation started but I got a message from the boss asking if I’d be available for an overnight shift. Instead of working 9:30 to 6:30 on Friday, I’d work 3:30 AM and be on vacation for ten days starting at 1:00 PM.
Obviously, I said yes.
Taking that shift meant I’d be outside for most of the morning and I knew that. It was actually really Christmas-y in downtown Grand Rapids on that day with all of the holiday lights and big, we snowflakes falling. It was a little cold and a little wet but I didn’t have too much to complain about.
I got done with the bulk of my assignment around 7 AM. I told my colleague I’d meet her back at the office as I was wanted to grab something for breakfast.
After leaving the Rosa Park Circle area, I headed around the corner to Terra Bagels to grab something to eat.
Terra Bagels has two Grand Rapids locations. There is one in Eastown which I stopped at back in July when I worked a similar shift. The other location is in downtown on the corner of Pearl Street and Ottawa Avenue on the bottom floor of the Trust Building. There is no exterior signage for the small shop but there are some in the windows. The entrance is actually on the Ottawa Avenue side through a small door that is only marked by the logo on the glass.
The shop isn’t very big but it’s a bagel shop so it doesn’t need to be. There’s an order counter right as you walk in with bins of bagels stacked up behind it. The menu board is actually on the opposite wall so you kind of half to turn around to look. If you put an order in ahead of time, there’s a pick up area to the right where you can grab your bag and go.
I’m not a coffee person so I just put in an order for the B.E.C. sandwich on an Everything Bagel. The cost was right around 9:00 and I took a seat in the small dining area which includes some seating at one end but is mostly rail seating looking out on to Pearl Street with pub style metal chairs.
It only took a few minutes for my name to be called and a paper bag to be set in the pick up area. I grabbed it and headed back to the office to eat.
The B.E.C. sandwich is pretty simple. As the name suggests, it’s Bacon, Egg, and Cheese. A thick, fluffy egg takes up most of the space with a layer of melted Cheddar cheese and some crispy bacon. The bagel is really the star of the sandwich so it doesn’t matter what you put on it. These bagels are amazingly good. There is so much of the Everything Bagel topping that it kind of gets everywhere. I had a colleague try to come talk to me while I was eating and I looked a mess with little bits of poppy and sesame seeds everywhere.
I love a good bagel sandwich and Terra Bagels has great bagel sandwiches. If there was one of these in downtown Kalamazoo, I’d be about a $50 poorer every week because I’d have to get bagels every morning.