I wrote this post last night as we were on the train coming home… Finally posting it 24 hours later..

We spent the last few days of our year visiting Chris and Megan at their home in Mystic, CT. We took the train from DC to Groton on Thursday morning, getting into town up north that afternoon. Chris picked us up and we went and met Megan at the Mohegan Sun casino where she works for their graphic design department. We wandered around there for a bit, while waiting for her to get off the clock. As an aside, I always find casinos to be a little depressing. Despite all the lights and potential, I always feel like the people there might be happier and more productive doing something – anything – else. I guess I don’t understand the addictive nature of gambling though.

Anyways, that night we went to dinner at Azu in downtown Mystic, which is a really charming little crossroads of a town right on the water. After having a sad, frozen salad and mostly frozen soda on the train ride up, I was pretty hungry. I had even thought ahead to pack train snacks for us, and then forgot by the time we got out the door in the morning. I guess I only have myself to blame for being stuck with bad Amtrak food. So, yeah, I pretty much devoured my delicious pizza dinner there at Azu. Yum yum yummy. The last time we had seen Chris and Megan was at our wedding, so we had lots to talk about and catch up on.

On Friday morning, we had brunch at Kitchen Little in Mystic, which was this awesome little diner inside a cute, old, blue house. While we were waiting outside for a table, I spotted this funny little face on the tree out back and snapped a quick picture of it. Then they called our name and seated us at the bar, which had tons of random, funny mugs hanging above it. I found one for the 1982 Washington Redskins Super Bowl season; had I ordered coffee or tea, I would have requested it. But, I just had water.

Next, we toured the Mystic Seaport Museum, which is a large complex of buildings with all sorts of exhibits and live demonstration type areas to check out. It could take you forever to go through it all, that place was so ginormous. My favorite building had a room with 10 or so ship figureheads from the front of different old ships. It was incredibly awesome and creepy in there and made me think of old, haunted ocean stories and ghost ships. We also saw a working printing press, and learned that it could take as long as 10 hours to typeset the front page of an old newspaper when laying out the text one letter at a time. Ohthankgoodness for this digital keyboard here and things like Photoshop. Though traditional printing is infinitely cooler, I would never have the patience for that.

On Saturday, we spent an hour tasting wine at Jonathan Edwards Winery, and stood out on the deck overlooking their vineyards as the weather went from mild and sunny to chilly, and then the fog rolled in. Nice way to spend the last day of the year, tasting different wines and trying our best to overhear the paid part of the tour as the group went by

We had reservations that night at Bravo Bravo, one of Chris and Megan’s favorite restaurants in town. It was one of the more delicious meals we’ve ever had. We all shared scallops, swordfish, crab cakes, lamb, and shrimp. It was pretty much a veritable sea schmorgasboard of delciousness.

New Years Eve dinner!
   

crabcakes! plus the cherry that Matt gave me from his drink. What a guy! He is the best, seriously!

One of the highlights of the early evening was watching an older couple, maybe in their 70s, leaving the restaurant, which had been decorated with tons of balloons to ring in the New Year. As they finished their meal and got up to leave, the cute old man started to untie a balloon from his chair to give to his wife. She smiled, but then kindly shook her head and indicated that she didn’t want him to take it, then she slipped out the front door ahead of him. After she had passed by, he smiled really mischievously, grinning from ear to ear, and took the balloon outside to give her anyways. Cute, sneaky old man. It was a really sweet little exchange, only a moment long, but Megan and I both noticed and it made us happy to have seen a little sign of affection and love that hadn’t worn off between the couple.

As we left dinner around 10:30 and headed to the Irish bar up the street, we passed a couple that Chris and Megan knew from the town. They held up the screen of their cellphone proudly for us to see. As we stood in the freezing cold on the Mystic drawbridge, we all said hello to their family in the Ukraine, whom they had been talking to through video chat, telling them “Praveet!!!” – hello!! in Ukrainian. It was a cool moment. yay technology.

The Irish bar was pretty empty and we soon realized it was due to the worst live band ever to play music in public, and that includes the time David’s band played at the Glenelg High school homecoming pep-rally (kidding, kidding). We tried yelling “Billy Joel” hoping they would get the point and take a request or two, but in the end it was futile. So, we headed back to Chris and Megan’s before midnight, and were able to watch the Times Square ball drop on TV. At midnight, we kissed and cheersed to 2012.

January 1. It was a beautiful, mild day and we took advantage of the warm-for-January weather to walk around Bluff Point State Park. So beautiful there by the water. We took some time to stop and sit on the rocks down by the shore and take pictures of each other and hunt for cool rocks and snails. Quite a nice start to this new year!

On Friday, we took off on our bikes a little after lunchtime and headed northwest towards Leesburg, VA. It was BEE-YOO-tiful out, maybe a little on the windy side, but cold enough to wear a pair of gloves and ear-warmers, two layers, but still not ever really break a sweat while riding OR start to freeze. Perfect! And with all the leaves doing their best autumn colors, it made for a prety backdrop to our ride. We made it a bit past Shirlington, only a few miles into the W & OD Trail , when we pit-stopped at some benches to eat the lunch I packed – turkey sammies and pita chips. Good fuel.

From there we pedaled on at my somewhat slow pace and enjoyed a pretty empty trail for the most part, passing a handful of other runners and bikers. I’ll admit that after about 15 miles or so, I had to stop pretty frequently to stretch out. I was getting horrible cramps in my neck, back, and shoulders that only felt better when I stopped to bend in the opposite direction of the way I sit on my bike. By the time we got to Herndon, about 30 miles in, I was pretty much ready to break my new bike in half and throw a tantrum on the side of the road out of frustration from my neck pains. I may or may not have done one of those two things, I’ll leave it at that. Matt suggested that we find a Holiday Inn and just stay in Herndon. I was pretty ready to do just that, but the thought of staying in a Holiday Inn was majorly disappointing to me. I certainly wasn’t going to make it all the way back to DC that night, so we decided that the best option was to continue the last 13 miles to our intended destination. It was pretty nice watching the sun go down to our west as we rode along, slowly, and yelling WOMP-WOMP-SUCKAS! at all the commuters stuck in Friday traffic as we biked across the overpasses at the Dulles Toll Road. I guess that part was actually earlier in the trip, before my breakdown in Herndon, but I didn’t want to leave it out of the story.

Anyways! By the time we neared Leesburg, it was getting pretty dark and cold, and the only thing that was worth quickly stopping for was a handful of peanuts. As we went on in the dark, we saw lots of little bunnies and critters scampering across the path, illuminated by our bike lights. Matt thought that the pattern of the lights on the ground looked like scary clown faces, his light more so than mine. It was mesmerizing to watch them move along the pavement. It is actual pretty peaceful to ride at night like that in the middle of nowhere. So we were about a mile from our destination, and my legs were totally turning into jelly, when I saw some lights off to our right, which I thought was Leesburg, but Matt informed me that it was actually some sort of small power substation. It was at this moment that I understood how a desert mirage works, when you are looking so hard for something (our destination) that everything starts to look like it. Funny how that works.

At milepost 34, we arrived and turned off to the right to go uphill to the Leesburg Colonial Inn. YAY!! Matt carried our bikes up two sets of stairs to Room 2. It was a funny little colonial-inspired place with a “washbasin” on the nightstand. I’m not sure it had ever been used for that, but I liked it anyways. We took hot showers and immediately felt better and ready to devour some pizza and beer at Fireworks, the place across the street. It sure hit the spot after all that riding. I think it was only about 10:30pm when we crashed for the night. Tired muscles! It was a good sleep. In the morning, over breakfast at the hotel, we strategized about a couple things. First, I admitted that it was a bad idea to up and ride 40+ miles on a new bike that I had only ridden about a collective 20 miles on before, and never more than 5 or so at a time. That was dumb, for one. It may have made more sense to try a shorter distance to check the fit. And yes, we had already tried adjusting the seat up and down, changing positions, etc. Matt thinks that next we will order a little adjustment piece to raise the handlebars a bit and see if that helps. Anyhow, at the end of our strategizing session, it was determined that we would bike 26 miles back to the Dunn Loring Metro, and metro back home from there, and call it a trip until I can get better adjusted and lose the neck pain. Before we departed, we explored a few of the antique shops in town. We hadn’t even opened the door to the first place yet, when Matt must have seen my eyes and declaredquicly, and with definity “The panniers are already full.” – meaning I wasn’t allowed to shop. So of course the thing that we found and loved happened to be an oversized sepia-toned print of a city-scene. This thing had to be about 4′ by 5′ or so. We asked the lady working there if they shipped things, telling her that we came by way of bike. “Oh!!” she said, “You’d take flight if you strapped that thing onto your bike!!” Then she proceeded to tell us that she had once sold a mannequin to a couple that came in on motorcycle. She said they rode away with a third person (the mannequin) strapped right on the back, and that she wishes she’d taken a photo because it was such a hoot. Well, she was a hoot. We got her business card and are contemplating driving back there next weekend to get the print. It was that good of a bargain.

It was a really nice ride back, warmer, sunnier, and less windy. Lots of people out enjoying a Saturday morning on the trail. The mileage somehow felt a little more doable. I was thinking about how nice it is to get away for a quick trip like that, and not pack anything except one change of clothes. I can’t remember the last time I went anywhere without my hair straightener and 4 times the amount of outfits that I actually needed. And that makes me sound high-maintenance, which I don’t really think of myself as being. It was kinda like “all-you-need-is-the-shirt-on-your-back” (and a bag of peanuts) feeling.

We stopped off in Vienna to get lunch. First, we wandered by the bike shop, and stopped in to look around. We talked at length to a lady about recumbent bikes because they had a ton of them sitting out front. She was telling us how much she loved hers after having problems with neck pain herself. It was interested to hear her talk about all the places she’d ridden before — Sugarloaf Mountain, Skyline Drive… She told us that many of the recumbents can actually go as fast as a regular diamond frame bike, though they are a little heavier and require a little more effort on really big hills. She recommended we try the little shop next to them for lunch, and so we did, and we had two little meat and veggie pupusas and they were tasty.

And then we were at the Dunn Loring Metro with our bikes, cutting out the last 14 miles, and my neck thanks me for that. It was a great success of a trip! As soon as I get my bike fitting a little better, I’m ready for the next adventure. It has me wishing for spring weather already, since I feel like there are some cold ones coming up. Where should we bike next??

We finally tried Taste of Jamaica on H St the other night for dinner. While we were waiting, we were checking out all paper money from around the world that they have posted on the glass of the ordering window. There are a few coins taped on there, too. It pretty much put my dad’s foreign money collection to shame. We tried counting the number of different currencies that we had come into contact with, ie how many of the countries we had visited… I think we accounted for maybe only 6 or 7 of them. Moral of the dinner outing = we need to plan another trip!!

Travel wishes aside, we ended up getting takeout – curry chicken and jerk chicken. It came with a ton of rice and veggies, and loaded with delicious spices. It made our noses run it was so good. Next time, we could probably have split one platter, there was so much food. Highly recommend. Hmm, maybe we should go to Jamaica…

In June (I know, it’s been 3 months) we went out to Colorado to visit Chelsea and Ryan. It seems like forever since we’d seen them, which was at our wedding, so it was awesome to see their house and have some real catch up time. Old friends are the best.

We spent our first nights staying at The Curtis hotel in downtown Denver. We started the trip like we always do – wandering around to get our bearings. We ended up at the Wynkoop Brewery for beer and lunch, then walked along the 16th Street Mall and then over around in the Coors Field area. When Chelsea got off work that day, she met us and took us to dinner at The Cheeky Monk on E Colfax. Delicious belgian beer and frites! Later we went to another hotel restaurant that had a spectacular view of the whole city (from whatever high up floor we were on). It’s always amazing to see the lights of the city from a high vantage point.

The next day, we rode B-cycles around the city and stopped at the Denver Art Museum, library, and all the Civic Center buildings around it. Quite a little complex of things to do and see. Then we rode over to the Santa Fe Arts District, which was my favorite part of the trip. There were all sorts of cool little artist shops and galleries, and we poked our heads into most of them, which was a good thing because it kept raining on and off. We talked to a sculpture guy (sculpturist?) for awhile about his work — he showed us some templates he was making for some large scale metal works, then some twisted red installations that he made out of carpet padding, and then some modular paintings that he created to be rearrangeable. It was quite the range of stuff, and he had a really cool studio space. I wish we had bought something there, but some artwork is just always out of the budget

After that, we found this amazingly cute tiny little courtyard surrounded by art shops. We had grilled sandwiches and smoothies there. Chelsea and Ryan came down again that evening to have dinner downtown with us at this delicious Mexican restaurant. We then had some drinks at our hotel bar (which had awesome bathrooms that had little post-It notes you could leave on the wall!) and planned our big hike for the following morning. Our bike hike was that indeed. Ryan led the way up the Flatirons in Boulder Mountain Park, which was closer to Boulder as the name suggests. It was a nice hike, though we did get a little winded in the mile-high mountain air. The view at the top was so worth it – and there was a cool natural bridge rock formation to stand underneath. We got lunch and ice cream afterwards in Boulder and then walked around the main town area.

That afternoon, we went back to the Thomas household and relaxed for a bit. Ryan made us his famous margaritas and we sat on their back porch and played with their dog, Ernie. Ernie is huge and awesome. For dinner, they took us to this amazing Indian restaurant in a strip shopping mall — we got the feast for 4 and it had a little bit of everything including the most delicious Chai tea and rice pudding at the end. Talk about a perfect day!

But the trip didn’t end there–the next day we went back to downtown Denver to check out the gay pride parade. It was the best people watching event I think I’ve ever been to. Wish we had taken more photos! In the afternoon, we went to the city park to listen to the Sunday evening jazz concert. It looked like it was going to rain any second, but luckily it held out. Our friend Erin, who took our engagement photos back in DC, met us there for awhile. She had just moved out to Denver and so it was nice to catch up with her and hear all about her new house and moving of her business.

On Monday morning, Chelsea had to go back to work, so we went with her and spent the morning in Golden. Cute little streets there – we got some coffee and tea and read for awhile at the coffee shop, then I poked around some thrift stores where I bought a cool angel wings necklace. If I’d had more room in my suitcase, I’m sure I would have come home with more. Chelsea drove us to the airport around lunchtime. Aww parting is such sweet sorrow. Can’t wait to go back out there already!

I have been wanting to go to the beach for about the past 5 years now, but I guess for those that know us, we’re just not really big beach bums. We almost always end up vacationing in cities or places where beaches aren’t really beaches as I think of the beach. If that made no sense, well, I guess what I mean is that the black rock beaches we saw in Iceland in cold weather just don’t count. I’m not complaining — we much prefer exploring cities over laying around in the sand, and I wouldn’t have traded our Parisian honeymoon for a Caribbean isle in a million years, but still, a girl’s gotta get to the beach! So Matt agreed to go on a day trip to the beach as my 28th birthday present. YAY!

So, on Saturday morning, we drove the 3 hours on Rt. 50 east heading straight into the heart of Ocean City, Maryland. We got some breakfast at a little cafe after we arrived and then had our towels laid out on the sand by around noontime, situated in very close proximity to the 50,000 other people that decided to go to the beach in 115 degree (with heat index) weather. Ahhhh, hot, sandy paradise. I had just dipped my toes in the crashing waves when it began to thunder and lightning. Mind you, it was perfectly sunny and bright over 90% of the sky with a little patch of gray clouds off in the corner… SOoo, we had to clear the beach. I was not in a happy mood, but I guess lightning+water is a bad combo, so we packed up our towels and sunscreen, put it back in the car, and decided to walk along the glorious boardwalk. Salt water taffy made for a good lunch AND a morale booster while we waited out the non-storm. Also – awesome. people. watching.

   

   

This picture makes it look like I’m an idiot sitting insanely far away from the water, but like I said we had to clear the beach when it was THIS sunny outside, so here I was waiting for the lifeguards to allow people back on the sand… Also, I had to post this pic because dang! look at my awesome neon toes!

   

For lunch part 2, we had Trasher’s French Fries with extra vinegar, like enough vinegar to “blow out the bottom of the fry cup” as Matt puts it. We came pretty close to doing that.

Finally the non-storm clouds had left and we were allowed back on the beach. By this time, we had wandered pretty far from the car and had found a nicer stretch of beach with a little more breathing room, so we spread out again and were able to enjoy the roast-in-the-sun, jump-in-the-water-to-cool-off, reapply-sunscreen rotation cycle about 3 times over. It was just what I had been craving, sand in the bathing suit and all!!! So when the dark clouds came back and we once again got kicked off the beach, I was okay with it because I’d gotten my fill. There was one last thing to do before we left, and that was to ride the Tidal Wave roller coaster at Trimper’s and scream like a little kid the whole ride.

That evening, we drove back towards home and stopped for dinner and then an overnight stay at Jill’s place on Kent Island. We got to Hemingway’s, which overlooks the Bay Bridge, just in time to watch the sunset and enjoy the live band on the outdoor patio. It was beautiful! Seriously, look at that view!

We enjoyed crab cakes and tuna and, of course, had to try Jill’s desserts. We might be a little biased, but that was the best part of the meal. Matt had the bread pudding and I went with the cheesecake. Check out the chocolate “hi lori”!! – gotta love personal chocolate messages from the pastry chef, even if they are all hot and melty. awww.
   

So we waited until Jill got off work, passing the time sitting in some adirondack chairs at the end of a long, candlelit pier projecting out into the bay. It was a peaceful end to the evening just watching the hectic traffic lights coming over the span of the bridge but only hearing the lapping of the water around us. ahhhh, what a perfect day it was.

Today, we slept in late despite being awoken early several times by a playful Frankie, Jill’s tiny black kitten. We eventually barricaded him outside the bedroom door and enjoyed pulling the covers back over our heads on a lazy Sunday morning. When we finally left Jill’s, we went exploring around Kent Island – we checked out a cute little boutique shop in Stevensville, then drove to have lunch at the Fisherman’s Inn in Grasonville. Afterwards, we went antiqueing. That’s right, we are all hip like that. Matt eventually asked me stop calling it antiqueing, stating that 1) we hadn’t actually bought anything and 2) why couldn’t we just say we were looking for cool old stuff for our house? I don’t really see the difference. Anyways, we did find one really sweet old white chandelier, but unfortunately it had already been sold. There was some long story about how a woman had purchased it and then her son threw it off the porch, breaking some of the lamp bulbs, but she was repairing it and anyways, sorry! it was resold. Oh well. We’ll just have to keep looking. One of the things we did find was this creepy old doll with yellow eyelids. We did not purchase that. But I will be having nightmares about that tonight.

Our last stop of the day was for eastern shore produce!!! …had to cancel out all that beach food we ate yesterday. We stocked ourselves with plums! nectarines! a cucumber! a zucchini! spicy jalepeno jelly! Mmmm. What a perfect little weekend trip.