if I never see another box again, it will be too soon [20]

We have had our things in our house for about a week and a half and I am still drowning in boxes. So - if I never see another box again, etc. etc.

It is a little strange and surreal to be unpacking things into this house. Our apartment in Mystic was spacious, but moreso vertically than within the rooms themselves. So we have a TON more space in the living area, but our bedrooms are MUCH smaller which is forcing us to get a little creative with our storage options.

Plus our two bookcases got wrecked in the move, so I haven't been able to settle in with all of my books still in boxes. A room without books is like a body without a soul (Cicero, you just get me). But we got some new bookcases, and although we don't have a couch or a dining room table or any real ~adult~ furniture at yet, things are starting to feel a bit more like home.

Other than the unpacking that seems like it's never going to end, we are just working on getting settled into some sort of routine. I am thrilled to be able to actually cook again, since we were without a kitchen or groceries for the better part of six weeks (!); Max is getting ready to start school, we are just doing our best to get into the swing of Normal Life here in California.

Also, we joined a wine club because #california

So, if you are planning to visit us - hope you like that view, because we will be taking all guests from now until we move out of California to enjoy our wine club membership with us. ;)

Until next time!

the lowcountry : charleston, tybee island, savannah [19]

Labor Day weekend this year found me trekking (back) across the country to attend a bachelorette party in Tybee Island/Savannah, GA.

Which also gave me a great excuse to stop over in one of my favorite cities.

      

 


Charleston, South Carolina. Back when Max and I were in that weird stage of "talking" and doing the long distance "are we together or not" thing, I was in the middle of my student teaching semester, very broke and under a lot of stress. Our conversations gradually shifted from "you should come visit" to "if you visit" to "when you visit" and then suddenly I had a plane ticket and a plan to fly to Charleston to see Max. So, it's really thanks to Charleston (and Max, and the Navy for putting him there) that I grew to love travel.

I have an unwavering love for this city - mainly because I fell in love with Charleston and, all things considered, in Charleston. I haven't been back since Max moved away from SC in 2013, and we haven't had the opportunity to travel there. So when it looked like it was going to be cheaper for me to fly into Charleston than Savannah, I jumped on it without a second thought. How could I say no to one of my favorite cities? And some of our best friends just moved there - so it was perfect.

I spent Friday morning and afternoon walking around some of my favorite places in the city. Breakfast at Charleston Cafe in Mount Pleasant, a favorite of ours, and then a trip up to the viewing deck of the Ravenel Bridge which looks out over the Cooper River, Mount Pleasant, and Charleston proper (as pictured above). This was the first place Max took me when I came to visit, and this bridge will always have a special place in my heart.

After the bridge, I went into Charleston, walked the waterfront park, waded in the pineapple fountain, got some lemonade, and walked around East Bay Street for a bit. It was a beautiful day, albeit a little bit hot, but enjoyable nonetheless.

After I walked the city a bit, I headed up to Tattooed Moose, a dive bar sandwich shop, to get some lunch. Tattooed Moose has become a running joke with Max - every time we tried to eat there when I was visiting, we got distracted and ended up going somewhere else. I was determined to get there on this trip and man, was it worth it:

                          

On the way out of Charleston, I stopped to pick up some beer at the new(ish) Beer Exchange - it used to be downtown, and I was devastated when I walked by the old building and it wasn't there anymore. Thanks to some googling, I learned that they had relocated and expanded right down the street from Tattooed Moose (perfect!) so the day was saved. I was not about to leave Charleston without some Holy City beers in my hands.

The drive from Charleston to Savannah/Tybee Island was a nice drive - until it started storming like nobody's business. I am a pretty confident bad-weather-driver (you kind of have to be when you learn to drive in Upstate NY), but the combination of heavy lightning, lots of rain, little lighting on the road, and an unfamiliar area made it less than pleasant. All things considered, though, I got where I needed to be and was able to enjoy the storm from the porch of the stunning house we rented for the weekend. Friday was a pretty chill night as only half of the bachelorette party attendees had arrived, so we enjoyed the storm and a few beers on the porch.

Saturday morning found us at the beach - and although I live right by the Pacific now, I really missed the ocean. You can swim in the Atlantic, whereas Monterey Bay is pretty cold. So I was thrilled to be able to get back into the waves. We were on the beach right by Tybee Island Lighthouse, and the New Englander in me loves a good lighthouse photo.

 

(It was cloudy, but who can resist a beach photo anyways)

We followed up the beach, part one, with lunch at The Crab Shack, conveniently located right near the house we were renting. I LOVE me some crab legs, so I went to town on a pound of snow crab:

The rest of the girls arrived shortly thereafter, so we went to a different beach (gotta explore all the options) where I got brushed by a jellyfish and enjoyed the water some more. We headed back to the house to clean ourselves up and then trekked into Savannah for dinner and drinks. The first item on the itinerary was the Paula Deen restaurant, Lady and Sons, which had exactly as much butter as you would expect. It was delicious, but my mildly-lactose-intolerant body was NOT having it. Note to self: maybe just get a small helping of mac and cheese next time. I couldn't even eat dessert because I was so full, and if you know me then you know how much I love dessert. We followed up dinner with coffee to try to offset the food coma, a drag show at Club One, and then another round of drinks at a rooftop bar. The weather was perfect, and I wish I hadn't been dragging so much so that I could have enjoyed the evening more.

Sunday morning we went back into Savannah to go to the Crystal Beer Palace for brunch/lunch, where we learned that you can't serve beer before 12:30 (surprise!). Once we were able to order drinks, though, I got a really delicious mango/pomegranate Berliner Weisse which was surprisingly great, had more of a cider taste than a beer taste, and was incredibly drinkable (and dangerous, due to its 8% ABV). Following lunch, we hiked over to the Savannah Slow Ride pedal pub. I have never done a pedal pub before, and it was GREAT. Despite the fact that the seats aren't really made for short people and I had to do some pretty heavy adjustments once it was my turn to pedal, it was surprisingly easy. Plus we made some new friends - we are a pretty boisterous crew, and there were three couples on board who were not prepared for us but we were all having a blast by the end of it. We stopped at four or five different bars, got a little bit of a historical tour of Savannah (only one haunted bar though!), and I got to pay homage to the institution of alcoholic slushies: Wet Willie's.

After the pedal pub, we headed back to the house to do some grilling and had some chill downtime for the afternoon. Shout out to everyone who cooked - the food was fantastic! And man, you really can't beat this view:

Tybee Island has a big Labor Day beach party every year, with fireworks and a band and all the things that come with beach parties. We headed down to stake out a spot and spent a little (more) time in the ocean. We were a little far from the band, but we had the perfect location for fireworks:

                    

 

After the beach party, we barhopped our way around Tybee Island for drinks and dancing. It has been a long time since I have done anything resembling "clubbing," but it was a lot of fun. All of the DJs were really feeling throwback 2000s tunes, which was fantastic - especially at the second bar we went to which basically seemed like the DJ was playing my college playlist. Certainly helps to get in the party mood when your party music comes on, you know what I mean?

We had to roll out early the next morning so that everyone could catch their planes, trains, and automobiles back home. When it was all said and done, though, it was a fantastic weekend celebrating our friend and I am so looking forward to their wedding in a couple months!!!

I headed back up to Charleston to spend the day with the aforementioned friends who recently moved (back) there. The theme of this weekend was definitely "reconnecting with people I miss" and gosh, it was good to see people that I love after having just moved way the hell across the country from everyone I know. But by the end of the weekend, I was ready to go home and start settling in to California - which is, ultimately, one of my favorite parts of traveling. I love exploring and seeing new places, but coming home always just feels a little bit sweeter after being away.

And it always makes me look forward to the next adventure.

meet me in st. louis [18]

Shortly after arriving in California, we turned right around and hopped on a plane to head halfway back across the country for a wedding. Which was a great excuse for us to add another state and a few more airports to the list. Our day began quite early with a 7:something AM flight out of San Jose - our closest major airport, which is also an hour away, so we hit the road by 4something-entirely-too-early-o'clock. Luckily, the rules of society don't apply to post-security airports, so I definitely had a mimosa at 6:45 am before we hopped on our first flight to Denver:

                         

 


I had heard that Denver was a bit of a bumpy airport to fly into and out of, so I tried to prepare my anxious-flyer-self appropriately, but still freaked out a little bit as we came into the airport. Even Max the incredibly experienced flyer said it was uncomfortable, and we bounced off the runway as we landed which was a new and mildly terrifying experience for me. But all was well! We found the New Belgium bar and got ourselves some lunch and beer before once again flying the friendly skies:

     

 


And then we arrived in St. Louis! We were attending one of Max's fraternity brothers' weddings, so we met up with the college gang for some food and drinks the first night we were there. A lot of the people at this wedding weren't able to attend our wedding, so it was great to catch up with some of the group that we haven't seen in the better part of a year.

Sunday morning, before the wedding, a group of us headed to the City Museum. Guys, this is one of the coolest places I have ever been. It's basically just a giant playground in the middle of the city, with a rooftop area and a cave system and a whole lot of things to climb on. My probably-a-monkey-in-a-past-life-husband was THRILLED. And it was so, so cool to look out over St. Louis from above:

Plus they had airplanes to climb in, an adult ball pit, and a plethora of other activities: 

Following our City Museum adventure (seriously SO FUN if you're ever in St. Louis you HAVE TO GO!!!!!), we got cleaned up and headed off to the wedding. It was absolutely beautiful and we had such a blast celebrating an awesome couple with so many wonderful people. Plus - we clean up good:

                                 

 

Monday morning post-wedding found us at the celebratory brunch, which was delicious - I am still always amazed when hotel-catered brunches are that good - and then a group of us who had some time to kill before our flights home headed down to see the Arch. Now, I am mildly claustrophobic, and I very much dislike elevators or anything resembling elevators, so I did not go up to the top of the Arch. Everyone else in the group did, however, and sent me some pictures:

   

Meanwhile, I took some photos on the ground level:

                      

 

We followed up the Arch trip with lunch and then made our way over to the airport. It started POURING as we were driving to the airport - like, the heavens opened up and we got drenched in the five feet between the car and the door overhang. And, unfortunately, my beloved yellow sunglasses did not survive the weekend. But, after a wonderful weekend, we were off - St. Louis to Denver to San Jose, Chucks and all. I never thought St. Louis would be a place I'd want to go back to, let alone go to in the first place, but I would definitely not hesitate to visit again.

                    

settling in : the beginning of monterey [17]

Hey y'all! Sorry for the radio silence. Turns out the actual moving part of this move has kept us pretty busy - not to mention two trips back out of state almost immediately after arriving in California (posts about those cities to come).

We have been in Monterey for almost three weeks now, and just moved into our house yesterday. Our stuff won't arrive for another five days, so we are making do with what we've got. I am trying very hard not to go to Target and BUY ALL THE THINGS until our stuff gets here, but I am SO excited to decorate and arrange and design and pretend I'm on an HGTV show.

For the first time in my post-grad life, I have a YARD, and a non-galley kitchen, and an actual house. We (humans) are thrilled to have more room to live, and the dog is already loving her yard. The cat is thoroughly enjoying the multi-shelved closet until she decides it's time to explore the rest of the house.

Monterey has been good to us so far. There is a year round farmers market downtown, which is full of all sorts of awesome stuff. I needed to eat a vegetable, so we went and got some produce at last week's market, and all of it was phenomenal. It's a major change for me to go from meh-produce at Stop and Shop to buying produce from the people that took it from the ground.

Speaking of which - did I mention our house has an avocado tree out front?!?

Anyways. So we have done a bit of exploring, shopping, and plenty of eating in these parts already. Alvarado St. and surrounding areas in downtown has a TON of restaurants, including a poke place called The Poke Lab which might be my favorite place so far, Alvarado Street Brewing Company, a place called Bull and Bear Pub Whiskey Bar and Taphouse which tells you all you need to know about it, Fieldwork Brewing Company that is based out of Berkeley but has a beer garden in Monterey, a bagel place, a Jamba Juice, assorted Mediterranean and Persian and other international cuisines. There is also a Ramen restaurant that we keep managing to go to when it's closed, but I will eventually get to try it.

We have also spent a little bit of time in Carmel - the shopping area in Carmel Plaza, mostly, as well as a winery in the Carmel Valley. The scenery there is a.ma.zing...we drove along the scenic oceanside drive and the houses are incredible and the beaches are incredible. The Pacific is COLD, and the weather here is a perfect 65 and foggy/partly cloudy every day, so we haven't spent much time doing the standard Beach Days that we got used to in New England.

So, we are slowly but surely getting our lives in order and settling into Monterey, especially now that our insane travel is over. Oh, you thought we were done traveling when we arrived in California? That's a funny joke. Five days after arriving, we flew out to St. Louis for a wedding, and two days after returning from that, I flew back to the East Coast to go to a bachelorette party in Savannah. We are really living the "can't stop, won't stop" life - but I am looking forward to not traveling for a bit. Blog posts for those cities up next! But first, enjoy some of the pictures of Monterey so far:

We did a short hike in a park outside Monterey. We only did about half of the trail, since we had other things to take care of that day, but I wasn't upset about cutting it short after this view.

Our first California winery experience! Folktale Winery and Vineyards in Carmel. Gorgeous setting, fantastic wines.

And, of course, the Pacific Ocean.