A Cleveland Christmas

A week before Christmas, Adam and I drove out to visit my parents in Cleveland. We weren't going to be able to see them for the actual day, so we decided to celebrate early.

As soon as we got there Adam's BFF Pearl came over to hang out with him.

We weren't at their house long before we decided to go out to dinner at the Great Lakes Brewing Company and visit the West Side Market. Ready for an almost all black and white photo post? OK, let's go!

We walked through the market on our way to the brewery to check out the place. We've all heard really amazing things about it and the different vendors there. I had no idea that there would be so many! We ended up buying some yummy cannolis - good stuff.

We didn't spend too much time at the market, because we wanted to put our name in at the restaurant.

I was actually surprised how big the Great Lakes Brewing Company was. There were 3 floors, it was really spread out, and there was a lot of seating. I guess I'm just used to the small breweries around here. It was pretty packed though - I think we waited about 45 minutes to get a table.

They had a ton of great brews available. I'm not a fan of the Christmas Ale (their seasonal pick), so I ended up choosing the Dortmunder Gold.

Downstairs, there was a whole other bar. This place was pretty cool, you could tell the building was really old by all little details that were in this room.

Here's me and my friend Dortmunder.

After dinner, we headed back to the house and had our Christmas present exchange. This year my parents gave me a new sewing machine. Totally pumped about this, since I've been using my mom's from the 1980's that has some... uhh... issues. Adam got a new pea coat. We win!

Here's another gratuitous cat shot to finish off the post! Ollie is so stinking handsome.

The Strip District and Donuts

On Saturday, Adam and I drove over to have lunch in the Strip District. We also wanted to pick up a few Pittsburgh themed things and there's no better place.

The Strip District has some pretty amazing old buildings and murals. If it didn't feel like -10º out, I would have asked Adam to walk around a bit more.

After lunch, we followed our noses towards the smell of freshly made donuts and were led to Peace, Love, and Little Donuts.

They had a bunch of different flavors of their mini donuts.

We settled on a half dozen of cinnamon sugar, maple frosted, honey glazed, samoa, chocolate chip cookie dough and maple bacon.

Oh tiny donuts, how I love you.

PS. My friends, Diana and Kristi and I started a photography blog based on our love for Disney and helping people who are interested in learning more about how to enjoy your photography either while you're visiting the parks or even at home. Be sure to check out The Glass Slipper Blog. We've got a lot of fun things planned and we can't wait to share it with you!

Pittsburgh!

A few weeks ago I drove out to Pittsburgh to help Adam move from his temporary housing into his more permanant apartment. I've never been to the 'Burgh as an adult, the closest I came was driving through on our way to my parents place back in May after my lab mate, Stephanie's, wedding. 

My week there was spent driving around the city, getting acquainted with things, visiting IKEA, eating Indian Food from a grocery store in the park. I was tempted to not go back to Massachusetts.

One of the first nights there, we ate at a local burger bar called Burgatory. They have a milkshake list to be envied. We chose the PB&J, well, I let Adam choose the PB&J. I would have been just as happy with the coffee & donuts, the salted nutella crunch, or the campfire s'mores ones. We also ordered a "create your own" burger each. Delicious.

While I was in Pittsburgh, I actually had a lot of work to do, so I holed myself up in the Carnegie Library for most of the week. I didn't realize that you could see the dinos at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History from the 2nd floor stacks, until one of my last days there. I didn't get to visit the museum, but seeing those dinos got me excited to go!

I also spent a day at the Phipps Conservatory, which I'll talk about in a separate post. I couldn't fit all the beauty in this one!

My last day before driving home, Adam and I headed out to Cleveland to visit my parents. That's one nice thing about living in Pittsburgh, I'll be able to visit with them more often. I rarely see them and it's been that way for the last 8 years, since I moved away from home. Anyway, we walked into the garage, which has become my grandpa's boat building room. How amazing is it that he put this thing together from scratch (with some help from my dad and my uncle Brian)? All those little pieces, even I would probably have a tough time!

I always love visiting with my parents, because I get to see my favorite kitty, Ollie. 

On my drive home, I stopped in Scranton, PA to visit with my great aunts. I haven't seen them in over a year and I wanted to stop by and spend some time with them. When I left their house, I saw a beautiful rainbow. What a great ending to a great trip!

San Francisco: Day Two

On our second day, we kind of wanted to take things in stride and just walk around again. We're not huge planners if you're seeing a trend here. Adam wanted to keep an eye on the keynote from WWDC, so he stayed at the hotel and I walked around a little down towards Yerba Buena Gardens and past the WWDC line (which was still around the block 10 minutes after the keynote started).

After the keynote was over, I came back to the hotel and grabbed Adam to head out for the day. We looked the day before and found that Adam's favorite food truck, Curry Up Now was down the road on Bush St. for lunch so we walked over and got some sexy fries and a chicken tikka masala burrito for lunch. I promise you, the sexy fries are much more delicious than they look. They're waffle cut sweet potato fries topped with chicken tikka masala. You can't go wrong, unless you don't like Indian food.

After lunch, we climbed the hill to the closest cable car stop (two blocks away) so we didn't have to climb one of the largest hills in San Francisco to get to the top of Nob Hill and the Fairmont Hotel.

I forgot to mention in my last post that we had purchased City Passes at the Alcatraz Cruises landing on Pier 33. I bought the City Pass the year before when I tagged along with Adam to San Fran and while he was attending WWDC, I was living it up and touring the city. For around $70 you get admission to many of the big attractions in San Fran: Cal Academy of Sciences, DeYoung Museum or the Exploratorium, SF MoMA, and Aquarium of the Bay. If you purchase the pass at the Alcatraz Cruises pier, you get a trip to Alcatraz included in the fee. If you purchase it elsewhere, you get a tour of the bay on the Blue & Gold Fleet, but don't get to set foot on Alcatraz. Trust me, it's worth the trip to Pier 33 to pick up your pass, Alcatraz was probably my favorite part of the whole package (well, that and the Cal Academy of Sciences, be still my nerdy heart).

The nice thing about the City Pass is that it gives you a 7 day unlimited MUNI/Cable Car pass. The Cable Car passes alone run you around six bucks a ride (that's one way!) or around 14 bucks for an unlimited day pass. I know that locals think the Cable Cars are touristy and few people ride them, but I've found that they're helpful to get down to the piers and they're fun. Since I am a tourist, I might as well get the most out of it.

I was itching to show Adam the Fairmont Hotel since I stayed there and attended a conference last October with my lab mate, Kate. The place is pretty amazing and has so much history. Like the Ferry Building, it survived the earthquake of 1906, but it was severely damaged after the fires that followed the earthquake ripped through it. I feel the need to mention that the closet in our room was about 6-feet wide. We found out that it was because it was designed to hold the large trunks that were traveling staples back in the early 1900's. Girl's got to have her clothes.

This was our view from our room the night we arrived and our view at sunrise the morning after. Isn't it amazing?

It's way too expensive for our poor grad student salaries to stay there normally (we got a great rate when we attended the conference), but I wanted to show Adam the views from the beautiful rooftop garden. Maybe some day we'll get to stay there. Our room was the third one up and to the left of the balcony in the photo below.

We decided to walk the rest of the way down to the bay, since it was all downhill. We happened to walk by the Cable Car Museum and figured we'd stop since we were passing it anyway. They always announce it on the Cable Car when they stop there and it's free admission. It was actually pretty fascinating to see how the cables work and to see the historic cars they had on display. Things sure have changed from when the cars were first introduced.

We figured we could treat ourselves to a cupcake for walking all the way down to the water, so we stopped in Ghirardelli Square. I thought these little birds splashing around in the fountain were adorable. After our stop we wanted to walk down to Municipal Pier that circles the aquatic park cove.

We've never walked this pier before and it was probably a good thing we avoided it. Between the Segway tours that were speeding up and down it (seriously, the Segway guide basically said to the tour, "Have at it.") and the wind that made it feel like we were being forced backwards/forwards/sidewards I don't think I'd walk this again. It does give lovely views of the Golden Gate bridge and the city though.

I got photobombed by a seagull while trying to take a picture of the city with my phone. This might be my favorite shot of the whole trip. It's been my phone home screen since I took it.

We stopped at the Maritime Museum on our walk back. I had been inside the museum before, but hadn't seen their large maritime exhibit "A Walk Along the Waterfront". It oddly reminded me of an exhibit in Disney, even the musty smell was familiar (weird, I know). We sat and watched the video that described the history of boats in the San Francisco bay and walked around and looked at the other historical information they had to offer. Did you know that there are a whole bunch of old ships buried under buildings in San Francisco? No? Well now you do! The guy floating in a life saver from the ceiling kind of cracked us up. Not sure what he was doing up there?

By the time we left the museum, it was getting pretty late and we were ready for dinner, since we had probably walked a few miles at that point. I don't even remember where we ate that night. It could have been In-N-Out. I wouldn't be surprised if it was, would you? :)

Next up: Cal Academy of Sciences!

San Francisco: Our First Full Day!

We had a few reasons that we booked our trip in June during what was probably one of the busiest weeks in San Francisco. The first reason was that my very first friend from college was getting married about an hour outside of San Francisco in mid-June and I really wanted to attend her wedding. We both happened to have January admission to the college we attended (there were only about 30 of us in this admission class), we lived in the same dorm and had a lot of the same classes together. We lost touch a bit after college (what can I say, things get crazy when you leave school!), but we've been fortunate to reconnect a few times over the last two years in San Francisco where she had been living and I was visiting.

Adam and I have been to San Francisco three years in a row now. Adam attended Apple's WWDC (World Wide Developers Conference) the first two years we visited, but unfortunately he wasn't able to get a ticket this year. We decided to go to San Fran during the same week as the conference anyway and Adam agreed to take a real vacation and tour the city this time. I was pretty stoked since he hadn't had the time the last two years and I had so many things I wanted to show him.

We got an early head start out of our hotel (the only nice thing about jet lag from the East coast) and decided to walk the Embarcadero to Fisherman's Wharf to grab some In-N-Out burgers for lunch. We figured if we walked the whole way there we wouldn't feel guilty about eating those delicious burgers and maybe some cupcakes after.

We walked down Bush St., the street that our hotel was on, and headed over to Market St. to catch up with the Embarcadero at the Ferry Building. I had actually never been this way before, but Adam had on his first trip to San Fran three years ago. The Ferry Building was built in 1898 and survived the earthquakes of 1906 and 1989. It's amazing to think that 100 years ago they could build something so solid.

The walk from the ferry building down the Embarcadero was a nice one. It was breezy and lovely out that morning (although when is San Francisco not lovely?). From the Embarcadero you can see few of the cities landmarks like, Coit Tower and Treasure Island, which was home to the 1939-1940 World's Fair.

It was a leisurely 45 minute walk to get to In-N-Out burger from the Ferry Building and we got there just after they opened at 10:30 AM. It's kind of become a tradition that when we visit the West Coast, we stop at In-N-Out as soon as we arrive. It's kind of become a running joke with my family and we even got In-N-Out t-shirts as a wedding gift from my family in California (Thanks Aunt Sharon, Uncle Brian, and Kira!).

After lunch, we trekked up the hill to Ghirardelli Square to grab some Kara's Cupcakes (our favorite!!) to bring back to the hotel for our late night snack. They have THE BEST s'mores cupcake e-ver. I have dreams of the fluffy marshmallow pillow topping and the graham cracker crust. Adam went with a strawberry cream cupcake, which was their seasonal special. We also picked up a red velvet and a peanut butter milk chocolate ganache for later.

Speaking of cupcakes, after we had checked in the previous night, we headed out to Bristol Farms on Market Street to grab some drinks and dinner. On our way over we passed a cupcake stand that we hadn't seen before called Cako. We decided to check out what they had to offer and ended up bringing two cupcakes, a snickerdoodle and a maple bacon back with us. I liked the snickerdoodle cake it was all yummy and cinnamon-y. Adam really enjoyed the maple bacon one, but he likes the one from our local cupcake joint, Kayce Cupcakes best. ;)

Ok, so back to business. We kind of felt disgusting after eating a burger, fries and a cupcake, so we decided to walk back to our hotel via the Embarcadero so we could check out the Ferry Building Marketplace on the way back.

On the way we saw a blimp, which was sponsored by some vodka company, flying overhead. Since we were kind of walking slower than before, I was having fun looking at all the different styles of the piers. This one in particular, Pier 17, was home to a chocolate company and was my favorite. I was crushing hard on those huge wooden doors. Gorgeous.

We finally made it to the Ferry Building and decided to walk around inside a bit to check out what it had to offer. There was everything from restaurants to pottery to mushrooms. Yes, there was a store dedicated to fungus.

After we felt that we had seen enough, we headed back to the hotel to relax a bit before dinner. We were going to walk down to the Ferry Building for dinner, but about twenty feet from our hotel, I saw a sign for The Irish Bank restaurant, looked down at my aching-still-not-recovered feet, stopped to check reviews on Foursquare and told Adam, this was where we were eating dinner.

And it was good. I had a Boddingtons and shepherd's pie, by recommendation of a few people on Foursquare. I don't even remember what Adam had, but both he and I scarfed our dinner down quickly and were satisfied.

It was definitely a fun first day! Be sure to stay tuned for our trip recaps to Golden Gate Park and Alcatraz!

Boston: Second Anniversary Trip!

Our anniversary is coming up in a few weeks, but we decided to celebrate early because things are going to be hectic these next few weeks with Adam’s imminent departure. To be honest, we weren’t sure what we were going to do for our anniversary trip this year. We had planned to go to Boston, like we had done last year, but we were considering an apartment hunting trip to Pittsburgh instead. This is going to be a long post, so bear with me...

We had stayed at a Kimpton Hotel, Hotel Triton, when we were in San Francisco back in June (I promise that trip update is coming next!) and we had signed up for their loyalty program to take advantage of the free wi-fi they give. A few weeks ago, I got an email with some summer special rates at their three hotels in Boston. I forwarded the email to Adam and as soon as we decided that flying out to Pittsburgh, getting a hotel room, renting a car, and apartment hunting was not really how we wanted to spend our anniversary trip, we booked a room at the Nine Zero hotel in Boston. I’m glad we decided to do this instead.

Just look at that bed. I was in love with it and the awesome faux fur blanket. So plush. 

The room was nice and spacious, which was a huge difference from our room in San Francisco, which was more boutique-y (ie. smaller and quirky) than the Nine Zero. I was really impressed with the huge bathroom too. I was not expecting such large rooms for a hotel in downtown Boston!

The Nine Zero is in an awesome location right in the heart of the historic Government district and right on the Freedom Trail. For those of you familiar with Boston, we were about a block away from the Park Street T line. On our first night we ended up walking around near the hotel and had dinner at Boloco, which is Adam’s favorite burrito joint (the one near the hotel had one of those new Coke Freestyle machines, which is AMAZING). 

After dinner, we walked around Boston Common and Boston Public Garden. The big blue building that blends in with the sky is the John Hancock tower. On a clear day it almost disappears into the background.

I've been to Boston a number of times, but I've never seen the Make Way for Ducklings statues. They're actually kind of creepy looking if you think about it. 

It was a gorgeous night. We spent some time walking around near the swan boats in Boston Public Garden and even got to see a swan swimming around in the water. 

On our way back we passed by the State House. I think this is one of my favorite pictures from our trip. This fountain was lovely.

The next day, we headed out to the Food Truck Festival by way of Harvard. The building below is the Harvard Lampoon, the comedy publication that has a number of famous comedian alumni. I overheard a tour guide (in a historical costume, by the way) say that this isn't the oldest comedy magazine in the college circuit, Yale's is 4 years older.

After the Festival, we stopped at the Granary Burying ground, which is part of the Freedom Trail. Some notable people who are buried in this place are Sam Adams (as in who the beer was named after), Paul Revere, Mother Goose, and John Hancock. The big obelisk in the background belongs to Ben Franklin's parents.

 We could see this from our hotel window. Those big trees you see are located on the grounds of the cemetery.

The clouds were starting to roll in by this time and we wanted to hit up Mike's Pastry before the rain came. We walked down by the water in the North End and through Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park. I loved the arbors on this path all filled in with beautiful green vines.

The line for Mike's was crazy long, but we only waited about 15 minutes to get our pastries. I had read before we went that the lines inside aren't single file, so you better be somewhat aggressive or you'll be waiting forever to move up to the front. As soon as we were allowed inside (there was a girl acting as a bouncer at the door telling people outside when they could go in and where to stand) we fanned out (to make sure we had no cutters in front of us) and just kept moving up when the line moved. You can see how packed the place was and how necessary it is to do this. We ended up picking a lobster tail (which weighed like three pounds), a ricotta cannoli and a strawberry cannoli. Woah. I generally don't like cannolis because they're way too sweet. These were perfect. I was amazed at how light and delicious the filling in these were. The lobster tail was hands down our favorite, it's filled with a light and fluffy cream (similar to a cream puff) and the flaky pastry was perfectly crispy. We pretty much devoured that thing as soon as we opened the box.

On our way back we walked through the Haymarket Square open air market. I loved the metal newspapers and vegetables that are displayed in the cement outside the market. I've heard of the market, but never walked through it before. I couldn't believe how busy it was and how large it is. 

That evening we had torrential downpours so we had to stick with a restaurant near the hotel. We looked online and found that UBurger was just a few blocks away and had pretty favorable reviews. It reminded me of Five Guys, but the burger was surprisingly non-greasy and the fries were thin cut, which are my favorite. I would definitely eat here again.

On our last day we drove out to Cambridge to go to our favorite breakfast place, The Friendly Toast. We've been here a few times over the last couple of years and we've always had a good meal here. It's a pretty interesting little place. It's got lots of weird vintage finds, like a giant barbie mannequin that greets you at the door. Barbie's weave is looking a little ragged. Poor Barbie.

Even the tables are vintage. We had a Pepsi-Cola table with Spanish writing on it. I think it said "Ask for Pepsi". We both had the basic breakfast, which was two eggs (any style, we got them scrambled) home fries, and homemade toast. I also asked for a side of bacon. Yum.

After breakfast, we decided to take the T out to Newbury Street. On our way to the T, we found a Steve Jobs dedication plaque. Of course I made Adam take a picture with it, I mean, the guy is moving to Pittsburgh (and leaving me in MA) to work for Apple. :)

The main reason I wanted to check out Newbury St, was because Georgetown Cupcake had just opened a shop there. We've never actually been to one of their stores, but we've had the good fortune of eating their cupcakes a few times now. I follow them on Twitter and saw that their secret (free) cupcake of the day was lavender earl grey - one flavor we've never tried before. I also bought a plain vanilla cupcake.

We didn't end up eating the cupcakes until we got home, because we were so stuffed from breakfast. The lavender earl grey was so good. Probably one of my favorites from their shop!

It was a great trip and I'm sad we won't be able to visit Boston on a whim like this anymore when we move out to Pittsburgh. It's a great little city filled with so much amazing history!

Signing out. Until next time (YAY California trip!).