lancaster travelogue.

I still haven't told you all about Lancaster last weekend - sorry for the delay! It was a great getaway. It rained almost the entire time but turns out Lancaster isn't a bad place to be in the rain. Here is the long and short of it...

After renting a car at DCA, we hit the road on Friday night - we really just wanted to get north of Baltimore and as far as we could before we had to pull over and find a place to watch Michigan play. Not pictured is the random Chilis bar we ended up at in the middle of Maryland. It was a very close game - I can tell you that the staff at Chilis was not prepared for us to be decked out in maize and blue and to take their t.v. hostage. Michigan won and we were back in the car and in Lancaster by about 11. Not bad! 

We stayed at the Lancaster Arts Hotel - an old tobacco warehouse. It was a great stay. 

On Saturday morning, we woke up and hustled over to the Central Market. The market is in a beautiful 120 year old brick building in the center of town and the market has actually been running for 275 years! The market is fantastic. 

We bought candles and jams. We also bought this great pretzel mix (the plan was to make these for Final Four watching this weekend to watch Michigan but since they lost we are going to have to find another time...)

We also picked up these sweet and hot jam sauces for crackers and cheese...

And of course, we had to try a couple fresh donuts from an Amish bakery....

Our plan had always been to take a long drive through Amish country, so the fact that it was raining, wasn't a real damper on our plans. We jumped in the car and started a very wide, long route....

To save any of you some time if you ever head to Lancaster, there wasn't much of anything to the west of Lancaster to see...so just head east and wander the roads. We stopped in Lititz and went to the Wilbur Chocolate Company. Turns out Ben has family roots in this area (more on this to come) and he was very excited to buy some Wilbur buds. They are little chocolate bites...

On the way out of town, we spotted the Julius Sturgis Pretzel Bakery. Naturally we stopped to taste test...

Turns out it was founded in 1861 and was the country's first commerical pretzel bakery...

We moved on to Ephrata from here and then swung south to New Holland. Along the way, we passed this great barn....

And the occasional Amish buggy...

New Holland was great for two reasons. The first is that Ben has a lot of family history here. His grandmother was born in New Holland and his mother's family have owned the Country Motor Squire Inn for a long time. Ben has memories of playing behind it on the train tracks (where have the days gone that kids were left to play on the train tracks behind a motor inn?).  So, we stopped in to the Motor Inn and their restaurant to pay homage. Ben ended up making friends with the new owner and talked with him for a while. We took a lot of pictures of the inn, the restaurant and Ben in front of the inn and the restaurant to send to his mom!

There is no connection to Ben's family, but Ben indulged me and let me wander through this great little cemetery in the middle of town while he sat in the car. Have I mentioned lately how much I love cemeteries?! This cemetery was very small and non-descript except for two really cool parts. There must have been a time when they delineated down to the day that the person lived...there were dozens of these types in a row...

And then I found this entire section, I have never seen so many like this before, where the stones are so old that they don't even show the etchings anymore...beautiful though.

As we were driving out of the cemetery, we spotted this thrift store on the corner. We decided to head in...why not, right?!

Oh man, we loved it in here. The place went on room after room. It was a disaster. And by that I mean, a disaster packed with excitement. The amount of crap in there was amazing but we found some total gems. That is going to have to be another post at some point soon - but it was a lot of fun to comb through....

Ben at one point found these old trucks he used to play with as a kid and was thoroughly foused in the toy truck section for at least 5 minutes!

We finally got ourselves back in the car and moved on. By this point, we were getting tired and hungry. Mary doesn't do very well when she isn't fed. We decided to go back to Lancaster to eat a late lunch. But then we entered the town of Intercourse and spotted this barn.

It was a big red barn, so yes, we obviously stopped to go in. We also paid a visit to the Amish wood furniture store next door....and finally got back on the road again. By the time we were in Lancaster, we grabbed lunch at the Prince Street Cafe - great little place - we would recommend it...

After lunch, we realized that we wouldn't be able to get ice cream after dinner, so we had to pop into Carmen & David's Creamery to test it out....fantastic Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough!

At this point we had driven in the car all day and eaten ourselves into oblivion, so we took a nap to reboot and get ready for dinner. We had dinner at john j jeffries. The restaurant convenient also happened to be in our hotel so I had a strong cocktail. All in all, the food was good. Not sure we would tell you to go there for your only dinner in town though....

On Sunday, we woke up and grabbed breakfast at a great little place, On Orange, and we also stopped into the Fractured Prune to try out their made-to-order donuts - a fitting end to our Lancaster excursion!

barred up.

Ben finished taking the Bar today! Hallelujah! I am a proud girlfriend but my bias is not relevant to the truth of how hard he has worked. Congrats to all who just finished (including of course Emmy, Friedman, Aaron and Charlie) and cheers!

(I took this photo of Ben in Ann Arbor his first semester of law school...i love it. And him....)

homestretch.

After three years of distance, Ben and I have less than one month left to go!

I can't wait for him to be back in DC. It isn't as though that much will change but because our days together are packed when we see each other, life will have more a routine when he is back. It sounds so trite, but even just enjoying the seasons together - I am so excited for snow this winter on a weekend when we can just hang out and cook in the house together! I can't wait for the occasional weekend trip to new places like Asheville, Tennessee, the Outerbanks, Lancaster, and Shenandoah (though I will miss regular visits to Ann Arbor). I want him home so we can tackle some house projects together like the backyard and painting. I will appreciate even more now on a weeknight being able to talk about the day together with some wine and having more time for friend time.

One month.

dog love.

Adam and Lauren pulled in a number of really lovely touches in their wedding ceremony...including this reading, How Falling in Love is like Owning A Dog. Loved it!

How Falling in Love is like Owning a Dog
by Taylor Mali

First of all, it’s a big responsibility,
especially in a city like New York.
So think long and hard before deciding on love.
On the other hand, love gives you a sense of security:
when you’re walking down the street late at night
and you have a leash on love
ain’t no one going to mess with you.
Because crooks and muggers think love is unpredictable.
Who knows what love could do in its own defense?

On cold winter nights, love is warm.
It lies between you and lives and breathes
and makes funny noises.
Love wakes you up all hours of the night with its needs.
It needs to be fed so it will grow and stay healthy.

Love doesn’t like being left alone for long.
But come home and love is always happy to see you.
It may break a few things accidentally in its passion for life,
but you can never be mad at love for long.

Is love good all the time? No! No!
Love can be bad. Bad, love, bad! Very bad love.

Love makes messes.
Love leaves you little surprises here and there.
Love needs lots of cleaning up after.
Somethimes you just want to get love fixed.
Sometimes you want to roll up a piece of newspaper
and swat love on the nose,
not so much to cause pain,
just to let love know Don’t you ever do that again!

Sometimes love just wants to go out for a nice long walk.
Because love loves exercise. It will run you around the block
and leave you panting, breathless. Pull you in different directions
at once, or wind itself around and around you
until you’re all wound up and you cannot move.

But love makes you meet people wherever you go.
People who have nothing in common but love
stop and talk to each other on the street.

Throw things away and love will bring them back,
again, and again, and again.
But most of all, love needs love, lots of it.
And in return, love loves you and never stops.

hot date.

Ben is in the homestretch and close to being done with the semester and back for the summer. I have been really missing him of late and actually really needing him here, so I especially can't wait. Lucky for both of us, I have channeled my anticipation into planning a date night! Its a surprise, so I can't tell you what the plan is but I can tell you this: 1) We are going to dress nice but not too nice 2) We are going to be mixing with some new people. Potentially very cool people. 3) Pretty sure we are leaving our wallets at home 4) We will take the BMW to get there (by BMW, I mean the "Bus, Metro or Walk").

I have never surprised Ben with a date, so I'm looking forward to this. And, as an aside, when Ben was courting me hard he would send me the funniest someecards. And to his credit, he was using them before they became popular. I so wish I had saved some of them, but to this day, even just the mention of a someecard makes me smile......