Vacation Recap

Well, the "vacation" part of my vacation is over. One more day to relax and get shit done before work on Monday. Here's a QUICK recap.

* Monday - The drive up to Hampton Beach, NH was smooth with no traffic. Checking into our hotel, the Boardwalk Inn, was pretty painless. Our room for the first 3 nights was right at the top of the stairs from the hotel side entrance. The room was basically a big, squishy bed and a TINY bathroom. The description of "Ocean View" was a little bit of a stretch. If you stood in the corner of the room and looked at an angle through the window you could see a sliver of ocean. The air was VERY hazy on Monday but we walked the beach for a little while after we checked in to the hotel, anyway. We had dinner at our hotel's restaurant. One thing I did notice right away is that the New England coast isn't a good place to be someone who doesn't like seafood. ;)

* Tuesday - At midnight my girlfriend let me open most of my birthday presents. She got me three AWESOME books of art (Tragic Kingdom, The Saddest Place on Earth and The Magic Bottle by one of my favorite artists, Camille Rose Garcia, a print of a robot with headphones and ORANGE paint to repaint my bike like I have been talking about for awhile. Slept. Woke up. Spent some time on the beach. Went out to a nice birthday dinner at the Ashworth by the Sea Hotel Dining Room. I ended up having a turkey dinner that made it feel like Thanksgiving. Overall it was a very nice birthday. :)

* Wednesday - Basically just hung out at the beach and the "boardwalk". We watched the fireworks on the beach from The Purple Urchin restaurant across the street from the beach. The food there was great and the service was good, too!

* Thursday - For Thursday night we switched to an ocean front room with a balcony at the same hotel. The room was bigger and nicer... and quieter, even... If we go back next year this is probably the room we'll try to get for the whole week. Thursday night we drove up to Wells, ME to go to The Steakhouse. It definitely lived up to the hype surrounding it. I had to park next door to the restaurant because the parking lot was more than full and we had to wait for almost an hour for a table but the food was amazing! It was well worth the wait.

* Friday - We checked out of the hotel and walked around the boardwalk for 40 minutes and decided it was too hot (95+ and humid) to walk across the hot sand on the beach and down to the water. I didn't want to be all hot and nasty for the start of the 3.5 hour drive home. The drive home wasn't bad, though. There were a couple spots of traffic here an there but nothing too bad.

Overall it was a amazing and relaxing week! The weather was much better than we expected. My birthday was very nice. Everything was great. I'm not looking forward to going back to work.

(Broken links removed February 7, 2017.)