Plymouth & Cape Cod

I was in Massachusetts this past weekend for my cousins wedding. He's the first one of us to get hitched so it was really exiting getting all the family together. We stayed in a hotel in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The day before the wedding, my mom and I roamed the cute ocean front town and wandered in and out of the rows of antique and boutique shops. We met up with my dad to see Plymouth rock, which wasn't what I expected at all. I was a small glued together rock that was caged in. overall an odd experience. But no matter, we all went to lunch at a sea food restaurant. I forget what it was called but I do remember picking up on some of the quirky names of items on the menu, like Chowdah. A nice spin on a Mass accent. My dad and his family are from Vermont so they too have a little bit of that New England accent but no nearly as bad as the family my cousin married into. They're all from Mass and talk without R's, it was entertaining.

The Wedding was beautiful, it was down around the Cape at Tabor Academy. They had the ceremony right on the water with boats and the sunset in the background. It was a really beautiful setting. My cousin loves sailing so it was nice that they had the marina in the background. He even proposed to his new wife on a sail boat. I don't know if this was for real or not but when they first did their wedding registry, it was for Boston Whaler, the boating company! He thought someone was going to buy him a boat. The family quickly made him change that.

Pocantico Hills

Pocantico Hills is a hamlet in the village of Sleepy Hollow in the town of Mount Pleasant in God knows what city in Westchester county in the state of New York, yeah mouth full...New York's weird like that. Pocantico Hills is a school which to my knowledge the Rockefeller family donated the money to build, pool included. It's very secluded and hard to find. The school sits on acres of land in the middle of Rockefeller owned parks. I've worked as a life guard at Pocantico Hills residential pool for 5 summers, this being my 6th. I taught swim lesions and coached the swim team. (undefeated season I might add) What makes this place interesting is the people that work there and the activities we do to entertain ourselves. Being a Hamlet, Pocantico doesn't have very many regular visitors to its pool so on quiet days or rainy days the staff finds the most absurd forms of entertainment. Our boss bought a surf board to "teach waterfront safety" but it was really just an excuse for all of us to surf across the diving bowl when no patrons are using the pool. It rained today, but with no thunder we were good to go. We try and get two people to run and surf together; we have competitions to see which team can get the farthest. For added difficulty sometimes you'll get tennis balls thrown at you or someone will jump off the high dive to makes waves so you tip and fall in. Other than surfing our staff has made up our own game called foot-skit-ball; The object of the game is to throw a football from one end of a basketball court to the other trying to make the football into the hoop. You get points for hitting the backboard and net but you get the most points for getting the ball into the hoop. We also play numerous rounds of home run derby and uno. I'd say we have it pretty good at the pool; a lot of play for very little work and pretty high pay.

D.C.

I went to visit my friend in D.C. this weekend. She just graduated Loyola in the spring and moved down there shortly after because luckily she got a job. Through my observations I concluded that D.C. is a post grad's dream. It's swarming with young twenty-somethings; much like the typical Loyola student, they're quite preppy and, from my experience, a lot of fun.

The road that leads from Bethesda, Maryland into D.C. is called Wisconsin Ave. This strip supports high end shops and trendy resturants. Although I didn't really get into the heart of D.C. during my visit, from what I did encounter seemed a lot different from NYC due to one small fact: trees. I was surprised at the upkeep of D.C.'s plant life, it's not as concrete as New York.

On this trip I realized that life after college is not to be dreaded. I also think that I'd like to consider my options in D.C. for work after I graduate; Before I only really thought about New York because I'm familiar with it. But from what I saw, I like the looks of our nation's capital.

LBI

Aside from my frequent trips to Avalon, I also visited Long Beach Island this summer. I went down for a weekend with some of my roommates. LBI is another beach location on the Jersey Shore, but it's a little more commercial than Avalon. LBI is also much bigger. I'd have to say that although I enjoyed my trip down to LBI I much prefer Avalon; it's probably just because I've been going to Avalon for years and this was my first visit to LBI and I don't know the area as well. In my comparison of the two vacation spots, LBI definitely has better beaches. Sadly the beaches in Avalon are eroding. If you try to walk out on the beach at 13th street, where I stay, you'd find a pretty steep cliff. The beach had eroded so much that there isn't even sand left. Bulldozers and Trucks speckle the doons in hopes of restoring the once beautiful beaches. In LBI I spent practically the entire weekend on the beach. The beaches were well maintained and completely in tack. I suppose it's the same for both but trying to eat between the hours of 7 and 9 in LBI is definitely a challenge. My friends and I drove around from place to place trying to get a table, but places were either way too expensive or way too crowed. We finally ate at the Boat House; it's a cute place but the food was awful and it was kind of tacky. Although more expensive, restaurants in Avalon, I find, to be all in all a pleasant dinning experience. I'm not trying to put LBI down, because I really did like it, but I am certainly biased toward Avalon.

NYC

York road's illustrious Pizza Valla, or Yai Yai's as it is currently known now, can be equated to the hot dog stand outside Grand Central Station. Both support swarms of people at approximately 2 in the morning and both in my personal opinion are not so appetizing but morph into something irresistible after a night out. I have found myself supplementing NYC hot dogs in the absence of Pizza Valla to please my late night food cravings. So naturally, last night after waiting about ten minutes for the line to disperse, I happily chowed down a very authentic NYC hot dog.

Grand Central Station is probably the most famous train station in the US, because of this many New York set movies show sweeping scenes of the beautifully crafted station with its teal blue ceiling that maps out the night sky's constellations. Last night film crews were set up smack dab in the middle of the station. Someone yelled that they were filming scenes for Step Up 3. I tried extremely hard to get myself in as an extra in this movie, all the while stuffing my face with a hot dog from the cart outside. So if you happen to see the movie, look out for me: blond girl, green dress, probably ketchup on her face and a hot dog wrapped in aluminum foil in my hand.

Avalon, NJ

Most New Yorkers turn their noses up at the thought of New Jersey. Truth is, as much as we joke around about the dirty jerz, we can't get enough of the Jersey Shore come summer. I am no exception to this rule; My friends and I always kick off our summer in Avalon. Typically Avalon is notoriously expensive, this is true, but I think I may have found a glimmer of light that breaks this notion.

I just got back from my second trip down to Avalon this summer. I was down celebrating my friend's birthday and no doubt spent way more that I wanted to. The whole weekend my friend, who moved down the shore full time for the summer, couldn't stop talking about this antique store. She works at the White Brier, a restaurant directly behind the Princeton. Anyway, right next door is Avalon Antiques. It's this huge antique store that supports anything and everything from dinning room chairs to bracelets. You really need a good hour to rummage through this place but everything I stumbled upon I wanted to buy. It was like hunting for treasure inside a treasure chest. The best part about it was that everything was so cheap; and not the cheap that breaks, the kind of cheap that it's like a crime if you pass it up.

I bought a handful of jewelry, each piece for around 10 dollars, which is almost unheard of in Avalon. I always thought shopping in Avalon stopped at the Closet or the Preppy Palm, but, this antique store makes me want to drive the 3 hours it takes to get down to Avalon just to shop there.