Alexandria

A few Saturdays ago, I went to Old Town Alexandria with my friend, Heather. I've been to Alexandria before, but it's been a few years and I love it there. :)

 

Heather and I met up at the metro station closest to Old Town and started walking down King Street toward the Torpedo Factory (which was our first stop of the day). We ran into this butterfly mural along the way.

Also a lion!

I just thought I would clarify that I was not actually touching the painting. I just wanted to make it look like I was petting the lion. ;)

I love walking along King Street. There are so many shops and restaurants, it's fun to window shop as well as go into the shops sometimes too.

We made it to the Torpedo Factory. I love visiting there! The building was used as a place to build torpedoes after WW I but eventually became an art center.

Artists have studios here and display their art for sale. The artists are often in their studios so you can talk to them about their art. 

The dinosaur in the picture above is called Gluey Louie. See picture below to learn more about him.

 

I didn't take many pictures at the Torpedo Factory but I thoroughly enjoyed walking around and admiring people's creativity and talent. 

After the Torpedo Factory, we went to an ice cream and custard place. I think I got raspberry cheesecake ice cream and it was delicious!

The Creamery where we got our ice cream.

Our next stop was the Stabler-Leadbetter Apothecary Museum. We arrived at the museum and the next tour wasn't for another 45 minutes or so. We bought our tickets for the tour (which were $8 per person) and then headed over to Captain's Row (not too far away from the museum) until it was time for our tour. 

Captain's Row has cobblestoned streets and many of the homes on the street were built in the 18th and 19th century. It was a beautiful tree lined street with lovely homes. Apparently this street was home to many colonial sea captains and Revolutionary patriots.

The homes on Captain's Row were beautiful, with lovely details.

We spent some time on Captain's Row and then it was time to head back for our tour. 

If you go to the apothecary, I highly recommend doing the guided tour. When you do the guided tour, you get to see upstairs (when you do the self-guided tour, you do not).

The picture above and the picture below were taken by Heather. (I forgot to take pictures on the first floor of the apothecary so Heather let me use her pictures).

The first floor of the apothecary was where the customers would come to buy things when it was opened. I thought it was kind of pretty and well organized. 

This apothecary was in business from 1805 until 1930. A few years after it closed down someone bought the place and wanted to preserve it in the condition it was left in. So the museum we see today is pretty much what it looked like in 1930. I think it's pretty dang cool!

 

Upstairs of the apothecary wasn't quite as pretty but it was really cool to see though!

In the upstairs (where the picture above and below were taken) is where they stored the ingredients they needed for making medicines and also where they would mix the ingredients to make the medicines.

The tour was super interesting and I highly recommend visiting the apothecary if you're ever in Old Town Alexandria.

Just because I think this house is cool, we had to visit the Spite House. It's a house that was built in what used to be an alley. The former owner of one of the houses beside it were tired of people using the alley way as a shortcut and scraping the walls of his home with their horse drawn wagons that he decided to build a house there to close up the alley. 

The house is only 7 feet wide and 25 feet deep. Although the house had been a full-time residence for a long time, the current owner only lives there part-time and will sometimes let his friends and family stay there.

 

At this point of our day, it was time to eat! I had researched restaurants in Alexandria while I was planning the day and found this taco place had good reviews and was decently priced. The food was delicious! I definitely could have eaten another taco but I only ordered two. I enjoyed both of them thoroughly though. :) The taco place was called Don Taco Tequila Bar.

Also, can I just say I was tired from walking out in the heat so I was happy to be in an air conditioned building sitting down?!

Yes, we may have already had ice cream earlier in the day, but that didn't stop us from getting more. :)

We had actually seen this place as we were walking from the metro to our first stop of the day, but it wasn't open yet at that point. We decided to go there on our way back to the metro. 

The ice cream was delicious but it was a little expensive.

Overall it was a good day in Alexandria and we saw a lot of cool things and ate delicious food. Thanks Heather for coming with me on this outing!

The Dentist

This is a really boring post about my tooth pain and dentist appointments... so feel free to skip this post. I write this for my own record.

This last Sunday afternoon, I started feeling pain in my mouth. It wasn't constant but when it was there it was pretty damn painful. It was painful enough and often enough that on Monday afternoon, I called to make a dentist appointment. Since I do not have dental insurance or a job right now, it was a hard to convince myself that I wanted to call, but ultimately decided it was important although I knew it would be expensive. (I actually have a job lined up but I'm waiting for a security clearance and I have no idea how long that will take. But that's a story for another day.)

I set up my appointment for Wednesday morning. Honestly it was hard waiting to go to the dentist from Monday afternoon until Wednesday because I was in quite a bit of pain and pain killers were not helping me. I went to my appointment and the dentist told me I needed a root canal and a crown and she prescribed me antibiotics to help with the infection in my mouth as well as the pain. I know it takes time for antibiotics to kick in, but it never really helped with the pain. 

I set up an appointment with an endodontics office to get my root canal done. I had it scheduled for today, but I was in so much pain and since nothing was helping with the pain, I moved the appointment to yesterday. Thankfully the office had availability on such short notice. 

I went to that appointment and the dentist told me it was worse than she thought and I might have to get my tooth pulled and an implant. She said she would take a closer look at it and see if she thought getting a root canal was worth it. I started bawling at this point and couldn't stop. I felt bad, but I was so overwhelmed with how much this was all going to cost and the thought of being in pain longer that I couldn't help but cry. 

But thankfully when she looked at my tooth closer, she determined that I could get the root canal. I was glad mainly because I was worried about having to deal with the pain for another day (since I would have to go to an oral surgeon to get a tooth pulled) and I know the recovery from getting a tooth pulled is harder than a root canal. I guess getting a tooth pulled is cheaper than a root canal but also getting an implant is super expensive. 

Why do I tell this story? Honestly I don't really know. But I will say that it is super expensive to go the dentist without insurance. (I know it can be expensive with insurance too, but man oh man without insurance it's painful). Although it's going to be expensive for all of my procedures, I think it's worth it because the pain was really bad, it was getting hard to eat and it would've just kept getting worse if I didn't do anything. 

Also, take care of your teeth. It may seem annoying at times, brushing multiple times a day, flossing, getting regular teeth check ups etc but it's worth it if you don't get cavities or need a root canal or other such dental procedures.

Outer Banks, North Carolina- Day 3 and 4

Day 3- This day, Rachel, Cat and I were at the beach or the pool the whole morning. It was cloudy but thankfully not rainy that morning.

 

We had each brought our camping chairs from home on this trip so that we could use them at the beach. I have a camping chair and a foot stool. I am really happy with my foot stool (which was bought separately from the chair and I haven't been able to use much yet). It was lovely to have at the beach. :)

 

Where we set up our chairs at the beach happened to be right in front of this crab that kept on going in and out of this hole. Sometimes when it came up, it brought some sand with it. Meaning it looked like it was trying to make its hole bigger. (Cat took this picture as well as the picture below).

This is the same crab as the picture above. Although there were other crabs close by too, this one was the most interesting to watch.

I'm happy to report that I lathered sunblock on myself multiple times while we were at the beach and the pool and did not get too sunburn on this trip. 

I did get in the water a bit. I didn't want to get my hair wet so I didn't get all of the way in but I did get quite wet. The water was a bit cold, but I decided it was worth it.

I took a walk along the beach. It was lovely! The beach wasn't too crowded.

I like this shot I took!

After the beach, we decided to spend some time at the pool too. The pool was freezing, but once you're in there for a little while, you get used to it. Also they had the equipment to play corn hole in the pool area, so we played that for a little bit.

This was the name of the resort we stayed at! It was a decent place. The room we stayed in was an apartment with full on kitchen, bedroom, one and a half baths, living room, dining room etc. It had beach access and a big pool. I think all of us were happy with the resort.

After the beach and pool that morning, we ate at a pizza place for lunch that was recommended to Cat or Rachel. It was decent but I don't remember the name of the place. Whatever the pizza place was called, I would eat there again.

Cat also wanted to try paddle boarding. Cat had borrowed a paddle board from one of her co-workers and wanted to try it on the sound side of the island where the water was a lot calmer. We found a spot the day before that we thought would work. Cat tried to stand on the paddle board, but apparently we hadn't been able to blow it up enough for her to stand steadily on it. Since she wasn't able to stand on it, she just sat on it and paddled around on it.

While Cat was paddle boarding, Rachel and I just sat on the dock with our feet in the water, watching Cat and enjoying the nice weather. The weather really did end up being so nice. :)

As we were walking back to the car from the dock, we saw some ladies looking at something in the water.  We decided to look too and saw what they were talking about. If you look closely in the grass near the water, you can see the brown muskrat with a long tail.

After we got back to the resort and got ready for our evening activities, I realized that I needed some alone time. I knew what we would be doing that evening would take up the whole evening until after dark and I just didn't think I could handle it. So I opted to stay at the resort by myself while Cat and Rachel went and did the evening activities. 

I am so glad I stayed. I needed that alone time. I read my book out on the balcony of our apartment, I watched a couple episodes of the Korean drama I was watching at the time, I ate dinner, I just chilled in the apartment by myself. I was going to take a walk, but it ended up raining and thundering and lightning so the walk didn't happen, but that's okay.

One of Cat's and Rachel's evening activities got cancelled because of the rain so they came back to the resort a little earlier than expected. But they picked me up and we got ice cream. :)

This ice cream was really good, the flavor was good, the creaminess was good, but I feel like it didn't have enough chunks in it. But I would definitely get ice cream there again!

Day 4- This day was the day we drove back home to Virginia. But before we drove home, we had a couple of places we wanted to get to before we left.

This morning I did get some time to read on the balcony one last time before we checked out of the resort. It was a nice morning.

The building that our apartment was in at the resort. :)

Our first stop was Corolla Beach in Currituck. Apparently wild horses will come running along this beach sometimes. We stayed here for a few minutes and soon realized that the likelihood of us actually seeing any horses would be very slim. So we left.

 

 Currituck Beach Lighthouse. I loved this lighthouse! I thought it was so pretty!

I really liked this lighthouse!

A cool bridge near the lighthouse!

There were just so many picturesque places to see here! So pretty!

Another view of the lighthouse!

After we finished at the lighthouse, it was time for us to head back home to Virginia.

I'm thankful I was able to go on this trip with Cat and Rachel. Overall I had a good time with lovely company and beautiful scenery.

Outer Banks, North Carolina- Day 1 and 2

Day 1- My friends, Cat and Rachel, invited me to join them on their four day trip to Outer Banks, NC. At first I didn't want to commit to something a couple of months in advance because I didn't know what my job situation would be at the time. Once it got closer, though, and no jobs had come up to keep me from going, I let them know I could go. Thankfully, they were still willing to let me go, although I gave them not as much notice as I should have. 

We drove from Virginia to Duck, NC (where we stayed the whole time we were there) on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. 

When we arrived, we couldn't check into our resort yet, so we went and got donuts at a place we saw on our drive in.

Can I just say that these maple bacon donuts were sooooo good?! :) Honestly they were the best food I had on the whole trip. Not to say that the other food on the trip wasn't good, but this donut just so happened to be the best. 

They made the donut fresh after I ordered it. The donut was warm and fluffy and delicious and I loved the thick chunks of ham on the donut. I've had other maple bacon donuts before and this one was definitely the best (in my opinion). :)

Near the donut shop was a boardwalk and this was the view. I ate the donut on the beautiful boardwalk.
 

Donutz On-A-Stick, the place where I got the delicious maple bacon donut.  If you're ever in Duck, NC, I highly recommend this donut shop. :)

 

Rachel, Cat and I went back to check in to our room. When we got to the room, we realized it was much bigger than we anticipated and we were definitely happy about that. It had a full-size kitchen so we went to Wal-Mart and we each bought ourselves groceries so that we could eat breakfast at the resort.

For dinner the first night, we ate at Steamers. Either Cat or Rachel found this restaurant. It had good reviews and had food that all of us were willing to eat. 

I had the Prosciutto Wrapped Chicken Roulade. It was tasty!

 

 

Day 2- Our first stop on Sunday was Duck Donuts. How could we resist?! We had to eat Duck Donuts in Duck, NC. :) (It was rainy for the first half of this day, but thankfully the sun came out later.)

 

 

 

 

 

I also got a maple donut at Duck Donuts to compare to the one I got the day before. Although they were very similar to each other (freshly made, warm, and fluffy), I slightly liked the donut at Donutz On-A-Stick a little bit better because of the thicker chunks of ham on it. I still really enjoyed my Duck Donuts also, maple bacon and s'mores.

 

 

Duck Donuts was near the boardwalk again so I had to go and take a picture there. I loved that boardwalk. (Later I'll show pictures from when we walked a long the boardwalk for a mile or two.)

 

 

 

The place I was most excited about visiting while we were in the Outer Banks was the Wright Brothers museum in Kitty Hawk. 

 

I read The Wright Brothers by David McCullough a few years ago and really liked that book and learned so much about Orville and Wilbur Wright. Although my memory about the details of the book were a little fuzzy, I still really enjoyed the museum and seeing where the Wright Brothers had many test runs and then where they eventually took the first flight.

 

 

Cat and I inside the museum.

 

 

I liked this sign. Wilbur and Orville failed many times in their attempt to get a plane off the ground. But they never gave up. They thought outside the box and believed they could do it.

 

On bottom of this sign (the yellow line), it shows how far they went on their first time airborne. They didn't get very far, but each time they tried after that first time, they went a little bit farther. On the fourth time even farther. The finally had made it into the sky!

 

 

 

This stone commemorates the spot where the Wright Brothers made the first successful flight of an airplane.

 

 

It's hard to tell from this picture, but where the lady in the light blue top and white pants is standing is where the first flight landed. Although it may look far in the picture, it wasn't really that far, but it was a major breakthrough for the Wright Brothers. They brought the plane back to the start and tried again and got a little bit farther the second time.

 

See that metal bar next to the stone, well that was to help the plane move along the sand. Even though now this area has grass, back when Wilbur and Orville were testing the planes it was only sand and was hard to get the planes to move along the sand without the metal track.

 

 

This stone shows approximately where the first flight landed, the next stone you see shows where the second flight landed, the stone after the second one (a little hard to see) is where the third flight landed. The fourth flight went even farther (close to the tree line in the distance). 

 

 

 

This is approximately where the second flight landed. 

 

This is approximately where the third flight landed.

This is approximately where the fourth flight landed. It's hard to capture the flight distances in these pictures. Even if the first flights weren't very far, it was still a big deal. The plane lifted off the ground multiple times, the first time in history!

Walking up to the Wright Brothers memorial on the hill. 

 

The Wright Brothers used this hill for some of their testing. At that time the hill was sand, so a lot harder to get up (especially with a plane) than now.

 

 

 

I really liked this place!

 

The view from the top of the hill was pretty!

 

 Another view from the top of the hill!

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we were on the hill, we noticed this mini airplane below and decided to visit it. It was kind of fun to walk around. It's a sculpture depicting the first flight and the people who were there.

 

Yes, they had a photographer there on the day that they took off for the first time.

 

I decided I needed to take a picture from this perspective so you could see what he's looking at. :)

 

 

 Some more statues watching the plane!

 

 

 

 

Looking from the front of the plane to the statues behind.  

 

 

A pretty view of the hill and memorial again!

 

 

After we finished up at the Wright Brothers Memorial and Museum, we went to eat at a place that was recommended to either Cat or Rachel, Pigman's BBQ. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I enjoyed my food! I would eat here again.

I used the restroom at Pigman's BBQ and this sign was in there and I thought it was kind of funny!

 

 

After we finished eating, we went mini-golfing. Thankfully at this point, it had stopped raining. 

 

For some reason, as soon as we got here, I started to get an aura migraine. I was seeing wavy lines in my vision and I couldn't focus on any of the signs to read them. Usually when I've had these migraines in the past, I've needed to go into a dark room and close my eyes for awhile, but I couldn't do that here.

 

I didn't mention the issues I was having to my friends, but I was able to continue playing the game since I didn't have to read too much. I did try to close my eyes as much as I could though. (I had briefly lost my sunglasses in the car and couldn't find them before we started playing mini-golf otherwise that might have helped my migraine a little bit). Eventually my migraine left.

 

 

 

After we finished mini-golfing, we went back to the resort and went to the beach for a little while.

 

It had turned into such a nice day that it made me really happy. (According to the forecast before we left for NC, it looked like it was going to rain the whole time we were there).

 

 

The water was cold!

 

 

 

 

 

We spent some time at the beach and then went back to our apartment and got ready to walk on the boardwalk and find a place to eat.

 

I really liked the boardwalk. It was really pretty!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was also somewhere around here that one of my friends decided to say something rude about my appearance and it made me super self-conscious about that thing for the rest of the trip. I honestly have no idea why she decided to say it since it's not really something I can change, but she did.

I did respond to what she said at the time, but I don't think I was able to portray how hurt I felt by what she said.

 

Despite that incident with my friend, I still enjoyed the boardwalk walk!

We ran into this awesome chair with a beautiful view!

Isn't it pretty?!

We ate at NC Coast Grill and Bar this evening and I thought it was sorely disappointing. I think it was the most expensive meal I had on the whole trip and the food ended up not being that great (at least in my opinion). I still ate it all because I was hungry and it cost a lot, but I didn't really enjoy it. 

I think Rachel also didn't love her food, but Cat enjoyed her food. Maybe I just ordered the wrong thing, but it was still disappointing.

To make up for the disappointment at dinner, we got ice cream at Big Buck's after dinner. There was a bit of a line when we got there, but it went pretty fast. I enjoyed my ice cream from there!

Overall, the first two days in Outer Banks was good! I really enjoyed all the stuff we got to see and do.