I just got back from four
glorious days of vacation with two of my
very best friends and sweet Amos. Food for my soul, to say the least. Melissa (AKA Melbert) and I left with Amos on jet plane from Asheville on Thursday morning and arrived at the Orlando airport just after noon to be greeted by Carolyn, her mom, grandma and aunt. Her grandma and aunt were on their way back to Illinois flying out of the same airport so it ended up being a perfect exchange spot. "Trading fun for more fun," as her precious grandma said. (: Since we arrived at lunch time we had plenty of time to beach it for a couple of hours before having dinner at a local dive -
Oasis. I tried conch fritters for the first time ever and
liked them (when I texted this to Mike, his reply was "Who are you?!"). We spent the rest of the evening in our PJs playing games and watching
The Expendables.
Friday morning brought about a trip to the store for some staples and a lazy morning since it was pretty overcast. We finally meandered down to the beach only to realize that the wind made it unbearable. After about an hour of fighting the wind and sand we packed up and headed to the heated pool. I was super excited to see Amos in the pool for the first time! He LOVED it. I seriously think we're going to have a water bug on our hands. After a good swim, we packed up (again) and headed in to clean up for an afternoon of outlet shopping and a trip to downtown St. Augustine. We shopped 'til we could've dropped, then Carolyn took us to
AIA Aleworks, one of her favorite restaurants downtown and it didn't disappoint! My Cuban pork, rice and fried plantains were d e l i c i o u s! Melbert ordered seared tuna which I tried and
liked. Now Mike was seriously wondering, "who am I?!" (I still don't think I could bring myself to order it though.) Post dinner, Carolyn gave us a tour of her favorite shops downtown and took us to
Whetstone Chocolates for dessert. After much deliberation, we decided on peanut butter chip and white chocolate caramel fudge (to go with the leftover fudge Carolyn had from her mom, grandma and aunt's trip). We capped off the evening in our PJs (are you seeing a trend here?) with
Zero Dark Thirty.
We decided on Friday that Saturday would be our beach day since we (Melbert & I) were running out of time to get a tan. We took our magazines, books, umbrella and snacks (or lunch for this nursing mama) down to the beach and layed out for hours. It was glorious. Carolyn still wanted to show us the
Taco Shop so we had an early dinner there, followed by ice cream at
Coneheads and a trip to
Happy Cakes so we could pick up cupcakes for dinner. Don't judge us. We were on vacation. (: We got back, had an NCIS marathon (yep, in our PJs) and played Bananagrams until about midnight since we had to get up SUPER early for our flight home! Seriously, this vacation was a lot like our college days, except now I have a baby to tote along. It makes my heart so happy to see Mel & Carolyn loving Amos & actin' like it ain't no thang to bring him along! (Kudos to Mel for traveling with me and the boy.)
We set our alarms for 5AM since our flight was at 8:40AM and we had what turned into a 2 hour drive since roads were closed. (We didn't know the roads were closed until we were literally making the turn onto one of them...) It was seriously the Lord's will that we made it to the airport on time because Allegiant didn't have another flight into Asheville until TUESDAY! Carolyn did an excellent job navigating the unmarked detour and got us to the airport with enough time to walk right onto the plane. The timing couldn't have been any better if we'd tried. It was sad to tell Carolyn goodbye knowing it'd be possibly July but most likely August until we see her again. I very much enjoyed reliving my college days with two of my besties (and my baby - haha) and am already planning (in my head) our next girls getaway (since we three made a pact to have girls weekends at least 2x a year 'til death do us part).
