Seaside

A few weeks ago we went on a mini vacation to Seaside and I am just now putting up some pictures! We really enjoyed our trip even though it rained or was cloudy the whole time we were there. We stayed in a place there called Inn by the Sea by Vera Bradley. I am not a huge Vera Bradley fan, but apparently this is the first and only place decorated by Barbara Bradley that created Vera Bradley. 

This is the room we stayed in. It is called "Posies." 

Our room was on the second floor of the hotel. This is a picture of the hallway outside our room. 

This is a picture of the Inn from the street. 

Ben took this picture on the beach of some of the beach front houses during a short sunny moment. It looks like it is really nice in this picture, but looking back out over the ocean it was really dark and rainy. 

We decided to rent bikes to ride around and check the entire place out. Once we rented them, I suddenly realized that I had not been on a bike since oh, elementary school. I thought it would be fine because "it's just like riding a bike," except for it is riding a bike, right? The bike was a little large for me because I could barely touch the ground with the edge of my flip flop, but I figured it would be no big deal. I had a lot of trouble riding in a straight line, and ended up kind of riding in a more weave-like fashion. I also had some trouble with turns. And the brakes. (The brakes weren't hand brakes. Instead, you had to push the pedals backwards.) Let's just say I had a few minor crashes, one into a stop sign on a turn, and the other into a parked car when a bug flew on the inside of my sunglasses and distracted me. Thankfully I dropped the bike before it hit the car, so only my body hit the car, and I escaped with only a scrape on my big toe. Following my crash, a lady in a car pulled up, rolled down her window, and asked if I was ok, which was really nice. Oh, and really embarrassing. I think I told I AM FINE! REALLY! like five times and she still just kept sitting there. Oh yeah, when I ran into the parked car (minivan, actually), there was a dad and couple of kids out in the front yard of the house on the other side of the minivan and they got to watch the whole thing. To make it that much worse, I was wearing flip flops and it appeared that the kids were about to go out on bikes and were in the process of putting on shoes, so the dad thought that it was a good time to say "see, that's why you can't wear flip flops." Next time we go here, I think I will stick to walking. 

There was a really cool bookstore there, and it happened to be right in front of the Inn where we stayed. They had a good selection considering it was really small. They had an entire Architecture section, which Ben said was better than what he could find at home. 

This trailor thing sold huge snow cones that were really good. 

We went to this Pizzeria place to eat dinner one night and it was the best food we had while we were there. Actually, the food was really good at all of the places that we ate, but this was my favorite. It had only been open three weeks at that time. The owners went to Italy and got certified in some sort of special pizza technique. Ben and I got broccolini with cheese and white bean something for appetizers and split a prosciutto pizza. It was pretty much the best food I have had a while. We sat at the bar next to this man and woman that were there together (but not together together as far as we could tell). The man was sitting next to me and struck up a conversation with us that ended up being very interesting. He was clearly a very wealthy man, but he was just chatting it up with us. Apparently he lives in Hawaii now, but went to Auburn, and owns a company in the Philippines. He also owns a house in the Highlands that his daughter lives in. He was telling us all about how he was buying up millions of dollars in loans from failing banks. It was all very interesting. Ben and I left and were laughing about thinking "if he only knew where we came from." Also, that we grew up on Hamburger Helper and shopped for clothes at Kmart and Penney's outlet. (Does he even know what Hamburger Helper is?!)

This is the us on the beach the last night we were there.