Where I Went: Acadia National Park

I started writing this post one whole year ago. I never got around to finishing it because eventually my personal computer stopped working. Happy to report we’re back up and running! Without further ado — our Acadia trip:

I am at least three national parks behind in posting on here. So here we go, a backlog!

I went to Acadia National Park for the first time, and it’s a shame it took me so long. Something about it being the closest national park (still a five hour drive, though), always made me put it on the back burner. But it’s very nice! The Atlantic is okay sometimes! We don’t hate the East Coast!

A roll of film. (Summer 2021)

Started going to shows again, sort of. Started hanging out with people again, mostly. Went to a handful of places that weren’t my house. Here’s every picture that was on these two rolls, almost.

A roll of film.

I shot some film. Coming up on a year of not going anywhere really, and 2020 was so much of going nowhere that going downtown for a sandwich feels like traveling and going to the beach for new years felt like a trip abroad. I’ve been shooting barely anything all year too, but getting some scans back gave me the same little jolt of serotonin I get from looking at a place for the first time. Here’s that roll.

I Moved Apartments + Here's What It Looks Liked

I moved back in August. Don’t worry, this was not brave or adventurous or a disaster or any of that. I put my one room’s worth of stuff in a truck and moved it exactly one block away on the same street and moved it into a place where there’s now room for two room’s worth of stuff.

What this post is for is to post all the pictures I took of the place one day in September while I was moping around not able to safely do anything fun because there’s a pandemic. I fancy myself something like an assistant to an amateur interior designer so there’s things I’ve already changed in here (those pillows on the couch are no longer) and things I want to change even more (there needs to be more color in here) and maybe I’ll post an update some day.

Drum roll please, here she is, all 500 square feet of her:

Bet you’re wondering where I got all this stuff?

AllModern Sectional // More Sectionals	Vasya TV Stand // More TV Stands
Mistana Table // More Tables	Eckard Side Chairs // More Dining Chairs

Other Stuff pictured:

Coffee Table - Inside Weather

Bench - Ikea

Basket - Ikea

Wall hooks: H&M

Duvet Cover: Parachute

Where I Went: Seville and Madrid (Spain Edition!)

We’re closing in on five months since I went to Spain, it feels super weird writing this now. It feels like absolutely no time and also like a lifetime has passed. We went to Spain right before covid started getting bad here, and at the time there was no way I was going to cancel the trip, but looking back now it’s wild to think we got on a plane to one of the hardest hit countries (at the time, lol), spent an hour and a half on the nyc subway system getting home, and made it back without any of us having been exposed, apparently.

I’d say it was stupid of us to have gone, but we really didn’t know enough at the time to have been concerned enough to cancel, and to be honest I am so, so glad we went. If there was one last normal thing I could do before we were all hunkered down indefinitely, this was it.

It’s certainly a privilege to say this feels like the longest I’ve gone without traveling in about ten years. If that’s not quite true, it certainly will be by the time I travel next. I have no reason to get on a plane anytime soon, and I won’t, so lusting over photos from trips passed is all I can do.

So here it is! Photos of mostly Seville, and a couple days in Madrid. I might add suggestions for food later if I can remember the name of even one place that we went.

*weird mix of fuji, pentax 35mm, and iphone in here

Where I Went: Amsterdam

Hey! Did you hear! (I’m sure you heard because I’ve made it very known) I left the country again!

We went to Amsterdam! Truth be told, I knew…..almost nothing about Amsterdam aside from canals and bikes before deciding to go. And wow what NICE and CUTE little city!! I felt very at home and safe from the second we got there and that’s a nice feeling to have when you’re very far from home.

So listen up, kiddos, because this blog is about to be a thousand photos of buildings and about 500 photos of food. I will not be telling you to go to Rijksmuseum, or to the Heineken factory, or to smoke weed. I will however give ya a list of a whole lot of establishments that treated us real nice, broken down by neighborhood.

This trip was nice because every day was basically:
-Coffee/breakfast
-Wander around aimlessly looking at stuff for a while
-Is is time to drink yet? Let’s find a cafe.
-Time to eat again
-Now we’ll drink for the rest of the night.

Amsterdam Oud-West

This is where we stayed, and it was definitely walkable to city center, definitely bikeable, and we definitely made a ton of use of the trams to get around while it was raining.

We stayed near Ten Katemarkt, a cute lil outdoor market that’s open every day with all the food you could ask for plus a bunch of other stuff. We spent all our leftover euros on pastries there, and I got a hat for just two euro when I was unprepared for how cold it was. We love a deal.

Here’s some other nice stuff in/around the neighborhood:

Foodhallen - Everyone will tell you to go here, there’s a ton of different food stands and beer and gin and tonics and I wish I could have eaten it all but I only had room enough in my stomach for 800 bitterballen (get these they are Good).
The Breakfast Club - Would you believe me if I told you this place was only open for dinner? No? (It’s breakfast)
Lot Sixty One Coffee - w o w a good latte
Cafe Panache - We just came here for a drink, but I think their food looks very good.
Local Hero - Pretty sure this is not actually Oud-West, (maybe De Baarsjes?) but it was real cute and we had a delicious brunch there.
Monks Coffee Roasters - If I lived in Amsterdam I would go to this coffee shop for breakfast while editing photos every single day. Probably my favorite little coffee shop / breakfast that we went to. Like do you see that avocado toast I had?

Jordaan

Naturally, on this day it was pouring rain so I left my camera behind, and then I ended up taking more photos than any other day. Jordaan! So! Cute!! Out of all the neighborhoods to wander around aimlessly, I loved just looking at stuff the most in this one. They got pie, they got beer, they got stroopwafels, they got more beer. For you Boston people, this is absolutely selling the place short but it sort of reminded me of a Beacon Hill. Way cooler, but equally as quaint.

It’s important you know that “brown cafes” are Amsterdam’s version of cozy lil pubs and I think they call them that because of something to do with everything being wood and they are my ideal kind of bar. Small, cozy, often cash only, you can actually hear who you’re talking to, people get wasted in the middle of the day. Win-win-win-win. There are a lot in this area, here are a few we went to:

Cafe Chris - (Pictured above) Brown cafe, which I have read is the oldest in Amsterdam? My favorite brown cafe that we went to. Actually, one of the only places we went where it seemed like some people didn’t speak english which made it feel much less touristy.
’t Smalle - (Pictured below) Loveddd this place, and while we were there on an extremely rainy night, yelp is leading me to believe it’s awesome during the day in nice weather. Tables outside right on the canal!
De II Prinsen - Another brown cafe that was a nice spot to kill some time before going the the Anne Frank House

Other places! I don’t know what that cheese shop in the picture above was, but it was absolutely the cheese shop of my dreams and they let you have so many samples! Stop in a cheese shop.

Winkel 43 - (pie pictured above) The place every single person will tell you to get apple pie. Surprise! It was good!
Anne Frank Huis - Seems like I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but I think this was worth going to. Depressing, yes, but so interesting and it brings a whole new level of real-ness to be IN the actual place they were forced to hide in for two years.

In and around Amsterdam-Centrum

Amsterdam-Centrum is by far the touristy-est part of the city, especially once you get toward Dam Square, but there are things worth going to. The flower market, basilica, Amsterdam Centraal train station, all over here so while you’re standing there gawking at all the black tulips at the market like I was (goth flowers!!! be still my dark heart!!) just make sure you look up every now and then so you don’t walk into some college kid who’s visiting for the weekend from wherever he’s studying abroad.

Here’s some stuff in Centrum I thought was worth it:

Bloemenmarkt: We sort of hopped through here because it started raining but I thought it was cool. It’s a huge outdoor flower market along a canal. If you want to buy tulips to bring home this is a good place to get bulbs (just verify you can actually fly back to the US with them, a lot of them will say on the label).

Basilica of Saint Nicholas: Biased here as somebody who likes to look at old architecture but it’s worth a walk through.

Stroopwafels: (Above left) To be completely honest I didn’t like this as much as I thought I would? But it’s a real Dutch thing I guess so you might as well have yourself a lil snack.

Pulitzer’s Bar: (Above right) Definitely go here!! This is a very good cocktail bar in an extremely fancy hotel that I will never be able to afford to stay at but the drinks were perfect for an afternoon break from walking around in the rain.

Botanical Garden: I! Love! Greenhouses! The botanical garden here was so cool! I took a million photos but I’ll spare you. They had all the same plants I have in my apartment except 2000x bigger!

De Pijp

How many times in one blog post do you think I can be like “loved this” before it loses it’s authenticity? We we uh… loved this area. Tons of good bars and restaurants, felt very hip and young-professional, the area I’d probably hang out in the most if I lived here.

Two of the best restaurants we went to were in this neighborhood!

Van ‘t Spit: (Below left) This place only has chicken. You can either get a whole roasted chicken or half roasted chicken and various sides. And ya know, a real, fresh rotisserie chicken is just so good.

Little Collins: (Below right) A small-plates, farm to table kinda little cozy place. Readers, everything was so good! Like in my opinion, best restaurant I’ve been to in a while good. By the way, if anyone wants to have the small plates to share vs normal portions and everyone gets their own debate I am here to FIGHT for small plates.

Glou Glou: A chill little wine bar! Not like the fancy kind of wine bar, but like the kind where you could sit at your little rustic wooden table and talk to somebody for four hours straight. Which we kinda did.

Scandinavian Embassy: Good latte, cute coffehouse, saw a really cute dog in here.

Staring at Jacob: (All the way below the next to photos) Why yes we did get brunch at a place that advertised American comfort food, and yes it was quite good.

Utrecht

Last but not least! We left the city of Amsterdam! One day during our stay we spent in Utrecht which is basically…a small version of Amsterdam. It was cute! And only about half an hour away by train. We spent the day wandering around, looking at old buildings, touring the church, eating french fries. drinking beers, as one does.

Where I Went: North Cascades National Park

So uh, Washington is the most beautiful place I’ve ever been? What the heck? What do they think they’re doing to me?

This trip happened like most do: I have three days to kill I look up flights and just picked one out that fit my budget and seemed ~ cool ~. I’m starting to get into the territory of repeating places, which I used to say I’d never do (lol) but I know what I like and clearly you can’t really experience a place fully in 3 days so back I went to Seattle.

I also did a smol lil trip to Seattle earlier this year but if you recall there was a snowstorm and everything was closed and it was only one day, so a reasonably priced flight seemed like a good chance to a) see Seattle again and b) go somewhere I’ve always wanted, NORTH CASCADES.

My original plan for this trip was to camp three nights at a campground, do two day hikes, and mozy around the scenic viewpoints the rest of the time. The nice thing about doing your own thing, though, is that if you decide you don’t want to sit in the rain for a third night, you don’t have to! So I went back to the city a little early.

The minute I got back to camp after hiking on the second day, it started to thunderstorm, like BAD, I saw bolts of lighting, it was very loud, it was raining so hard it kind of hurt. I was SURE my fire was going to go out, but I threw every piece of wood I had left on it and it didn’t! So I backed up the jeep to the fire, took cover in the trunk, and ran back and forth in the rain to shift the foil packets of veggies I was desperately trying to cook. Not to brag but I am extremely impressed with myself, like expert camper over here please take me with you if you need assistance.

* I * personally love thunderstorms so I was in my goddamn element, I could not have been more relaxed that night.

triscuits and juice, a normal spread for camping right?

Now here’s the good part: Maple Pass

I definitely said “holy shit” out loud to myself somewhere between five and eight hundred times over the course of the ~4 hours it took me to hike this. It’s just absolutely gorgeous during every single step. Obviously, this is a pretty popular hike so I’ll tell you the thing that everybody tells you, which is go early. I started hiking a little before 8 on a weekend and barely saw anybody for the first half, but by the time I was nearing the end it was getting super crowded. A sunrise hike up here though? Probably unreal.

I think most people actually hike this counter-clockwise, but I went clockwise. There’s no wrong way to do this by any means, but all those pictures above were from within the first like 1/4 of the hike. HOW!? The colors! It looks fake! Help!

^hiked that =)

DO YOU GET THE PICTURE NOW? I’m also required by law to post pictures from all the touristy pull-over overlooks and stuff, so naturally here is another photo of Diablo Lake, a place I’m sure you’ve seen a hundred pictures of already before. But! It’s really! That! Blue!

I’ll link all the places I stayed/hiked at the end. For now, I leave you with two pictures of a random dirt road I drove down in the rain <3

HERE ARE THINGS I DID:

Maple Pass Loop: 7.1 miles, doable for most hikers / kids / dogs. It took me about 4 hours and I stopped A LOT.

Marble Creek Campground: I loved staying here. Right along a very pretty river (book early and you can snag a river spot!) and there’s a little beach anyone in the campsite can hang out on. Honestly - great campground for hanging out at even if you’re not doing any hiking. Not too many spots, and a good amount of privacy. About an hour to Maple Pass, but only about 30 min or so to Marblemount. Also only a few miles from a gas station / diner / restaurant where there are camp supplies and food and CELL SERVICE.

A Film Dump or: Presence At Home

I really like shooting film (go analog baby!!!) though admittedly don’t reallllly know what I’m doing. That, and the fact that I had been struggling with a barely functioning 35 year old camera made it so for a long time I really didn’t do it much.

But! Reader, that is about to change! Big time! ! I finally pulled the trigger on something smaller and automatic (two, actually but the first one didn’t work. Thanks for nothin ebay scammer!). I feel like I can throw it in my bag wherever I go and so, here is my plan: document the one place I always completely ignore — home. So here’s my first roll, a bunch of shitty throw aways from time around Boston (mostly) and still, I love them. Life here is messy and filled with trash and still lovely and fun and that’s what I feel when I look at them.

Where I Went: Moab (Arches, Canyonlands)

I dream about giving up the city a lot. Trading in my entire life here for one that’s wholly about the outdoors. As I’m sure we all have. But I never wanted any of the in between crap. I need to be in the city or extremely not. When it comes down to it I know I’ll never leave and the one thing I wish you’d see more people say on this big old place the ~ internet ~ is that you don’t have to live in a van! You don’t need to be wholly nomadic or give up your job or any of that. You can do a little of both! And that is what I try to live by.

Then I go to Moab and I throw that entire sentiment out the window because there are so many dirt roads out here I want NEED to drive down, and I imagine how easy it would be to mountain bike after work, or climb on the weekend or camp in a new campsite every night and it is just not possible to do any of that in Boston.

When it comes down to it I know I’ll never leave but I sure will try to go back to Utah as many time as I possibly can before I die.

This time around was my first time in Arches and Canyonlands and hoooooooboy it was Good.

Day 1: Arches

The first full day there, we decided to do all the typical Arches drive-bys. There were two main things we wanted to ACTUALLY do (meaning, like, requiring a small amount of hiking), which was hiking the Fiery Furnace and heading to Delicate Arch for sunset.

You need a permit to hike Fiery Furnace, and because a good rule of thumb for national parks is that everything will always be completely booked, the soonest we could get one for was a couple days later. That ended up working out, because another good rule of thumb for national parks is that everything will take twice as long as you think it will so we would have been really rushing to squeeze it in anyway.

That left double arch, devil’s garden trail, north and south window arches, park avenue trail during the day. Peep some pics above and also below.

I said there were really only two things we were concerned about doing in Arches, and one of those was sunset at Delicate Arch. WORTH IT. The way the sun hits that already ridiculous looking piece of rock, and illuminates the mountains in the background, dang everyone you gotta go see for yourself.

I’m sure it’s the most popular arch in the park so I can only imagine what the crowd of people is like during the day. We hiked up there about an hour before it got dark, brought some drinks to chill with (cue reminder to pack it in and pack it out people!!), and it was so….nice. There were still a good amount of people there but something about being up there for sunset seemed to make everyone actually respectful. It went unsaid that if you wanted a picture in front of the arch you take turns, all 20 photographers helped each other out with angles, and everyone sat back and stayed out of frame as the sun was setting.

More of that in parks, please.

Day 2: Dead Horse Point and Canyonlands

The next day we headed to the Island In The Sky section of Canyonlands, and hit up Dead Horse Point State Park on the way. Canyonlands is so so much bigger than Arches, and so few people go. We were here on a beautiful weekend day and it almost seemed deserted compared to Arches, which is how I’m sure we’d all prefer it.

To be completely honest, there were points at which I thought Canyonlands was more impressive than the Grand Canyon. It’s like a canyon within a canyon within a canyon and it’s so big I still can’t completely wrap my head around it and so I will refrain from even trying to describe it to you.

The one thing I will say about Canyonlands is that there are a ton of back country roads. We really didn’t make use of them (rental car, no lift, etc etc) but I would absolutely love to come back here for a true 4x4 camping experience preferably with bikes. But I’ll save it for another trip.

Day 3: Fiery Furnace

I am so happy we decided to return to arches to do this hike. Fav thing we did on this trip. Fiery Furnace is about a 2 mile loop hike through a maze of small slot canyons, boulders, arches, all kinds of rocks. As I mentioned before, you need a permit, and you’re required to sit through a quick video + overview with a ranger. They make it known that it truly is a maze, and you will probably get lost, but exploring off the trial is encouraged.

This hike was so. fun. It’s technically only two miles but we spent four hours in there. There are trail markers, but they are quite hidden and we definitely got truly lost a couple times (not lost that I was trying to ration my clif bar or anything, though). There’s a ton of slots to climb through, stuff that actually took a few tries to climb over, hidden arches — the perfect amount of technicality for someone who is not technical at all when it comes to climbing or hiking. It was the best adult jungle gym I’ve ever been in.

And with that, I will leave you with the tune that first even made me want to go to this amazing red-rocked dusty southwest pocket of the U.S.

Where I Went: Four Days All Over The PNW

One day I will get on a plane to somewhere and when I get off I will stay put until it’s time to go home. This was not that trip. I don’t think I’d even recommend doing this trip like I did if you’re coming from the East Coast but I am notorious for trying to squeeze as much as I possibly can into long weekends so here we are.

Booking a flight to Seattle turned into “let’s go to Olympic too” turned into “we might as well go to Portland” and so that is what we did during the worst snow the PNW has seen for a decade.

We got to Seattle around 11am and immediately headed to Pike Place because we were right there and I felt we had to. I looked at the first Starbucks, it was dumb, and I did not see Future President Of The United States Of America Howie Schultz.

Hey here’s a Sarah travel philosophy:

Do the touristy stuff and look like a tourist too. Who gives a shit! You are one, after all. You’ll be disappointed by some of it, but most of the time places are touristy for a reason. Pike Place was cute, a very enthusiastic employee at the soap place in the market gave me a bunch of free stuff when she found out we were from Boston and I had an exceptionally good hot toddy. And nothing was even crowded because of the snow! I had no complaints.

Big ole s/o to my good pal Andy who moved out to Seattle a few years ago for playing tour guide for us all afternoon. We very much just followed his lead and it WORKED, especially when we escaped the snow to go to Bathtub Gin & Co, a speakeasy where we got an entire room with a fireplace to ourselves.

Day Two! Olympic National Park!

Me:
Everybody in Seattle: There’s too much snow to drive to Forks
Me: I have all wheel drive a lead foot and a wild sense of adventure lfg

I was definitely operating with a little too much of that “I’m from a snowy place” arrogance because there are two snow plows in all of Seattle and it sure seemed like there were zero people to operate them because that city does NOT know how to clean up snow. Regardless, we headed out to the the Olympic Peninsula and by the time we got to the beach the weather could not have cooperated more.

We hit up Ruby Beach which based on internet sleuthing only actually seemed slightly nicer than the other popular destination - Rialto Beach (which, surprise! Rialto was inaccessible due to a road being out anyway!)

Hey here’s another Sarah travel philosophy:

It’s not a road trip unless you have to turn around and/or are scared while driving at least once. There’s a fair amount of road closures in Olypmic right now, I * think * because of storms, trees down and the whole the park isn’t maintained during a government shutdown thing, so turn around we did, a few times.

But if you’re wondering if I had another travel philosophy I am here to tell you I sure as heck do and that is to just pull over and walk around if your original plan doesn’t pan out. Or even if it does. Just always pull over.

We spent the last two days in Portland. If you were wondering my opinion on US cities, or even if you weren’t I’m going to tell you anyway because this is my blog, they’re all bad except for Portland and also Austin but Portland has more nature. We spent most of our time around Mississippi, a nice relief from the busier/bougier Pearl District. I hate pizza twice, drank a thousand drinks and took pictures of exactly nothing.

And, if you remember, you should be doing the toursity stuff, which is why naturally we were obligated to go to Multnomah Falls on the rainest PNW-iest day we were there.

Lastly, here’s everywhere I went worth recommending!

Seattle:

Bathtub Gin & Co. - A speakeasy that actually felt like one
Rachel’s Ginger Beer - This ginger beer was GOOD. You can get it with or without the booze.
Cyclops - A bar that was actually my speed despite being downtown - p chill, p cheap, just slightly divey.
Skillet Diner - A nice diner.

Portland:

Oven & Shaker - Pizza which I didn’t eat, but the meatballs I had were A+ and I take my meatballs seriously.
Pink Rabbit - Cocktail bar. GUYS. If you’re not a fan of The National (America’s Best Band) you’ll have no idea this entire bar is a reference to their discography but if you are a fan of The National you will be geeking out about it. Between the three of us I think we got every drink on their menu. They were all delicious.
Either/Or - Coffee! Head to the SE location and give a s/o to Patrick who I finally got to meet IRL while there. He’ll be the one controlling the cool music.
Pine State Biscuits - I feel like I don’t have to tell you guys about this.
Salt and Straw - I feel like I don’t have to tell you guys about this either but if you’ve never had this ice cream you need to.
Blue Star Donuts - I….feel like I don’t have to tell you guys about this.
Psychic - This is a cool bar where my good friend and travel partner walked up to the bar and was able to order a bowl of fruit loops, a side of toast, an orange juice and a shot of vodka at 11:00 pm.
Mississippi Studios - Music venue, also bar. I wish I could have seen a show here but the bar half was cool to just hand out in regardless.
Stormbreaker Brewing - The thing that got me in to this place is they had outdoor firepits under tents so even though it was pouring rain it still sorta felt like I was camping.

That’s it! Until next time friends, I cannot promise that I’ll have any updates until I venture to somewhere else. But I am now/always taking suggestions.