The People's Place

I may be a long-time Floridian, but it took a while for me to discover this state landmark. :-) The Clark's Fish Camp in Jacksonville, FL. Wow. It was a great experience. The restaurant was hidden away in a residential area, but that didn't hinder the crowds from finding it.

The menu had everything from the regular fish fry and gator options to yak, kangeroo, eel, rabbit, antelope, ostrich, and a long list of other exotic meats. But the really good stuff was the prime rib stuffed portobella. (I know, right?)

The restaurant has indoor and outdoor seating on the river, a very local feel, and supposedly the largest private collection of taxidermy in the world. LOL. There was half a giraffe...no kidding. Who does that?! But it was definitely a memory. One I just might repeat sometime.

Summer Vacation Part 2

We were in Jacksonville, FL for the rest of our trip. Here are some of the things we did:



1. Watched a baseball game, where we ate too much, enjoyed fireworks, got free baseball caps...



...and saw Irish wrestling for the first time ever. (For those of you not in the know...which is probably all three of my loyal readers...Irish wrestling was actually a staged match with a couple little people/leprechauns.) Interesting, to say the least. :-)





2. Went to two museums. The wrong two, apparently. The manuscript museum had a small collection of photocopies of old letters, etc. It took about two minutes to go through. But the building was cool. Kind of run down, but it apparently used to be a theater/opera house, with a small orchestra pit and everything.

The second museum was one for contemporary art. We figured it wouldn't be quite our style, but it would be something different. Well...it was definitely different. One floor was made up almost entirely of videos. Odd videos. Like of a woman putting on her make-up, but the camera was in the make-up brushes. So, close up shots, to say the least. Or the one where the guy was covered in mud and veeeeeeerrrrrrrrrryyyyyyyyy slllllllllllooooooooooowwwlly approached the camera. Or the one where the guy did a slow and exaggerated cat walk down a long hallway. Yeah. Weird. Maybe they would have made more sense if we'd read all of the explanations beside the displays, but I doubt it.

So the museums...not something I would do again, but definitely something we'll remember. :-)

3. Something else I probably wouldn't do again...We tried sushi for the first time. Kind of on accident. We ordered dinner "boxes" at a Japanese restaurant and ended up with a sampling of things. Among them--California rolls. I think that's what they were, anyway. I ate all of mine just because. They weren't disgusting, but they weren't exactly good, either.

4. We drove around a lot. Jacksonville is a sprawling city. I could never live there--WAY too many shopping plazas and interesting looking restaurants. :-) We got stuck in Hobby Lobby for a couple hours, trying to pick out some wall decor for our newly repainted rooms. Finally took pictures of a bunch of things and left to decide on later. Never did make up our minds...Anyway, the city also has some cool bridges and buildings.

5. We walked around the San Marco shops a little bit. Got some ice cream, ate it near the gazebo...

...and of course couldn't resist going into this shop --

The Write Touch. :-) Cute little store with stationary and computer bags and an old golden retriever who greeted us at the door. All the frames for sale in the shop had the dog's picture in them.

6. Went to the zoo. Of course! No meerkats this time, but we did have a bird freak us out. And we watched a monkey mess with the face of a giant-gerbil-like thing.

7. Met up with Jason's cousin and his wife and ate at Cheesecake Factory. Yeah. That in itself would have made it a good vacation. :-)

So...that was the summer trip for 2009. Next year, we're thinking about Kentucky. :-) Any suggestions?

Summer Vacation Part One

So...I'm back from a short, last-minute, but fun and much-needed vacation. :-) After working on our house for a month, we took off to the Jacksonville/St. Augustine, FL area. We decided to leave early--after I got home from work on Tuesday. We hadn't packed or anything, but we rushed around to get ready so we could make it far enough down the road to go to Texas Roadhouse for supper. Well, we made it. Barely. :-) It felt odd to order a full meal at 10 p.m., but ah well. Vacation, right?

The next morning we shopped in St. Augustine and then ate lunch on St. George Street. We were really in town just for the gelato from Cafe de Hidalgo. :-) Good stuff, let me tell you.

Then we traveled on to Jacksonville, where we checked in to one of our favorite places in the world: Hotel Indigo. (The happy couple in the hallway. ;-) )

Ah...Hotel Indigo. Our very cool home away from home. We checked in, hung out for a little bit, and then went to a mini golf place. Jason won, of course. But I beat him at the NASCAR arcade thing, so maybe we're even. Either way, it was a great start to our less-than-usual planned-out vacation.

Tennessee Three

Here's the rest of our Tennessee trip. On the way out of Nashville, we stopped at the Hermitage, Andrew Jackson's homestead. It was cool to see it and to walk around the property a bit.

Next stop was a bed and breakfast on the way to Memphis. We stayed at the Chestnut Hill Ranch, which had quite a few farm animals and a very relaxing atmosphere. We had fun hearing stories about the pet pig, Esmerelda, reading outside on the deck, and watching hummingbirds and finches right outside our window while we ate breakfast.

The next morning, we drove to Memphis, but with a pit stop in Collierville. They had a great town square area with a park in the center and unique shops all around it. We ate lunch in a railroad car, trying out some Southern cooking. And not doing so well. Fried green tomatoes just aren't for me.

Then came Memphis. It wasn't my favorite city of the trip, but the food was amazing! We ate at an Italian restaurant called Papa Pia's near Beale St.

After eating way too much, we meandered over a few blocks and watched part of a baseball game.

Another thing we did in Memphis was to take a tour of Sun Studios (where Elvis first recorded).

We also walked Beale Street and ate some BBQ at the King's Palace Cafe. Good stuff!

All in all, the Tennessee vacation was a lot of fun. Great memories.

Now it's your turn--what great stuff did we miss doing in Tennessee...just in case we decide to go back sometime? :-)

More Travel Stuff

Okay, here's some more Tennessee trip stuff...just because it was a great trip and it's summertime. :-) When we left Chattanooga, we headed to Nashville. But we made a pit stop in Bell Buckle for some shopping. I LOVE that place. I'm going to have to set a story there, I think, just so I can go back sometime.

After Bell Buckle, we drove to Nashville and checked into our hotel. On one of our spring break trips, we'd stayed in the Hotel Indigo in Sarasota and loved it, so we decided to try out the Nashville version. It's a botique hotel with different decor at each location. I think we both liked the Sarasota version better, but it was still great.

This was an upstairs lounge area where we read and hung out.

Jason and I love to check out a zoo on our trips. Our favorite animal display is the meerkat--love watching those things. In Nashville, we skipped the country music stuff and went to the zoo. There's probably something wrong with that, but we had fun. We walked around downtown then ate some BBQ.

Later, we checked out a bookstore (of course). It was here that I realized my books will probably be shelved very close to one of my all-time favorites--Walker--Warren. I thought that was pretty cool.

Here's the sign for Broadway - had to get that in there.

So there's a snippet of Nashville. Stayed tuned for Memphis. I'm sure you'll wait on the edge of your seat. :-)

Travel Log

Okay, so I'm supposed to be writing. But as I sit here in the front room, surrounded by books, with music blaring, my gaze keeps falling on a picture of a historic hotel in Abbeyville, SC. And since I haven't blogged in a while, I thought maybe I post a few pictures from one of my vacations. (Not Abbeyville, because that was before I had a digital camera, and I don't feel like scanning pics. :-) )

I love to travel with my husband, and we have a lot of fun planning trips. Last summer we did a quick "tour" of Tennessee. We stayed at a bed and breakfast on a farm as well as a couple cool hotels. A lot of fun. Here are some pictures from our first stop: Chattanooaga.

On our anniversary, we went to cool restaurant in an old warehouse. Most of the building had been converted into an antique shop. The other part was a restaurant called Foodworks.

After supper, we picked up our tickets for a play at a community theater, then grabbed some dessert at the Mudpie restaurant. I loved that place. So much character. :-) The tables were mismatched, most of them heavy wood and scratched up. It was on a strip with little shops and restaurants near the water. The sidewalks outside had shoeprints in some areas with numbers beside them to teach you the steps of a waltz and other dances. After the play we walked out on a pedestrian bridge and looked at the water while we listened to a live band playing on the porch of another restaurant on the strip. A perfect evening. My brother and his family met us for a day, and we had fun taking a tour on a riverboat as well as checking out the aquarium. Jason and I also went to an art museum, but to get there, we had to walk over this glass bridge. Did I mention Jason is afraid of heights? :-) Our hotel was under construction, so the outside was a mess, as was some of the downstairs. In fact, if you looked at the building you wouldn't think it was open for business. But the rooms were newly remodeled and really great.I absolutely loved Chattanooga. If we could have changed anything about our trip, we would have stayed there longer. The city was clean, there was a big variety of things to do, and there were tons of cute shops, coffee shops, dessert places, etc. One of these days I'll have to write a story that takes place there. I'd have to go back for research, right? :-)