Heading Home Part One | Boston to Virginia Beach

Well I’m back on the road! Instead of driving north with Mom, I am driving south with Dad. As I am writing this we are driving on I-95 south, about an hour away from South of the Border (UPDATE: As I am publishing this, we are in our hotel in Charleston).

Yesterday Dad and I made the long journey from Boston, MA to Virginia Beach, VA. It was a twelve-hour day including rest stops and lunch. We left the apartment at 6:30 am and ate at a Starbucks for breakfast (a sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich for the both of us).We went on the George Washington Bridge where I took a bunch of photos!

On the New Jersey Turnpike, we stopped at the Walt Whitman Rest Stop where I had a prosciutto caprese sandwich and Dad had a Nathan’s hot dog. Before the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, most of the drive was through rural Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.

Then we got to the Bridge-Tunnel, which was really cool. As the name suggests, some of it is a bridge and some of it is a tunnel. At the rest stop we stopped and took lots of pictures and Dad got a Geocache.  The sun over the water was beautiful and would be lovely to see at sunset.

We finally got to our hotel (the Ramada Oceanfront) at around 6:30 pm. We had to switch rooms because the first room was smoking and we had requested non-smoking. The views from both of the rooms were fantastic!

I quickly freshened up my hair and makeup before Dad and I headed out to find some dinner. I took a few more pictures on the beach before we went to Waterman’s Surfside Grille. We ate inside because the wait was short and we were happy to still be able to see the ocean from our seats. For an appetizer we got hush puppies, which are fried cornmeal balls that shouldn’t be so good. They were served with some butter, but I don’t think that you needed it. As my entrée I got the Parmesan Peppercorn Halibut, which was good but I think it had too much of the cheese sauce on top. Dad got the crab cakes that tasted really yummy!

At a nearby table set for sixteen, there was a wedding party that had just gotten married on the beach. The groom was a sailor in his dress whites and the bride was in a flowy, long, white dress. They were adorable and I wish them all the luck in the world.

Before heading into the room, I took a couple of photos of the sunset from the windows on our floor. Then Dad and I watched Harry Potter: The Making of Diagon Alley (which looks amazing) and American Ninja Warrior (the stuff that they can do is crazy) before going to sleep.

It was long day, but we were up early this morning for the next leg of the journey: Virginia Beach to Charleston, SC. Thanks for reading!

Washington, D.C. Day Three and Four | College and Georgetown

Bienvenue! On Monday and Tuesday I had college orientation. We listened to presentations about living in dorms, the community, getting involved, and meeting fellow students. It was a long two days, but a lot of fun. I am excited, but nervous, about the upcoming year. I’m scared that I won’t be able to make friends quickly, I’m afraid that I’ll get really homesick, I’m afraid that the classes will be too hard and I’m afraid that I won’t have any “alone time.” But I’m also excited for the new experiences, decorating my dorm, meeting new people, learning new things and starting my adult life. I don’t know what I want to major in, but I’m thinking something to do with media and maybe French. This semester I’ll be taking general education courses in writing, business, justice, literature and media. It’ll be an exciting semester and I hope that I’m still writing this in six months when my first semester at college is over.

After coming back to the hotel after the second day of orientation, I planned on napping for ten minutes. As you could expect, that ten minutes turned into forty minutes. Since I had done that, we had to rush to get ready for dinner. We went into Georgetown to find a restaurant that wasn’t too fancy or expensive. We ended up going to J. Paul’s where we were able to watch Russia-South Korea match from our table. They served us pretzels straight away (YES!) and then we ordered our entrées. I got the seafood pasta with scallops, shrimp and clams, and Emma got the BBQ Ribs. Again, I did not think that she would finish it but she got close.

Yes, a ten-year-old girl ate most of this! 

After dinner we wandered around the town before we got a little something-something for dessert. Emma got frozen yogurt from Pinkberry, and Dad and I got cookies from Dean & Deluca. I got a raspberry window and hazelnut sandwich. Dad got a football cookie in honor of the World Cup (which we are watching right now as I type).

  

One last post about D.C. will be uploaded tomorrow, and I haven’t planned what I want to post afterwards. Anyone have any ideas? Anyways, thanks for reading about fears and hopes for college. Until tomorrow . . .