Ladies' trip to Palm Springs

Jumping back in time to the beginning of May, when I got to spend a weekend with some ladyfriends from college/beyond. We don't all live in the same city anymore, and when we do get to see each other we're usually surrounded by children and husbands (not knocking this - our group is pretty fun and their kids are adorable). But getting away for a couple days was exactly what we needed. We rented an AirBnB with a pool and movie screening room and we drank and ate and talked and re-watched 10 Things I Hate About You and talked more and generally had the most relaxing, life affirming weekend. Oh, and we got massages. It felt indulgent but was actually not too bad cost-wise, since we split the rental four ways and cooked almost all of our meals.









Also, Palm Springs continues to get better and better. It's always been lovely, but the food and drink offerings were lackluster. I'm happy to report that things are looking up.

What we did (besides lying around the house, which occupied most of our time):

Coffee at Ernest Coffee - we went four times over the course of three days. It's that great. The place is adorable and has legitimately great coffee (when I was there they had a date shakerato that was out of this world) but also has boozy coffee options for late afternoons (their Irish coffee was so much better than any other version I've ever had that it could have been a different drink altogether). And here's the really fun part - the back half of the coffee house is a tiny, adorable tiki bar that opens up in the evening. Which leads me to ...

 Drinks at Bootlegger Tiki - as I mentioned, it's tiny and only has a few booths, but you can also take your drinks outside to the Ernest Coffee patio. Tiki drinks are one of those things that I would never in a million years consider making at home (so many ingredients, so incredibly sweet) but I love a good tiki bar, especially on vacation. This is a good one.

Breakfast at Cheeky's - always worth a stop.

Morning run to the Doug Atkin installation, Mirage. Running up that hill was brutal, but the sweet reward was an utterly deserted mirror house at the top. When D and I went to see it back in March it was crowded and still blew me away. Seeing it completely empty was next level. The website says it closed on April 30th, but we were there the following week and it was definitely still open (there was a guard and everything). Maybe they've extended it?

East coast vacation

Whew. This was a great trip but we really maxed it out while trying to take as few vacation days as possible, leaving super early on Saturday morning and then getting back close to midnight the following Sunday. Normally I try to make sure we get a day at home to recover before going back to work but the timing wasn't right here. We were going to a wedding in Scranton, PA so we decided to tack on a couple of side trips to visit old friends and really make the most out of it. Totally worth it.

{flushing meadows corona park}

{the whitney}

{ellsworth kelly at the whitney}

{samara golden at the whitney}

{the happiest hour}

{lygia pape at the met breuer}

{sol lewitt at mass moca}

{spencer finch at mass moca}

{power outage!}

{deer in williamstown}

{wedding cocktail hour - scranton}

{day after coffee - scranton}

We flew into NYC and spent a few days hanging out with various friends, visiting museums and spending way too much money on drinks. But we made up for it by crashing with our friend Beth the whole time (I think I've posted this before, but I find it incredibly life affirming that you can have people you love so dearly that squashing yourselves into a studio apartment is a joy). We try to make it out to visit her every couple years and whenever we're there I have these glimpses of our alternate life. We were thisclose to moving when D was choosing a grad school, but we made the prudent financial decision to go with in-state tuition in CA vs. private school (and higher living costs) in NYC. I think we made the right call because we'd probably be bankrupt in Manhattan and I don't know how I would have managed my family stuff long distance, but I still get pangs. Lots of pangs.

Highlights of this NYC trip: 
Flushing Meadows Corona Park and the Queen's Museum (and ridiculously good dim sum in Flushing beforehand) - I hadn't seen the Panorama piece and it was really fun.
The Whitney - that Samara Golden piece in the biennial was breaking my brain but D figured it out right away.
The Met - for the Rei Kawakubo exhibit, of course.
The Met Breuer - now in the former Whitney building. The Lygia Pape exhibition was great.
Breakfast at Sadelle's - super fancy bagel breakfast. It's pricey but you could also go to the bar and order bagels a la carte.
Soft serve from Big Gay Ice Cream Shop - the Bea Arthur is my jam.
Lovely Szechuan style noodles at Hao Noodle and Tea.
Drinks at Seamstress - crazy long menu but everything we tried was wonderful.
Drinks at The Happiest Hour - the interior alone is enough to make you feel happy.
Drinks at Death & Co with my lady LMO.
A couple of exercise classes to try to balance it all out - we both got ClassPass* trials this month specifically because we knew we'd be going on this trip and it seemed like a good time to test it out. I'm happy to report that it was super easy to use. I've always resisted because I was afraid it would be a huge pain. I'm going to see if we use it enough at home to justify keeping it.

We rented a car with Beth and drove out to Williamstown, MA to visit our other dear friend (last time we were together was for her beautiful wedding!). Dustin and I met the two of them 19 years ago (!) at a really dorky educational summer camp and they are still our people. I feel so lucky to have them in my life and even though we only get to see each other every couple years it always feels like we're picking right back up. Our plan is to eventually retire together on a compound, Golden Girls style.

Massachusetts (we only had one full day here, but we tried to make the most of it):
The Clark - make sure to hike up the hill in back
Mass MOCA - mostly for the massive Sol LeWitt exhibit but the Nick Cave currently on view is wonderful.
Delicious breakfast at Five Corners - they had hibiscus kombucha on tap and it was the first time I've really understood the craze.
Pizza from Hot Tomatoes, which we were incredibly grateful for because we had just paid for our order when the entire town had a major power outage due to a sudden storm and everything closed down immediately. They finished cooking our pizza in the dark and we drove home and ate dinner by candlelight.
A morning run where I spotted a deer during the first five minutes and then got to run along the river, heaven.

Annnnnd then we proceeded down to Scranton, PA for the big event of the trip. The wedding was beautiful and so full of love and it had a great dance floor, which I really appreciate. It's kind of a blur but I don't think I sat down for more than 5 minutes. We were mostly doing wedding stuff, so we didn't get out much in Scranton but we had a really good time at the few places we went.

Backyard Alehouse - ridiculous selection of beers
Texas wieners at Coney Island of Scranton - the name, like the Texas wiener itself (which is a hot dog sandwich with chili on it), is somewhat inexplicable but I have no regrets.
Coffee at Adezzo and also at Northern Light



* I feel like they're always offering deeply discounted ClassPass trials, so maybe google for that first, but you can also get $30 off by signing up through this link (full disclosure - I also get $30 credit if you use it, so if you hate me you should probably not click on it) which might be better than the promo running at any given time.

Joshua Tree - NYE 2016 camping

I want to be a rational human being who doesn't think that how any particular day goes really has any particular bearing on the rest of your year. But there's something about the transition to the new year that gets me. I want it to feel kind of weighty, but also celebratory and serene and reflective. We did it right this year and took a trip out to Joshua Tree. We got in Friday night, spent Saturday scrambling around the rocks and the expected rain even held off long enough to let us enjoy a long NYE happy hour by the fire. (We don't really do "glamping" but I made an exception and packed a couple of our nice champagne coupes for the occasion.) It rained all night, but cleared up for a perfect New Year's Day camp breakfast.












You can't really go wrong with Joshua Tree camping, in my opinion. We stayed at Indian Cove this time. The sites are great (if you check the site list you can actually see pictures of all of them, which is really helpful), with plenty of vault toilets scattered around. There's no potable water available in camp, although apparently you can get water at the ranger station about 1.5 miles away. It gets really busy this time of year, so reservations are your best bet. We booked our site months in advance to make sure we got one. If you're planning on having a few people join you, make sure you check the site photos carefully. Although technically you're permitted to have two cars per site, some sites can really only accommodate a single car. We stayed at 96 and were pretty happy with it.

Campsites are dog friendly, but they aren't allowed on the trails - bummer. This can be a deal breaker if you have dogs unless you have a big enough group that someone is willing to hang out at the campsite during the day. For this trip, we didn't really hike, just scrambled around the rocks at the campground (with Circe in her backpack).

If you're into rock climbing, Indian Cove has some great options. D loves it, but I'm terrified of sheer heights, so I can't do it. Oddly, I'm fine clambering over giant piles of boulders, hence the rock scrambling.

I like to take January to think about goals for the year, but we're both on board with continuing our 2016 resolution of fitting in as many short camping trips as we can.

Sycamore Canyon Campground - beach camping!

Last weekend we had a one night stay in Sycamore Canyon campground, in Point Magu state park. It's a small campground with amazing beach access and I think we'll put this place on regular rotation. I can be a little grinch-y about the beach in summer (crowded, hot, hard to park, high risk of sunburn) but I love, love, love going in the off season. The goal was to hang out on the beach on Saturday afternoon, then get up early on Sunday so D could surf, but Sunday ended up being rainy so we slept in and read and made breakfast between rain showers instead. This sounds wimpy, but it isn't the rain itself that's the problem, but rather the contaminated runoff that results from the rain. I know, lovely. Here are some nice, non-contaminated photos.







Sycamore Canyon details - This is a great little beach campground. My standards are a little lower for beach adjacent campgrounds because you know what you're getting into when you reserve one - you're paying for amazing beach access, and the campground itself is often beside the point (San Onofre is a great example of this). This campground is pretty nice, though. There is running (potable!) water, with hot showers (bring cash for the shower tokens) and flushing toilets. Sites are arranged in a little loop and several of them are nestled into nooks that feel semi-private. You can't reserve your site ahead of time, but check-in is at 2 pm and you can show up and see what's still available. We ended up with site 23, which would be an amazing group site because it has plenty of space, although it doesn't have any tree cover (totally fine for this time of year, would suck in summer). Sites 33 and 42 looked nice and shady, but smaller. You can have three cars per site, and this would be a fun place for group camping. Sites are relatively pricey at $55/night ($45 + $10 for reserving online), but totally worth it. You can buy firewood from the camp host on site ($7/bundle while we were there).

We didn't have time for hiking this weekend, but there is a trail that leads right out of the campground. Since this is a state park, dogs aren't allowed on the trails (sad). In the opposite direction, you can access the beach through a pedestrian tunnel that goes under PCH. The beach allows dogs, which is a huge plus because dog friendly beaches are few and far between around here. Circe was in heaven and kept breaking into a sprint out of sheer joy. Seeing her bounding across the beach almost makes up for the 10 lbs of sand that she managed to bring home with her.

Fall camping - Marion Mountain Campground - Idyllwild

We didn't make it out camping in August or September, due to tight schedules, but we managed two trips in October and it felt good. I'm terrible at sticking with resolutions, but last year we set a goal of always having a camping trip on the calendar, and we managed to make it out quite a bit in 2016 (just counted - I think we got in six trips, which isn't the one-per-month we were aiming for but is still decent).

At the beginning of October we went back to Marion Mountain campground for a one night stay. We've stayed here before and it's quickly becoming one of my favorites. Our goal is to schedule a two night stay at some point so that we can actually summit the peak, but this trip was a particularly lazy one. Just getting out of the house took about all the energy I had left after a long week, so we mostly napped and read and played a million rounds of Boggle while sipping rattlers (pretty much the best camping cocktail, in my humble opinion, although bourbon and hot cocoa is pretty nice once it starts to get chilly).






Campground details in previous post. Worth noting - both times we've been here there's been a complete ban on campfires (you can still use your portable stove, but no other flame is permitted). I think this will probably continue until the drought ends. I was realllly bummed about this the first time, because it was cold and rainy and we had assumed that campfires would be allowed in the rings so I'd brought hot dogs and s'mores. The second time I was prepared and we made sure to bring games and plenty of layers and I only missed the fire a little.

Four (ish) days in Mexico City!

D and I love to travel but it's been a while since we've made it out of the country. It's tough juggling vacation schedules and it never seems to fit in our budget easily. But when I saw that Southwest was having an international sale a few weeks ago I decided to forget about being practical and impulsively booked us a last minute trip to Mexico City to celebrate our five year wedding anniversary. I felt really spontaneous and fun until I realized that my passport had expired and I had to run around trying to get an expedited renewal. Womp womp. BUT it was wonderful and worth it and when you consider that Mexico City is closer to us than NYC (and a whole lot cheaper) it's kind of a no-brainer.

This was NOT a relaxing trip where we lounged around by the pool. I made an insane Google map with about three times as many museums, restaurants and bars as we could possibly visit in 4.5 days. I like to have options. We didn't even attempt to get to everything because feeling pressured on vacation is no fun, but we definitely kept busy and we were walking upwards of 10 miles a day, taking in as much of the city as we could. We decided we'll have to go back soon to tackle the rest of our list.

I'll share some details about what we did and where we stayed, etc. after the photos. (Whoops - this got insanely long - I should probably split it up, but I'd rather have everything in one place, so ....)

{hotel casa nuevo leon}

{chicharrón de queso at el faraon}

{trotksy's house}

{frida's studio}

{frozen margaritas at bonito}

{luis barragan's house}

{coffee at cafe zena}

{anthropology museum}

{museum entrance}

{buna 42}

{coffee at buna 42}

{art deco details at palacio de bellas artes}

{tiffany ceiling at gran hotel ciudad}

{mezcal jugs at el palenquito}

{walking on avenida amsterdam}

{tout chocolat in condessa}

{pastries at eno}

Hotel: We wanted to stay in the Condessa/Hippodromo/Roma area. These are gorgeous residential neighborhoods with tons of great restaurants, coffee, etc, so I figured it would make a good homebase. After a lot of searching I found Hotel Casa Nuevo Leon, which is right on the edge of Condessa and Hippodromo. It's minimalist in a good way, and relatively inexpensive. We loved it and would absolutely go back. They include breakfast in the little cafe downstairs (just fruit, bread, coffee and juice, but it's more than enough food) and one of the highlights of the trip was the warm pan dulce every morning. Avenida Amsterdam, which is just a block away, has a gorgeous green walking loop lined with cute cafes. This neighborhood has great dog watching, which I loved.

Schedule: We gave ourselves a day each in a few different areas (Coyoacan, Chapultepec/Polanco and the Centro Historico). Traffic is rough, so you can't count on getting anywhere quickly. We "lost" a day because it was Mexican Independence Day while we were there and we knew museums would be closed. It worked out, though, because it gave us an excuse to explore Condessa/Roma and take a much needed afternoon nap.

Site seeing: Actual places we visited (as opposed to all the places we saw while we were out walking). I should note that we had already visited some museums and landmarks when we were in Mexico City years ago, so we skipped those this time (including Teotihuacan, which takes a full day but is amazing).

Museo Casa de León Trotsky (aka Trotsky's house) - just a few blocks from Frida Kahlo's house and it opens up a little earlier, so you can go there first and then walk over to Casa Azul.

Frida Kahlo's house - super crowded, even though it was a random Wednesday. But seeing her studio and living spaces was amazing, and they had a great temporary exhibit up with her clothes and her undergarments/braces.

Museo Dolores Olmedo - huge collection of Diego Rivera's work, along with rotating exhibitions. This is pretty far south but I was willing to trek out so that we could see the xoloitzcuintli (ancient Mexican dog breed) that live there. Sadly, you don't get to pet them, but it's fun to see them.

Luis Barragan's house/studio - Barragan, a visionary architect, used his house as an exploratory space and it's amazing. It's best to make a reservation well ahead of time.

National Anthropology Museum - this place is enormous and you can barely scratch the surface of it in an afternoon. We just gallery hopped to the subjects we were most interested in.

Palacio de Bellas Artes - gorgeous art deco detailing, amazing murals, and (while we were there) a great exhibition on Mexican architect Javier Senosiain.

Eating/drinking: I think it was the altitude but both of us noticed our appetites were smaller than usual. This meant we didn't make it to a lot of the places on our list, but we still had some great snacks/meals/drinks. A few of our faves -

Al pastor tacos at El Huequito - so great. We also tried crowd favorites Tizoncito and El Faraon (both delicious, just not quite as good). All of these places have multiple locations across the city.

Frozen margaritas at Bonito Popfood (San Angel location, but there was also one right down the street from our hotel) - fancier than we were expecting, but this was a fun lunch.

Delicious quesadillas at Maria Isabel in Polanco - these aren't what we're used to calling quesadillas at home - they're more like pockets of fried masa with cheese and fillings. The bean and cheese one was the standout for us.

Hipster breakfast at Lalo! - avocado toast and flat whites are everywhere now. We stuck with the chilaquiles and the huevos rancheros, both were amazing. The servings are enormous and we agreed that it would be best if you had five people and could order 3 - 4 dishes (we really wanted to try the french toast, which came highly recommended, but we couldn't even finish the two dishes we ordered).

Perfect dinner at Fonda Fina - the homier cousin of Quintonil (we wanted to go there but they were booked up a month in advance). This was a wonderful, special meal in a relaxed setting.

Cocktails and aguachile at Huset - their patio is dreamy, but you need to make a reservation to get a table there for dinner.

Pastries - As far as pan dulce goes, I'm all about the conchas, so we tried a couple of the city's most popular versions. Panadería Rosetta (we went to both locations) had a great one, but their guava danish was the true standout. Eno's concha was delicious (and we grabbed sandwiches to take on the plane). I still think my favorite was the cafe at our hotel, where they baked them fresh every morning.

Ice cream at Nómada - best avocado ice cream I've ever had.

Mezcal tastings at La Botica (they have a couple locations and they do cocktails as well) and at El Palenquito, which wasn't on our list but we're so glad we stopped in our last night. They have a small but well curated list of artisanal mezcals and we also picked up a bottle take home.

Mexican craft beer at Taller de Cerveza la Graciela and El Deposito.

Delicious coffee at Buna 42, where we also picked up some beans to take home. Another great coffee stop was Cafe Zena, which we mostly picked because the space was so cute, but their coffee was good too.We window shopped at Distrito Fijo Club de Ciclismo, a combo coffee/bike shop, but we were maxed out on caffeine.

Shopping:

Chocolate - we wanted to bring home some candy so we visited Que Bo! (delicious showstoppers) and then later found Tout Chocolat, which was just around the corner from our hotel. They make the chocolates onsite at the Condessa location (not sure if they do the same at their other location) and we particularly loved the mezcal with sea salt and the maracuya (passionfruit). We brought a bunch home.

Custom made shoes at Goodbye Folk - D picked up a great pair of shoes here. They have beautiful designs and if they don't have your size in stock they can make a pair in about 10 days (and will ship to the US for $20 if necessary). I'm not a shoe person at all and I was sorely tempted by a pair of mint green quilted loafers.

Tourist shopping at Centro Artesanal La Ciudadela - this is a huge, overwhelming market and it's great. I think you're supposed to haggle but I hate doing it, so I didn't. We don't normally do much shopping on vacation but we couldn't resist picking up some kids clothes and then we sort of went off the rails and came home with a giant blanket, a scarf for me that might as well be a blanket, and a lighting fixture (!), along with various other trinkets.

Quirky prints from Macolen - we stumbled on this little shop and ended up buying two framed prints. The owner works with artists all over the world, makes prints of their work using a Riso printer (the full size version of the Gocco, basically) and then sells them out of this little shop/studio. There are some amazing pieces in here.

Logistics - not sure if anyone else is interested in my cell phone plan details, but I had to Google it before I left, so maybe one of you is wondering?

Uber: Lots of friends recommended Uber, which didn't exist the last time we visited Mexico City. There are safety concerns with hailing street taxis, so this was a great option and it also helps if there's a language barrier (I'm lucky because Dustin is fluent, but if I was on my own this would have been a huge plus!). We tipped in cash. I know Uber says tipping isn't expected, but that always makes me feel weird. I'm embarrassed to admit it but we didn't take the subway once. We planned to, but every time we checked Google maps it was faster to either walk or take an Uber. I think this is because our hotel wasn't particularly close to a subway station.

Walking around: We walked and walked and walked. We actually walked from Chapultepec to Polanco one day (I don't recommend this - I didn't realize our route had us walking on a tiny strip of sidewalk next to the freeway). But other than that ill advised trip, the walking was great. We were really oriented in the city and we got good at finding our way around and stumbled on little places we wouldn't have seen otherwise. I always follow the same walking safety rules in cities I don't know - choose your route on Google maps before you leave your hotel, trying to find streets that seem nice (stores, coffee shops, etc) so you don't accidentally end up in a weird deserted area. Once I have my route set, I turn on navigation, put one earbud in discreetly and then tuck my phone in my purse or pocket. That way I'm getting step by step instructions but I look like I know where I'm going.

Cell phones: Of course, in order to use Uber or maps we needed our cell phones to work. We have Verizon, so I added an international travel pass to our phone plans before we left. The travel pass is activated as soon as you use your phone in a different country, and they charge you $2 per 24 hour period (in Mexico, it's higher on other continents) to use your regular data/minutes/etc.

Cash: I ordered pesos from our bank before we left and I'm really grateful for it. They let me specify small bills, which meant I had a big wad of 20s, 50s and 100s. If you get money from the ATMs in Mexico you mostly get larger bills which can be hard to break. We did use credit cards for some meals and our hotel, but we needed cash for almost everything else, especially tips.

And one last note on the altitude - Mexico City is pretty high up (just under 7500 feet) if you're used to sea level. Last time we were there I was really affected by it and felt crummy. I was determined not to let that happen this time so I read up on what you should do to prevent altitude sickness and found this article about a study that showed taking Ibuprofen could help stave it off. The day before we left I made sure to drink a ton of water, and then I followed the general recommendations of the study, taking three 600 mg doses of Ibuprofen the day of travel (one when I woke up at 5am, one on the plane around middday, one in the evening when we had arrived). We were also really careful about hydrating while we were there, basically picking up bottles of water anytime we passed a mini-mart (so, all the time). Not sure if it was the pills or the water, but other than a little headache the second day I felt great and we were able to walk a ton and get a lot done.

Huge thanks to those of you who reached out with tips and recommendations - so sweet of you all!