It's been a busy summer so far with lots of trips out of the city! Today I'm so excited to share my recent girls' trip in Connecticut. This trip has been years in the making (yes really) and I'm so excited that we finally made it happen! 

Mystic is a super adorable coastal town located in Connecticut. It's about 3 hours from Grand Central, but totally doable for a weekend trip! 

Lucky for us, we had a pretty awesome tour guide to show us the ropes! We stopped in the downtown area and had brunch at a cute new spot called NOCA. When you're on the coast I feel like it's totally necessary to eat as much seafood as possible, including brunch. I ordered their Mystic Scrambler with farm fresh eggs, lump crab, shrimp, jack and cheddar cheese, tomatoes, spinach and hollandaise sauce with a side of sweet grits. Seriously solid!

Connecticut was definitely living up to its preppy stereotype with this shop and I was loving it!

We also got to watch Mystic's famous draw bridge go up (a few times!) It goes up once an house in the summer months and it was fun watching it go up and all of the ships that went through.

If there's one word to describe Mystic I'd definitely say it is quaint. The downtown was so adorable.

After watching the boats go under the bridge we decided to hop on a boat ourselves and take a little tour of the seaport. 

There was actually a boat festival going on during the weekend so we got to get up-close and personal with some pretty cool ships.

Oh yeah, and if you look close in this man's kayak there's a dog cruising down the river with him!

One of my favorite part of the town was Captain's row, which were all of these beautiful homes that were waterfront on the river. Gorgeous!

After a busy day of exploring we worked up an appetite to hit up another Connecticut favorite.... Lobster rolls!! Mmm, my mouth is watering just thinking about them!

These were. so. good!!!! You really can't go wrong with fresh lobster on buttery rolls though can you? While we were eating I saw that they were selling these funny little lobster hats, so obviously I had to buy one! ;-) 

After we were stuffed to the giles with lobster we headed onto our next adventure... fresh ice cream! We had a little bit of a drive which was fun to see a  little more of Connecticut. We went through a lot of trees and then onto farm lands so I felt right at home! 

Alas, we arrived at Buttonwood Farm for some dessert! I was pretty pumped to try this place because my friend has been talking about it for a few years. The hype didn't disappoint either! I ordered a blueberry ice cream cone and it was definitely top 5 that I've had. Totally worth the trip out there!

We wrapped up the weekend with some more girl time including time with her pup Phoebe! We had such a great time and I can't wait for my next trip back! And for more lobster rolls and ice cream ;-)

This weekend was quite the collection of celebrations! We started the weekend off early on Thursday evening by enjoying some delicious desserts at Serendipity 3. Let’s leave out the fact that the desserts were actually my treat as a result of losing a bet… haha. The boys have gotten me into doing March Madness brackets the last two seasons for college basketball and Chris and I usually make a bet over something delicious. Last year, my bracket won and I was treated to some frozen yogurt, but this year my bracket wasn’t as lucky. I’ll still count it as a kick-off to the celebration weekend though since I still got to enjoy all of the deliciousness they offer!

By Friday night, we were off to celebrate one of our friend’s Birthdays down in the East Village. It was the first night going out this year that I didn’t have to wear a coat out, gasp! It’s only April, but the weather forecast has been in the high 70’s all weekend with a forecasted 85 for Monday. We ended up having a really great night out catching up with a bunch of our friends and then ended up catching with a couple of other friends after taking a detour on the way home. It is pretty remarkable the characters you can meet in NYC at 2 in the morning. This time, we ended up meeting up at a bar in Midtown that had about 10 people there, but the most amazing cover band! I’m talking great! One of the girls sang Adele followed by Janis Joplin. As if those two weren’t awesome enough then one of the guys broke out in some old-school Biggie. It was pretty remarkable and the band had all 10 of us pretty into their tunes.

By Saturday we were off for another celebration, a baptism party! One of Chris’ friends new baby was baptized this weekend! So we ventured up to Harlem where his friend lives. On our way up there it was pretty crazy too because we passed this group of guys on four-wheelers and dirt-bikes driving up and down the streets doing wheelies.. only in Harlem will you see that in NYC! Shortly after they made a couple of rounds up and down the cops were on their way to chase them down though.

It was such a fun get-together and wonderful to meet little baby Sophia. She’s adorable! Their new apartment is amazing too! I will admit I am slightly, meh very, jealous of their 2 bedroom with a full finished basement and backyard with grass. YES, grass in a New York apartment backyard. It was a really great time and they had the party catered by Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, which has been grilling up rocking BBQ in Harlem since pre-Anna days in 1988. As soon as the boys found out they were catering the party their mouths were watering, and I soon found out why. Just check out their homepage photo on their website and you will soon know why too!

To close up the night I headed back downtown to have a girl’s night with some of my friends. We were WAY over due for a girl’s night.. so it was a lot of fun to get together. One of our friends just got into a teaching training program and is leaving the advertising world this summer to pursue her ambitions too so it was really exciting to hear all about the program and everything.

By Sunday, I’m not going to lie I was pretty tired! A day spent relaxing and watching tv and some sports games were just what the doctor ordered. Now it’s off to bed for me to get a little rest before another event-packed week to come!

Some more photos from the weekend!