Okay, okay so California Chrome didn’t take the Triple Crown and there was no history to be watched, but I still need to tell you how Belmont went!

Being a Triple Crown and all this year I made sure to make plans accordingly. 1.) Check with my friends for a head count on who was heading to the Stakes, check. 2.) Plan on getting to the train station earlier than precious years to avoid some of the chaos, check. 3.) Set up a said meeting spot once we arrived so that if we branched off we had a spot to meet back at, check check. I did everything I thought was beat practice to make the event day go smoothly, and for the most part it worked out. Definitely some bumps in the road, but not totally terrible.

As expected, transit was pretty atrocious. We waited quite a while before making it to the front of the line, had to split up from a few groups of friends, the train was late, and then the train went apx. 5 mph the whole trip. Once we made it though things ran pretty smoothly. It was definitely a lot more crowded than usual {which is still pretty crowded}, but it wasn’t unbearable. It was a beautiful day and we all had a lot of fun! I’m not big at betting, but I did bet on two horses for the day 1.) FiftyShadesofGold — I never read the 50 Shades of Grey books butttt I sure do love gold ;-) and then 2.) California Chrome. I ended up being a big loser for the day, but it was fun regardless.

Some other cool things that happened were there were performances by LL Cool J and Frank Sinatra, Jr. leading up to the Belmont race. Can you say awesome? I loved LL Cool J as a kid, so that was definitely a treat and hearing Frank Sinatra, Jr. sing New York, New York, was pretty awesome to say the least. 

All and all I’d say it was a pretty solid day. Nice weather, great company, some yummy lemonade and kettle corn? Solid! Getting home was a 3 hour nightmare {NY Times did a decent write-up if you want to read}, but all and all a fun time! Definitely an event I recommend!

In 3+ years, Chris and I have only somehow been on 2 trips together — both to Washington to visit my family. I usually use my vacation time to go home and he usually uses his for out-of-state boys trips or bachelor parties so unless it’s a weekend trip to visit his parents, we don’t get out of the city much together! Not to mention, it’s tough to get-away together because then I have to find someone to watch Scooter!

Despite the reasons, it was about time we planned a little getaway! I proposed the idea about a month ago and Chris suggested we rent a bungalow on Fire Island. He had rented several times with his buddies from this one guy and he just so happened to have a studio bungalow available for the weekend that was pet-friendly. DONE and DONE!

The trip to Ocean Bay Park on Fire Island from the Upper East Side took about 2 1/2 hours, but it wasn’t too bad! Scoots has gotten much better traveling in his bag — I think he understands he gets to go places when he hops in now. After a bus, subway, train, shuttle, and ferry ride though he started to get a little antsy, but hey we made it!

I got out of the office a little early for the holiday so we were able to get to the bungalow and walk along the beach for the evening.

Fire Island is a small island off of Long Island, and where we were was full of small beach towns. Aside from service vehicles, there weren’t any main roads other that for walking and biking and the whole diameter of the island couldn’t be more than a few city blocks wide. Giving you views of the bay if you look in one direction and the ocean on the other. 

Our bungalow was located in Ocean Bay Park, but over the weekend we took several walks around the island through the other nearby towns of Seaview and Ocean Beach. 

It may have only been a few hours outside of the city, but it easily felt worlds apart. Instead of taxing whisking by you in the city, we passed lots of wagons. Near the ferry docks, there were areas for residents to lock up their wagons. Since there aren’t really cars, this is how people pack things from the mainland to their beach houses. Having a wagon never seemed so cool to me before!

We spent a lot of time in Ocean Beach checking out the views, shops and of course the restaurants!

Of course I had to give the local drink of choice, a Rocket Fuel a try during our visit. Basically, it’s a pina-colada made with 151 and amaretto. I only had one, but I can certainly see how they might get you in trouble!

What would an Anna and Chris adventure be without some delicious food too? Since we were on a little getaway we decided to treat ourselves with some fancy dinner choices including steak and I even tried my first order of mahi-mahi over the weekend {totally delicious btw}.

Fire Island has quite the reputation of being a “party island” so we definitely saw our share of interesting people over the weekend! That’s for sure! They made for good entertainment though and everyone seemed very friendly for the most part. We ended up hanging out with some of our neighbors to the bungalow, a lot of which actually live on the Upper East Side currently and two who turned out to be from a town near my hometown in Washington. Such a small world!

We capped out the weekend by celebrating Scooter’s 11th Birthday {Boo Boo is getting old!} and a visit from Chris’ family on Monday. 

Spending time on the beach followed by a BBQ on our porch was the perfect end to the weekend! Until next time Fire Island!

I stumbled across the cutest store while walking through the Flatiron District, named Fishs Eddy, that I just have to tell you guys about! I never thought I’d be so excited about a store carrying flatware, glassware, and other kitchen items but this store was seriously just too cute.

From my first few steps in the store I was hooked! Their vintage almost barn-like vibe of the shop took me back to quaint shops in Washington, making me feel right at home. Vintage milk jugs, painted mason jars, and their ceramic berry baskets — to die for! 

Now if I only had more cabinet space to fill up with all of their goodies! Maybe my next apartment ;-) Until then, I’ll be working on my wish list!

If you are in the city, they have two locations, one in Manhattan and then an outlet store on Staten Island. Don’t worry if you aren’t here though because they also have an online store!