Summer 2013 East Coast Trip
Hello again! It has been quite a while since our last post, but given our recent trip to unknown territory, we thought we would share our experience with you all. So, our vacation couldn’t have worked out better. I had been wanting to explore the Northeast and then all of a sudden I got an email about a nurse practitioner conference in Cape Cod. I immediately knew it was meant to be, and then on top of that Jordan had been previously invited to speak at the BALSSI (Baltic Studies Summer Institute) language program in Pittsburgh. It was fate! I booked the conference and Jordan accepted the invitation to be a guest lecturer, and so began the endless planning that I do. 🙂 We drove from Knoxville to Pittsburgh, PA, then to Ithaca, NY, then Cape Cod, MA, Providence, RI, Bordentown, NJ, and Alexandria, VA, before finally heading back to TN. We hope you enjoy the pictures…
First of all, this is the scenic view we enjoyed while eating our picnic lunch. We stopped in Virgina on our way to Pittsburgh. This area was called Benge’s Gap. JORDAN: Hey, everybody, Brittney instructed me to chime in here and there. So here I’ll offer a travel tip: If you ever get a chance to tour the Appalachia region, I highly recommend Highway 23 from Kingsport, TN up through Virginia. That highway has some of the best vistas east of the Rockies, at least from what I’ve seen (including the one below).
Below is the Cathedral of Learning on the University of Pittsburgh’s campus. It is a 42-story Gothic style cathedral that was built between 1926- 1934. It is the 2nd tallest educational building in the world! Jordan was so fortunate to be invited to speak at BALSSI this year and this was the building where he gave his lecture on Latvian 4-H during the Ulmanis regime.
This is looking down onto the commons room inside of the Cathedral of Learning. The ceilings in this room are 52 feet tall. It was so beautiful inside. How lucky the students are who get to study in this magnificent building every day. JORDAN: Indeed! Why can’t every humanities department be housed in a magnificent building like this?
Below is a picture of one of the nationality rooms in the Cathedral of Learning. Each room is designed to celebrate a different culture that had an influence on Pittsburgh’s growth. There are 29 nationality rooms and the rooms are actually used for lectures. This happens to be the Austrian room. It reminded us of the Rundale palace in Latvia. Can you imagine sitting in a classroom that looks like this?! JORDAN: Another thing that is cool about these rooms is that much (or perhaps all, I’m not sure) of the money to furnish them was donated by the local ethnic communities. What’s more, it also gives you a sense of how wealthy the city was during its steel-producing heydays.
After we left Pittsburgh, we made our way up to Ithaca, NY. This is the bed and breakfast that I found for us to stay at. It is on a farm about 5 miles from Ithaca. It was so peaceful and quaint.
We went to Cayuga Lake in Ithaca to watch the sunset. Ithaca sits on the southern end of the 40-mile-long lake. It is the longest of the Finger Lakes.
We also drove along the western side of the lake and visited some of the wineries. The area was quite scenic but, unfortunately, we were not too impressed with the wines. Here is a view, as the picture suggests, from one of the vineyards.
We left Ithaca and headed for Cape Cod. This is a picture of a typical farm in the countryside of Upstate New York.
This is a view of the Cape Cod Canal Railroad Bridge. JORDAN: So what you see above the water, way up in the air, is the railroad track itself. It is on a vertical lift, which is lowered when a train needs to cross. Pretty amazing!
This is Old Silver Beach in Falmouth, MA. We took these pictures from the deck of the resort where we were staying for my nurse practitioner conference. It was a pretty rough conference when at every break I could just walk outside and see this view. 🙂
This is down in Woods Hole, one of our favorite spots. It had a more Bohemian, laid-back feel. This picture was taken from the restaurant we were eating at, Quicks Hole (see below for pics of our meal there)…
A view of the restaurant.
One of the best things about traveling is enjoying the local food. This was my first lobster roll experience. I thought I loved crab cakes, but now I’m obsessed with lobster rolls. They are oh so good! Jordan opted for the lobster taco, which was so fresh and tasty. I never liked lobster because of the texture, but I realized I had just never had fresh lobster. 🙂
Sitting at Quick’s Hole, we realized that the parking lot wasn’t covered with white rock or crushed concrete but with broken seashells… Then we started paying attention elsewhere, and it seems that this is pretty common everywhere in the region.
Below are some pictures of the harbor in Woods Hole, MA. These two appeared to be on their way back home from a grocery run. 
Here is a picture of the cars waiting to get loaded on the ferry to go to Martha’s Vineyard. Maybe next visit we will take a trip over to the island.
JORDAN: This was kind of cool. In Woods Hole there were a number of ocean research centers. The big ship here is one of the research vessels used for deep sea missions. It’s hard to get a sense here of how big the ship is, but let’s just say that it dwarfed the nearby building.
Check out the houseboats/floating houses in the background!
On the last day in Cape Cod, we went to the less touristy area near Woods Hole. The beach there reminded us of Latvian beaches because it was smaller and more natural (save for a few insanely nice homes).
The area also had one of the nicest lighthouses. JORDAN: Kimberly, I hope you are still following our blog, because I took this picture while thinking of you.
Of course, no trip is complete without finding a good bakery. This was on main street in Falmouth and they had really good almond croissants and chocolate croissants. 🙂 JORDAN: This bakery was awesome! A number of the guys working there were actually from France, and their baked goods were so good that they renewed my desire to master croissants. And on the front, I can report that my first batch of croissants last weekend were pretty good, but I still have some tweaking to do.
We enjoy visiting college towns, so after we left the Cape, we stayed in Providence, RI, where Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design are located. This was in front of the famous front gate to Brown University. We were told by a campus security guard (with whom Jordan chatted for a while) that the gate is only open on graduation day, and only the graduates are allowed to walk through (everyone else has to use the smaller side gate to the left).
We were walking around the campus area in Providence and stumbled upon this beautiful building. Jordan was being his curious self and walked up the steps to get a better look. We were then invited in by the local artist who is using the first floor as his studio. We had a nice chat with him and a local art professor, and at the end of our chat he graciously gave us one of his drawings of this street in Providence. Who says Northeasterners are rude?! We would just like to debunk this myth now, because everyone we encountered in the Northeast was outgoingly friendly.
If possible, we prefer to stay in B & Bs when traveling. This is the amazing staircase in the Christopher Dodge House in Providence, RI. I highly recommend this place. It had a great location, friendly staff, a deliciously filling breakfast (we were served Finnish pancakes with lots of other goodies), and it was in a beautiful, very historic building.
From Providence we headed south, but decided at the last minute to spend a few hours in Newport, RI, thanks in part to the urging of the kind artist mentioned above. Newport was a wonderful experience and a perfect way to end our time near the ocean. So, this view is of the bridge that takes you to Newport, RI. We tried to capture the effect that we saw, which looked like the bridge was taking you up to Heaven. 🙂
Newport was founded in 1639. This is a typical colonial style building near the “downtown” district of Newport.
We took a walk on the famous Cliff Walk located on the eastern shore of Newport. This is one of the mansions that is on the trail. JORDAN: Newport has some crazy, crazy mansions. I guess during the first two decades of the twentieth century Newport became THE summertime playground for the ueber-rich. For example, two of the Rockefellers had “summer homes” in Newport. The biggest Rockefeller mansion there, The Breakers, were it to be built today, would cost some $350 million — and for a “summer house” where they only stayed eight weeks a year!
These pictures below are views of the ocean from the Cliff Walk. JORDAN: It’s hard to know which way to look while on the Cliff Walk. On the one side are these unbelievable mansions, but on the other side are these breathtaking vistas of the Atlantic.
Here is the Newport Shipyard. It was neat walking around and seeing them actually making ships. It was also quite interesting to see some of the yachts and sailboats that people own. These buildings were located in the middle of the shipyard, and the awning on the end was Belle’s Café, where we had fresh seafood for lunch.
We had to try the littlenecks, which are small clams. They taste amazing!!
This was the view from our café table.
Here is my fresh salmon over greens. It was unbelievably good. It is not fair that the whole world can’t experience fresh seafood. It is hard to beat.
Jordan had to try the lobster rolls at Belle’s. They were quite tasty. JORDAN: And I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the potato salad was finished in a Southern German style with cream and vinegar. Tasty!
So, I had to find a good stopping point between Rhode Island and Pennsylvania and we didn’t want to deal with traffic in a big city, so I found a little town called Bordentown, NJ, which is about 30 minutes north of Philadelphia. Bordentown is an old historic town that sits on the Delaware River. We got into New Jersey late Thursday evening, so we spent Friday morning walking around Brodentown and we stumbled upon this Episcopal Church that was built in the 1840s. It was beautiful inside and had an old cemetery behind it (see picture below)…
JORDAN: To further Brittney’s point about Northeasterns being quite friendly, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the very nice guy who was there cleaning the church. He waved us in, stopped what he was doing, and despite that fact that he was, in his words, sweating boats (it was really hot and humid that morning), he took us for a personal tour of the entire church. What a nice guy!
We couldn’t even read some the the headstones because they were so old. I think the oldest ones we could read were from the 1770s.
Our last night we spent in Alexandria, VA, which sits on the Western bank of the Potomac River and just south of Washington, D.C. It was settled in 1695! (JORDAN: But let’s not forget that by that time Riga had already been around for nearly 500 years!) We visited Old Town Alexandria and fell in love with the quaint feel of the city and the beautiful and historic homes. For instance, here is the somewhat recently rebuilt home that George Washington had built in the late 1760s.
JORDAN: I want to buy the blue house! Seriously, I’d like to live in a place like that.
We found Le Refuge, a quaint little French restaurant right off of the main street in Old Alexandria. It was very eclectic and cozy inside and the food was outstanding. Definitely makes our top 5 list of best restaurants we’ve ever been to here in the States.
Below is a picture of Jordan’s duck with raspberry glaze, scalloped potatoes, and whipped carrots.
Below is a picture of my soft shell crab with almonds and a lemon-garlic sauce. The soft shell crab is lightly fried, and you actually eat the shell. I’m not a fried food kind of person, but I’ll make an exception for crab. 🙂 The picture definitely doesn’t do my meal any justice.
For dessert we had the pear tart paired with vanilla-infused homemade whipped cream and chocolate sauce that was quite tasty too.
Finally, after our meal we took a stroll along the Potomac. Here is the view we had. We had an amazing time visiting the Northeast and highly recommend exploring the area! Until next time…
crookedtimberofhumanity 