Miscellaneous Adventures!
August 2
Exploring Our City
For our last day before Brenna moved away back to DC, we decided to go to New York City. We had been to so many other cities on our European exploration that we felt the need to explore the city closest to us: NYC. We hopped on the classic NJ transit train and headed over. We took a walk down to around the Chelsea area and got some brunch. We then made our way down to Little Island! Little Island is a man made island that is a very cute park where they hold events daily and there is a spot for food trucks and such. There is even an amphitheater that they hold events at with a great view of the river and Jersey City. We perused the entirety of the island and got some great shots of downtown. We left and started walking again South. We found ourselves in the meatpacking district and saw some cool buildings around. We then went over to Pier 40 since it has lots of stuff going on including an aquatic research lab that you can tour. Unfortunately the lab was only open later in the day so we could not go (Ben was disappointed). We went down to Pier 25 where they have a park and a mini golf spot. For $10 a person we played 18 holes of mini golf. Which was awesome. Similarly to our time on Little Island we had great views of Downtown and Jersey City while we played. Neither of us did fantastic in the mini golf but Ben did end up winning and Brenna got a hole in one! After the mini golf we went next door to Pier 26 which had a rooftop bar. We got their wine flight and had 4 different wines (from left to right: Riesling, Rose, Pinot Noir, Cabernet). The wines were pretty good but the views and weather were even better. We sat up there just chatting for a while enjoying ourselves. Would highly recommend this spot just to hang out for a drink! We took the metro back up to Penn Station and narrowly caught the NJ transit train back to NJ.
August 22
Harpers Ferry is Hopping!
Ben visited Brenna for a couple days in Washington DC prior to his semester starting. On this quick visit we took a day trip to Harpers Ferry West Virginia. This town is small but has a great national park surrounding it along with many small museums with information about the civil war era. We drove and arrived around midday, parking at the train station. A park ranger approached us at the train station and asked what we were doing in town. We said we wanted to look around and do a bit of hiking and she was more than happy to give us a nice hiking route. We meandered up the main street and passed by all of the old buildings. We then settled for lunch at the Rabbit Hole which we both ate the Appilacian BBQ sandwhich which was fantastic. We wandered up and down, going into some different stores. Ben obtained a West Virginian Wine and a single Beer to try at a later time, and we also went into an old candy store where Ben purchased some sippin specs for himself. We looked in a few other shops and saw some cool stuff but the only other thing we bought was sunscreen. We started on our two mile hiking journey going up a hill past the town church which was pretty cool looking but we couldn’t go in. We continued further and found the Jefferson Rock. We’re not sure how it got its name but it seemed cool and the view from next to the rock had a great view of the Shenandoah River. We continued on our hike which was nice as the trees shaded us from the sun. We eventually looped around and descended down to the riverside and sat by the river observing the beauty of our surrounding for a bit. We found some old ruins of buildings and water holding tanks near the river that were used for mills and such. We finished up our hike and checked out some of the museums which had civil war artifacts. Lots of old rifles and information were layed out in these museums and it was pretty cool. We finished up our time in Harpers Ferry with a beer at the Harpers Ferry Brewery which had an excellent view of the river. The establishment’s slogan was: The brew with a view. Fantastic beer and fantastic view was 10/10. We departed and went back towards DC stopping at a Japanese place along the way to get some Ramen (Ben’s volcano ramen shown). We finished up the evening with some pool. Great little adventure for the day and an overall great visit!
