Escape from Baltimore, Part 2.

Where were we? Ah, yes, New England. Red and I rolled into Providence in the late afternoon. Such a cool town! Spoiler alert: We highly recommend it. It’s very walkable, so we strolled around and got our bearings. Evidently it was move-in weekend for several of the colleges near our hotel, so it was perhaps a little more bustling than normal. It was also a Waterfire weekend, so we appreciate Providence’s putting on a show for us.

Hotel view.

Waterfire before....

...and after!

We’d heard wonderful things about Nice Slice, so we went in search of vegan pizza. We were a bit deflated to learn that we couldn’t simply order off the menu, which looked amazing; instead, there were a few limp slices of vegan pie hanging out under a heat lamp. We were hungry and weren’t sure where else to go, so we ate them. They were fine, but definitely a letdown.

That's some sort of spinach-almond-cranberry on the left, and pepperoni-sausage on the right.

Can't remember what it was, but I loved it.

Our pizza break came at a weird too-late-for-lunch-and-too-early-for-dinner hour, so we vowed to do better later that evening. Union Station Brewery was right next to our hotel, so we popped in there for a beer and a snack. They didn’t have a lot for us, but the hummus plate was delicious and I had a nice Lemon Weizen.

Sunday was our last full day of vacation, so we spent the first half with our friends, Mike and Kristin, and their adorable toddler, Maggie. I swear, it was the Weekend o’ Cute Kids. We met for brunch at the Garden Grill, where Maggie proceeded to charm everyone while the rest of us inhaled food that more than made up for the sad-faced Nice Slice Pizza. Seriously, behold:

My tofu BLT (with avocado, of course)

Red's tofu scramble (he loves nothing more, I tell you)

Those home fries were something else, too. Everything was amazing.

After that, we all walked to a nearby park, with a quick stop at Wildflour Café for coffee and pastries. Wildflour is an adorable little all-vegan joint with fantastic treats, and has the distinct honor of blending Maggie’s favorite smoothie. The best part: It’s right next-door to Garden Grill! Vegan domination! If only a yoga studio had been in the same shopping center. Needless to say, Red and I loaded up for the remainder of our stay in Providence: We took home a chocolate-chip scone, a granola scone, and, if I know myself at all, probably something chocolatey. I know I just said it, but Providence is extremely pedestrian-friendly. Mike and Kristin walk most everywhere with Maggie. It was wonderful to be in a city that supports a more eco-friendly way of living.

MINE!

After a bit more walking and window-shopping, Red and I headed for the East Greenwich Art Festival. We’d been stalking Like No Udder (VEGAN! SOFT! SERVE!) on Twitter and Facebook to nail down their location, and the art festival was it. A bit of artisan crafting to go along with our ice cream? Don’t mind if we do!

The truck!

Alas, we didn’t even get a grainy cell-phone pic of the ice cream, because we were too busy rejoicing in the sweet, creamy delight and trying to eat it faster than it could melt. For real, you guys, this shit is good. New Englanders, you are lucky, lucky folks. We kept it simple—I think I got chocolate and Red got chocolate-vanilla swirl—but sometimes simple is best. It was especially revelatory for Red, who loves soft serve like no one’s business. I’m happy with regular scooped ice cream, but my man knows what he likes. High five, Like No Udder. You made a vegan boy very, very happy.

Once we were high on delicious sugary ice cream, we took in a few festival sights:

Don't fall in!

Also, because I didn’t take a picture of it, I just now remembered that Red and I went to Julian’s for dinner. Their website boasts several good-looking vegan selections, so we were bummed to learn that on the weekends, they cut back to a limited menu. This left us with basically one thing to order, and I couldn’t even remember what the hell it was. Thanks to Red, who took a picture with his phone, we figured out that it had been some kind of tempeh wrap. It was fine. We were just grumpy at not having a choice.

Thrilling, I know.

The next day, we flew home. That’s a story in and of itself, but we survived. Lucy thoroughly enjoyed her first time staying home with a sitter, the wonderful Cathy, and we were all happily reunited before dinner. Although it was a short trip, we packed in a lot of good friends and good food. I know we’ll be back again, if only because Red will need a soft-serve fix!

I bought that pretty scarf at the art fair!

Escape from Baltimore, Part I.

Over Labor Day weekend, Red and I fled town. We did this because of a small traffic jam known as the Baltimore Grand Prix (I’m not linking because get bent, you assholes). This is an event which, starting on the Thursday before Labor Day, turns the city into an Escape From New York-style nightmare in the name of tourism, cars that go really, really fast, and people dumb enough to want to sit outside on metal bleachers while the asphalt reflects the scorching summer heat. Once would be bad enough, but it is supposed to happen annually. I could write a book about all the ways it sucks, but I won’t because last year we decided that we would simply do an end-run around the whole clusterfuck by leaving town every Labor Day.

Every day for a month, I drove to work through a cage. Photo ripped from wn.com. 

This year, it was a no-brainer. We have friends in New Hampshire and Rhode Island, so we hopped a short little flight up to Manchester and prepared for a weekend of food and camaraderie. New England did not disappoint us.

Our first stop was at my heart-sister Jess’ place. I miss her every day and hope that one day we’ll live in the same city again. She and her husband Matt are new parents to the most adorable, magical little stinker. I’m completely in love with him. He didn’t get to have any of this, though:

Hello, lover.

I was overjoyed to learn that Trader Joe’s stores in more civilized states (read: not Maryland) sell alcohol. Not only that, but they’ll also give you a list of all their vegan selections. Finally, cheap vegan wine! Turns out that Three-Buck Chuck is highly drinkable. So is Green Fin, which is about a dollar more. I don’t think I’ve ever bought two bottles of wine for under eight dollars before. It all went marvelously with the massive quantities of Indian food we powerhoused while gossiping and playing Scrabble.

Confession: Until this trip, I had never actually had a dosa. Sure, I’d eaten my fair share of my low-budget dosadillas, but those are crap compared to the real thing. The spongy, injera-like dough! The savory filling! The little cups of chutney and dipping sauce! These dosas were fantastic. That’s a samosa on top there, as a bonus. Basically we ate a lot of fried dough and carbs, then wondered why we couldn’t move.

Surprisingly, we were hungry again the next day, so we all met up at Life Alive Café, a hella hippie place that is also the most gorgeous restaurant I’ve ever visited. For real, look at the bathroom:

It was a tiny tropical paradise.

Tell me you don’t want to just hang out in there for a while.

All the dishes have ridiculous but friendly names. It’s hard not to feel like a spaz when ordering The Romantic:

It's basically tofu, avocado, and broccoli, but it hit the spot.

Jess ordered The Hot & Healthy Bachelor, though, so I think she wins. Everything was delicious. If only my latte had been bottomless. Endless caffeine makes everything better.

The utterly scenic Lowell, Massachusetts (I am not even being sarcastic; Lowell has come a long way since my dad grew up there):

Side of the New England Quilt Museum.

Obviously.

I don't know. I just liked it.

This cool-looking building houses one of the UMass Lowell bookstores, among other things.

After that, there were many many hugs and baby snuggles before we hit the road to Providence. Come back soon and check out the rest of our trip! I promise to post the second half before winter arrives.

Faux-tropical paradise, with ducks.

Hi, my little sugarplums! I wish I could say I was writing to you from balmy Florida, but I barely looked at the computer while we were down there, so I’m writing it from where I usually write these things: the bathroom. (Kidding.) Anyway, Red had to go to Orlando for a conference and I wanted to escape a week’s worth of forecasted rain, so we jetted south last week. We were very lucky to stay on the Loews Royal Pacific Resort. It is basically a luxurious Fake South Pacific, but they had lots of sushi and vegan-friendly food (as opposed to Loews Portofino Bay, aka Fake Italy, where all the pasta at this one restaurant was made with eggs, but they did have Vespas). They also had a pool and sunshine and lots of ducks wandering around quacking for snacks. And dogs! They are a dog-friendly resort, and Red and I became BFFs with a hyper little corgi-Jack Russell sweetheart named Ike. It was a total win, is what I am saying. We did absolutely nothing photo-worthy, not even visit Hogwarts—and we sort of wanted to, but it is so expensive and we didn’t have a lot of time, so we bagged that—but I did take lots of pictures of our food for you.

But first, logistics. Just like I did before we went to Sanibel, I hit the Internet to gauge our options. Loews provided most of their menus online, so I was able to get an idea of what we could eat on the various resorts (Loews has three Orlando resorts linked by a shuttle system: Royal Pacific, Portofino Bay, and Hard Rock). It looked like we’d be good to go at Royal Pacific and okay at Portofino Bay, but we kicked Hard Rock to the curb for veg-unfriendliness. Red also found a Whole Foods nearby, for those urgent kombucha cravings. (I don’t know why I wrote that. I hate kombucha.) We were confident we wouldn’t starve, but we still packed granola bars.

The view from our room.

Our first order of business was dinner, because we were very hungry after we finally made it to the hotel and I get cranky if I miss meals. We wandered downstairs to the bar (‘scuse me, the Orchid Court Lounge) and begged some sushi and alcohol from Taren, my new favorite bartender. She is from Tasmania and gave us pieces of the pineapple she was slicing for garnishes after she saw me staring at it. Taren is the best.




We had a couple false starts at breakfast, because once we determined that they offered the particular variety of Kashi cereal with dried blueberries—the only vegan Kashi they had on hand—that’s what I kept trying to order. It’s called Blueberry Clusters or something. One morning I got the correct cereal with extra fresh berries (totally not a problem), the next I got the wrong cereal entirely and had to send it back, and on our final morning I gave up and had berries and potatoes. That was no hardship, believe me, but I had a hell of a time trying to explain that damn cereal. Red got off light, because he ordered Raisin Bran. Happily, only once was there confusion with the soy milk.

Behold, a breakfast montage:




Do you want to see ducks? Of course you do.

Not too sure what these are. Any ideas?

More french fries, please!

We were lucky to be able to have lunch together every day before Red had to go back to work. Mostly we ate at Emeril’s Tchoup Chop, which needs to up their sushi-rolling game because my poor chopstick skills do not make otherwise well-made sushi fall apart.





Our poolside lunch at the Bula Bar featured one of the tastiest salads I’ve ever had:



On my own, I usually read by the pool or the little canal thing they’ve got going on. Then I read some more. Sometimes I did a little yoga in our room, but mostly I wanted to be outside. This was the view from my lounge chair:






The day before we left, Red wore this shirt:


That afternoon, we were hailed by a fellow vegan! He was also in town for the conference and was peacefully eating his PBJ when he saw us. “Sometimes you’ve gotta pack your own,” I said. He agreed. Yay for finding our tribe, even in the unlikeliest places!

Twice we had pizza and hummus for dinner at Jake’s American Bar, which is what you’d get if you tried to do Rick’s Café Américain without the Nazis. Or Sam. (Also, holy shit, there really is a Rick’s in Casablanca now. I want to go to there!) The first time, I also had a veggie pita because we didn’t know how much hummus we’d be getting—so much, we took the rest back to our room. That restaurant was amazing: Upon hearing he had two hungry vegans, the chef came out and talked over our options with us, offering to make us something special. I don’t think I’ve ever chatted up a chef before. He rocked.




One night, we decided to dress up (for vacation, anyway) and check out Portofino Bay. We tried to go to Bice, their swanky restaurant, but that was the place with egg-tainted pasta, so we went to Trattoria del Porto, which was still very nice and not a bad Plan B at all. We both ended up with the same dish—whole-wheat penne with vegetables—but it was tasty and they had Italian beer, so we didn’t care.



A kind fellow tourist took a picture of us in which we both look decent (and, more importantly, I don’t look sunburned):

Portofino Bay: Come for the atmosphere, but the dining options need some work.

We had lunch outside right before we left for the airport, and this little fellow came to see us off:

Lizards are probably nothing special to Floridians, but I thought he was pretty cute.

Well, darlings, there you have our idyllic jaunt to sunny Orlando. I loved our time away, but I loved coming home and snuggling Lucy even more.

Finally home.