Saturday, March 26, 2011

Spring Day Trip

When the days start to grow longer, I get excited about day trips. Today seemed like the perfect day to celebrate spring and Jeff's birthday (which was actually on a busy weekday last week) with a little (1 hour) road trip to Cape Cod.

I haven't really mastered the outstretched arm technique. I was hoping to show off my new haircut, but I'd opened the window which resulted in a hair tornado, so it was really a mess at this point!

We decided to go to the town of Falmouth, find somewhere scenic to walk, browse a lot of the cute shops on Main Street and do a quick look around a village style mall, go out to eat, and see a museum. Being 39 F for a high temp, it was not really a beach day...

It's not the best time of year for a walk in a garden either, but lots of shoots were coming up and there were still pretty, colorful winter berries on some of the shrubs. The nicest thing to see were spring daffs beginning to bloom!

Even though it's the 'off season' there was a lot of shopping potential. (I actually think the off season is the best time to go to the Cape!) Some of my favorite shops of the day were:

Bean and Cod, a gourmet shop that stocks Emma Bridgewater Pottery! (Squeeee!) They didn't have their summer stock ordered yet, so it will be worth another trip later. I bought a couple of melamine cups (in the Black Toast pattern) to carry out to the patio when the weather gets nicer.

Sage, a knitting shop. I was on the lookout for bag handles and Sublime yarn. They had the handles I'd like, but in the wrong color! I am very particular about the yarn I want at the moment for specific projects and I didn't see what I needed. But it was nice to look around and it's a good shop.

Uptown Dog, for some treats to take home to Saffy and Silas. It was a little on the cold side for a truck ride and beach walks, so we left them home this time. Besides, the cat likes the company. They now have a box of gourmet, frosted cookies and a new, special dog frisbee that's soft so it will be easy on their mouths.

It was hard to pick just one restaurant, as we were tempted by Italian and Mexican options, but when we saw The Golden Swan, there was no competition. We love Indian food! I really could eat it every day. We started with the vegetable appetizer platter and went through generous amounts of chutneys and then, for main course we had curries with onion kulcha. So yummy! I had no room left for gulab yamun :(

We decided to check out the Cahoon Art Museum and had no idea what to expect. Well, Mr. Cahoon had a 'thing' for mermaids...or, one wonders, if it was a 'thing' for topless ladies?! He collected items with Mermaids like these iron fence sections set into a wall in the yard.

He also painted them. A LOT. His wife painted some rather nice primitives which were also on display. I thought the mermaids were a bit odd (mainly because of the sheer number of paintings of them!), but I have to share two of the images with you. Look here, at the "Cape Knitting Co."!! This is quite the knitting group!

I think they are all knitting flipper cozies! I had such a giggle over these and thought some of my fellow knitters would enjoy them too ;)

There was a room with some 19th century pastorals that were quite nice, a show by a contemporary artist and a show of Cape Cod pottery that included some interesting gourd shaped pieces. I think the house itself, dating from 1775, interested me the most. It was a little sagging, had a number of little stairways and some gorgeous old fireplaces. The kitchen one still had its brick oven. There were some original stencils in the front hall. The windows had lovely old wavy glass.

After all these places, I was so ready for a stop at Starbucks for my bucket of a latte. It was located in the Mashpee Commons shopping village, so I went in The Gap and Williams Sonoma since they were right there in front of me. At The Gap, I was wandering around and spied a glass vase in the center of a display. It had some interesting fabric in it. Jeff said I looked like some bird with a prize worm, leaning across the wide, low display counter and pulling this fabric out of the vase. It turned out to be a sort of tie dyed scarf, which I loved! I think I'd seen it awhile ago in a magazine and filed it away as something I might want, but didn't commit to finding. When the check out girl looked at it she said she didn't even know they had it, so I'm wondering how long it's sat there stuffed in a vase?! While I waited in the checkout line, a new pair of sunglasses jumped into my hands too ;)

From there, I went to Williams Sonoma and it is a giant version of Williams Sonoma--I was in heaven! They have so much new stock, but I 'just' got an Easter Bunny dish, a spice rub and some cupcake papers. Here's a pic that also shows the new EB cups.

From there, we headed for home. I was considering stopping at Sakonnet Purls, but I think they close pretty early, so I decided to save that shop for another day. Maybe tomorrow, or next weekend! It's pretty close by.

It was such a nice day out. I feel quite refreshed and happy after a change of scenery and I love all my little mementos of the day!

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