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July 2017

Things I'm Loving Right Now

Best Coffee Shops in Annapolis

July 25, 2017

Hi coffee lovers!  Thanks for visiting my blog, I hope you’re having an incredible week!  I’m here today to share some of my favorite coffee shops around the Annapolis, Maryland area.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m living in Annapolis for the duration of the summer while I’m working at my internship, so I’ve had some time to explore and find the best ones!  Let’s get to it!

Starting with Bakers & Co., this cute little place is one of my favorites!  It’s right down the street from where my apartment is, so only a short walk away, and it’s so good!  We visited on a weekday, so it wasn’t busy at all and the treats were so yummy.  Unfortunately, they don’t have soy milk, so I couldn’t get anything to drink but my boyfriend and I shared what they call a “market bun” and it was delicious! Basically, it’s croissant dough rolled up and showered in cinnamon sugar.  We used to make them at a bakery I worked at in the beginning of college and it brought back so many memories!  I definitely recommend checking out Bakers & Co.!

Next on my list is Ahh, Coffee.  It’s in Eastport, just like Bakers & Co., and it’s in a little shopping center that also has a fruit and veggie stand where you can get fresh produce!  The employees at Ahh, Coffee were incredibly nice and they provided such a great environment to sit and talk and have a snack.  I got an iced chai (with soy milk) and it was pretty good!  It was a little thicker than normal so it tasted like a milkshake but who would complain about that!?  My boyfriend got a cup of their medium roast coffee and he said that it was the best coffee he’s had in Annapolis so far, so that sounds like a great cup of coffee to me!

The next coffee shop is called City Dock Coffee!  It’s right downtown, so just a short walk from our apartment in Eastport, and it’s in a great location.  It’s right next to the Iron Rooster, which I mentioned here in my Annapolis travel post and has a great selection of treats to choose from!  Besides coffee and tea, you can choose from a huge assortment of brownies and cookies or you can get a sandwich and a side if you’re in the mood!  It’s a wonderful place to go if you’re too hungry for just a cup of coffee but not hungry enough for a big meal!

The Red Bean is the next coffee shop on my list and it’s actually my favorite one!  It’s located right in downtown Annapolis, on Main Street, and it’s a mix of both an ice cream shop and a coffee shop and it’s super cute on the inside.  The employees were really, really sweet and the tables are so spacious and spread apart!  We sat at a cute one right in one of the front windows and it felt like we had the whole place to ourselves.  They also have a little tin of dog treats outside, so it was fun to see all the dogs pass by and get excited when they saw them.  I’d definitely recommend stopping by this place if you’re in the area!

Ceremony Coffee Roasters is last on my list and it’s one of my favorites as well!  It’s tucked away in a little shopping center but it’s totally worth stopping in if you’re in the area.  The aesthetic is incredible – Ceremony has lots of wooden tables and natural light and they have mostly white accents so it’s a wonderful place to come to if you have some work to get done and need to concentrate.  The employees are so nice and they offer a ton of coffee options!  They also have some great food choices such as different types of toast, grilled cheese, and salads!  I’ll definitely be going back to Ceremony Coffee as soon as I get the chance!

I hope you liked this compilation of my favorite coffee shops!  Please let me know if you’re familiar with Annapolis and if I missed any good ones!  Have an amazing week!

Fashion

Date Night OOTD: His & Hers

July 18, 2017

Hi beauties, happy, happy Tuesday!  I’m back with another fashion post this week, I hope you’re as excited about it as I am!  This one’s about what to wear on a summer date night so let’s get into it!

Starting off with my boyfriend’s outfit, he’s wearing a navy blue, short-sleeved Lacoste shirt and it’s one of his go-to’s.  We both love to wear a lot of blue and white so it typically goes with what I’m wearing and it also shows off his beautiful blue eyes!  He paired the shirt with a pair khaki shorts and finished out the look with his gray Vans shoes.  He was super comfortable and ready for a fun night!

Moving onto my outfit, the dress I’m wearing is one of my absolute favorite dresses I’ve ever owned!  I got it very recently from Nordstrom (linked here), so it’s most likely still available if you’re interested.  It has a tie front so you can adjust it to whatever size you are and it has elastic on the back so it easily fits whatever body type you have.  All in all it’s just SO comfortable.  Another cute feature this dress has is a little peep-hole in the front, where you tie it together.  This adds a little extra something to your look and makes it more fun to dress up or down!  It also comes in a second print and I’m dying to order it as soon as my size comes back in stock!

To get a cute background for these photos, we drove around the area where we live and found a local school that had a giant, empty field and it worked out pretty well!  There were a ton of trees and empty space and it was super fun!  If you end up getting the dress I wore, let me know in the comment section so we can talk about how amazing it is!  Well, that’s all I have for this post so I’ll see you next week for another one.  Bye!

Travel

Being a Tourist In: Chicago

July 11, 2017

Hi everyone, welcome to one of my most exciting travel posts yet!  This one’s about my recent trip to Chicago, Illinois and I can’t wait to tell you all about it!  I’ve never been to Chicago but my uncle lives there part time, so my mom and I went to visit with him and explore the city over a long weekend.  Let’s get started!

We flew into Midway International Airport on a Thursday afternoon, so when we arrived, we had the majority of the day to see the area he lives in.  He doesn’t actually live in the city of Chicago, but in a town called Elmhurst that’s only a short drive away.  It’s the absolute cutest little place that has an amazing downtown area and you would never know you’re only twenty minutes outside of Chicago!  There are so many trendy coffee shops and boutiques and the people were so friendly!  There were also a ton of cute spots to take outfit photos so that’s always a plus!  One of my favorite things about the Elmhurst main street was the old movie theater called “York” that they still have in business.  This town also has a train station right in the middle of it, so you can hop on the express train and be right in downtown Chicago in only twenty minutes!  Great for work week commuters and weekend adventurers!  If you’re in the Chicago area and have a little bit to explore the suburbs, Elmhurst would be a good one to visit.

Friday was our first full day to adventure, so we hit the city early.  We were up and out the door by 8:30 and ready to tackle the day!  So no time was wasted, we purchased tickets for the day ahead of time with the Go City Card app.  With the Go City Card app, you pay before you download the app and are then given a long list of attractions to do in the city.  With this app, you’re allowed to choose three things to do and all you have to do is scan your app when you get to each destination.  It was a great way to skip some lines and see what the city had to offer!  For our first attraction, we went to the Sky Deck, which is in the Willis Tower.  Apparently, the Willis Tower used to be called the Sears Tower, but the name switched a couple years ago.  The views from the top of the building were insane!  They had three or four glass enclosures that were extended over the side of the building so, when you walked out on them, there was literally nothing separating you from 103 floors down except a thin sheet of glass.  Crazy!

Next, we headed to Navy Pier.  Navy Pier is super cool and there was lots to do and see!  We first went inside where there were a lot of places to eat and then we headed out to the end of the pier to see Lake Michigan.  Chicago sits right on the lake so the water was beautiful!  While we were there, there was a Rolling Stones exhibit going on so there were tongue statues everywhere – so neat!  There are also a few rides and a ferris wheel on the pier (which are also an attraction that’s included on the Go City Card app), so we took some time to ride a few rides.  The ferris wheel was a great idea because you can see the entire skyline of Chicago when you reach the top.  Definitely worth the trip to the pier to see that!

After Navy Pier, we grabbed a quick lunch and decided to do an architecture boat tour as our third attraction for the day.  We caught the boat right around the bridge where Trump tower is located and rode all around the Chicago waterways!  It was a 75 minute tour in total and we learned so much about the history of Chicago and the different types of buildings that have sprung up since the Chicago fire.  This initially wasn’t something I was super excited about when I saw it on the list of things we could do, but it ended up being one of my favorite things we did while we were in the city!

On our last day in Chicago, we explored a little bit more and went to the Bean!  I found out it’s actually called Cloud Gate, but it’s in Millennium Park, which is a really beautiful area of Chicago where there are a lot of sculptures and other forms of art.  After this, we did a two hour segway tour with a company called Absolutely Chicago.  It was awesome!  We had a few minutes before we started where we could practice and get the hang of it and, I’ll admit, I almost wiped out the first time I went up a big hill, but overall it was pretty easy!  Great for people of all ages!  Since we had spent the day before going all around the city, I had perviously seen a lot of what we saw on the segway tour, but it was nice to get some more information about the touristy locations we went to.  I’d recommend doing this if you want to see a lot of prime Chicago spots in a short amount of time!

My trip to Chicago was incredible and thank goodness I could sleep in the day after we got back because I was exhausted!  Overall, Chicago was a lot cleaner and more friendly than I was expecting and I’d go back in a heartbeat.  I’m already looking to visit again soon so let me know if you have any suggestions of places to go that I didn’t mention in this post.  Have a great rest of your week and I’ll see you next Tuesday with another post!

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Travel

Being a Tourist In: Annapolis, Maryland

July 4, 2017

Hello everyone and welcome to another “Being a Tourist In:…” post!  Thanks for coming back to Allison in Wonderland on the 4th of July!  I hope you’re looking forward to your plans for tonight and have a blast watching the fireworks – they’re my favorite part of today!  It’s so exciting that the warm weather and sunshine are in full-swing and I’m thrilled that I have the opportunity to live in such a beautiful place for the summer.  I’ve been living in Annapolis for the last month or so while I’m working at my internship and it’s been such an incredible experience!  With driving to and from Annapolis every weekday last summer for my internship, I really wanted to be able to live here full-time this summer so I could cut down on the long commute time and also figure out if this is where I want to live and work after I graduate.  I’m graduating from James Madison in December, so it’s coming up quickly!  Luckily, we were able to find a gorgeous, short-term apartment and everything has worked out really, really well so far.  Throughout this post, I’m going to take you through a few of my favorite, local places in Annapolis so I hope you enjoy!

The first place I’m going to share about is a restaurant called the Iron Rooster.  I had never heard of this restaurant until over the winter when my bosses took the department out for a holiday brunch.  It was so nice of them to do that – it was absolutely delicious!  And I unknowingly drove past it every single day!  The Iron Rooster specializes in breakfast/brunch and it just so happens that those are my two favorite food categories!  It has a very rustic interior and the staff is as pleasant as could be.  I definitely recommend getting the big waffle, it was delicious!

The second place on my list is the entire area of downtown Annapolis (which is where the Iron Rooster is located as well).  The cobblestone streets are just gorgeous and it’s the perfect mix of small town and city.  There are tons of interesting shops to visit and there’s history everywhere you look!  Downtown is right next to the water so you get quite a view on both sides.

My third recommendation is a little shop called Sadie’s Flower Shop and it’s just the cutest place!  I noticed it driving home one day last summer and immediately needed to go.  It’s the tiniest building right along the road and it only says Flowers across the top, so it took me a long time to figure out what it was actually called but it would definitely be a must on my list if I was visiting Annapolis for the day.

 

Another one of my favorite spots to hit on the weekends is the Anne Arundel Farmer’s Market.  We just went for the first time a couple weekends ago and it was super cute.  There were a ton of fruit and veggie stands and the people were really nice!  It was such a fun thing to do to get our weekend started on a Saturday morning.

Lastly, my absolute favorite area of Annapolis is a section called Eastport!  Both my apartment and the company that I intern at are in Eastport and it’s the coolest.  It’s right next to downtown Annapolis, across a tiny drawbridge, and it has so many fun, unique features to it!  There are coffee shops all around, marinas at almost every block, and it has it’s own park called Quiet Waters.  My boyfriend and I love going to Quiet Waters on the weekends for a quick hike or to take some food and sit by the water. Eastport has all the perks of downtown Annapolis but it’s just a bit quieter and I love it!  I don’t think we could’ve chosen a better place to live.  Plus, there are a ton of cute locations to take OOTD photos!

Those are all the recommendations I’m going to write about today but I have a ton more so let me know if you’d like me to do a “take two” of this post at the end of the summer!  Thanks for taking the time to read all the way to the end and I hope you have a wonderful week!  See ya next time!

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