Issue 7: 2022 Highlights
Readers, it’s been a while. The beauty of summer became the blur of fall and then the hectic of the holidays. Let’s catch up with a few of my favorite adventures in 2022. Hope some of these inspire you to find new places to stay, eat, and play in 2023, with the people you love.
Best Family Trip. Three of four votes for spring break in Puerto Rico. My pick was Asheville, NC (more details to come in a future newsletter).
Best Friend Trip. Lucky to have several great ones this year, but the unexpected winner was a post-pandemic reunion with two besties. We started with a great dinner in DC Friday night and headed to Baltimore the next day for one night. What a treat to host and get away. The whole weekend felt like one great conversation.
Best Rental: We booked six vacation rentals this year, and each was terrific. But my favorite was this one right outside Asheville. This airbnb is special, not so much for the place (though it is everything it promises to be, and more) but for the incredibly kind hosts. We’ve already made plans to return in 2023.
Best Hotel: We surprised our kiddos with a trip to Disney World at the end of October and spent two nights at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge. Waking up to see wildlife outside your window was pretty amazing.
Best New Restaurant: Definitely this intimate, colorful Filipinx restaurant in West Asheville. Three days after my husband and I ate at Neng Jr.’s, BA magazine named it “one of the south’s most exciting new resturants.”
Best New Restaurant (DC): Although it opened just before the pandemic, Albi in DC’s Navy Yard was new to us. We lucked out on bar seats on an impromptu date night when grandparents were visiting and went for the tasting menu. It was so good that I repeated the experience six months later with a visiting friend.
Best Experience: During our trip to Disney World, we all managed to ride Rise of the Resistance twice. The Star Wars ride puts guests into the middle of a battle between the Resistance and the First Order. The 18 minute ride takes place in a three act structure and is nothing less than epic, even if you are like me and know almost nothing about Star Wars.
Rise of the Resistance, Hollywood Studios, October 2022
Best Live Event: Over the holidays, we spent a day in New York City and saw the Music Man revival with Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster. It was my first time seeing a movie star in a live show and you know what? It was awesome. The dancing was unreal and the show was just super fun.
Best Sporting Event: Though we live in DC, our allegience is to the Red Sox. So we took our kids to Fenway for the first time last summer with both sides of the family to watch the Red Sox beat the Yankees (a particularly satisfying victory since some of these family members are Yankees fans). The best thing we did was this hour-long tour of Fenway Park, the country’s oldest ballpark, right before the game. Highly recommend whether you are in town to see the game or not.
Molly and Wally, Fenway Park, August 2022
Best Holiday Outing: On our way up north for the holidays, we stopped in Baltimore to watch Home Alone, with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra playing the score live to picture. We all loved it, and the show reminded me to regularly check this site for local deals wherever we are (our kids tickets were less than the price of a movie theater ticket with this offer, and ours were not that much more).
Best New Beach: This one is a tie between Playa Negra, a black sand beach in Vieques, and Napatree Point, Rhode Island’s southernmost beach. Both are a little bit of a pain to get to, which is probably why I like them.
Nearly Empty Beach at Napatree, August 2022
Best Hike: The award goes to the Rainbow Falls hike at Gorges State Park, about an hour outside Asheville, NC. We swam at the first of the three waterfalls on this temperate rain forest trail.
Best Family Picture: We haven’t had professional photos taken of our family since my youngest was a baby. So on a whim, I asked our Airbnb host in South Carolina to recommend a family photographer, and she came through big time. Erin is a fantastic photographer, but an even better human. We loved spending time with her.
Folly Beach, SC, August 2022
Best Reminder: We visited family in Massachusetts for Christmas and then drove to upstate New York to ski for a few days. We stopped for dinner in Lake Placid. Let’s just say that after more than five hours on the road, my children were not on their restaurant behavior. An older woman at the next table kept watching us throughout dinner, and speaking in French to her husband. Every time she looked over, I would furiously shush my children, who ignored me. At the end of their dinner, the woman came over to our table and said “You have such a wonderful family. So much energy!” It was a great reminder to forget assumptions and be grateful for what I have, noise and all. Cheers to a new year.
Love the reminder to forget assumptions!