Take a ride on metro north

Last Saturday Sean took me on a surprise outing to a small town by the name of Cold Spring, an hour and a half'ish north of the city. We hopped on the subway to Grand Central where we caught the train by a nose hair and enjoyed the beautifully scenic ride. I love to take the train. I love the east coast. I love small towns north of the city. So much, I do. Combine all of these things and you have the perfect day trip.

Here is a map, in case you are curious:

click here

I love riding the train because the ticket agents are all old fashioned and look like they just walked off the Polar Express. "Tickets. Tickets, please" they say as they go up and down the aisles. You give them your tickets and they punch them with a special hole punch and you think, why am i not always taking the train? Sean expressed his confusion as to why they haven't upgraded in this digital age and I said to him, "Sean, why change something that is already perfect. There is no need." Ok i don't know if that's what i said. It was something like that, and it was good, whatever it was.

Here is a fuzzy picture:


The route is nestled between foliage and the Hudson River. People scramble for the seats on the left to get a view of the river because the NJ cliffs are so gorgeous.


(stolen from google. I have been on that boat before though.)

We arrived to our destination and spent the afternoon perusing about 8 antique shops. We intermissioned for some lunch and then resumed the antiquing. We love doing this. Sean is probably a bigger antiquer than I. He was on a mission to find a nice frame. He found it. I was on a mission to wear my scarf in a weird way. I was successful.



No, i can't be bothered to take my hair out when i put on my scarf. (I think I can actually hear Ashley's skin crawl.) (<-- that would be weird) Only when I looked at this pic did I realize what i'd done and how weird i looked. But you know, it was pretty frigid that day. I'm thinking that my hair, kept close to my neck with my scarf like that, really helped keep me warm. That and my super awesome new gloves!! Look closely. Mitten flaps?? I am in love.

Also: notice paper man hanging from the roof. I did not notice this until later.

Here's Sean.


It's so fun to hang out in antique shops. We saw the difference between antique shops and stores full of junk and nonsense. What treasures we found. I love the musty old smell too. I wanted to buy a vintage dress that was robin egg blue and had feathers for sleeves but there was no way to try it on. I didn't get pictures of anything cool, sorry about that. I could describe it to you in detail but I'd rather not.

I did take a picture of this though:


That would have been perfect for Jen's Haunted Yard of Horrors. I don't know, though. My newspaper-stuffed sleeves were pretty great.

Here we are by that same awesome building, but this time across the street. Totally different picture.


We found a few treasures in some shops and got back on the train to go home. We didn't sit on the river side but the other side is pretty too. I played a game with myself called, "let's see if Jen can take a decent picture while the train is moving." I seriously couldn't focus on anything because the view was so close to my face. Every picture i got was a surprise. Here's what I got:





This is a picture of a charming white cottage nestled amongst the beautiful leaves. Too bad that yellow tree jumped in front of it just as i snapped the pic. Stupid pretty yellow tree...





Here is the winning pic:


What the. Are those swans?? That pond came out of nowhere. And you can't even tell I'm on a moving train. Way to go, Digital Elph. (actually they are probably geese. But let's pretend they're swans.)

And then I took a picture of me and Sean, to capture the moment of sleepy contentment after a lovely day. Hurrah.



Ok, i just looked at the picture again and we don't look content at all. Sean looks sleepy but angry. I just look loopy in a lazy way. Ah, close enough.