62. June 24th, 2011 Picture.

Oh mah god.  So you probably think that the past week or so of posts has been somewhat busy.  Bar crawls, parties, Red Sox games, dinner with friends, THE FUN NEVER STOPS.  Not to mention that Ratty and I are moving in 6 days.  SIX.  Last I checked, you need to be home in order to pack up said home.  So, what's the most logical thing to do when you're in the throws of the most complicated move in the history of moves?

TAKE A LONG WEEKEND AND GO TO ITHACA.  Naturally.

Ratty went to college at Ithaca, and has been talking about it for the entire time I've known him.   He typically goes back up there for a weekend during the summer, going to dinner at nice restaurants and doing day long tours of the wineries on the finger lakes.  Hi, nice dinners and a whole day spent sampling wine?  I'M IN!  

This year we went with his mom and his aunt, planning quite the whirl-wind weekend full of shopping, farmers markets, Ithaca tours & yes, wine.

We left around 11am on Friday and settled in for the 6+ hour drive to upstate New York.  You know when someone tells you that is over 6 hours to get someplace but deep down you know that they must be kidding?  I assumed it would clock in at less than 5, almost as if we drove from Boston to the tip of the cape and then back again.  I WAS WRONG.  I was obviously in denial.  6+ hours is exactly what it is, it means 6 hours, sitting in a car, with no possible end in sight.  We made it out to Western Mass before stopping for lunch and I thought to myself, we're almost in New York, it cannot be that much longer.  We drove through Syracuse, getting off the main highway and again, I said to myself, 'oh this is our exit, we must be close!  See, I knew it wouldn't be 6 hours, we're right around 4 hours now, I knew Ratty was exaggerating.'  Oh dear lord exaggerating he was not.  Once we got off the highway I breezily asked Ratty how much longer he thought we'd be, expecting him to say 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, something that ended in MINUTES.  Oh no, he said that we still had about 2.5 hours to go.  TWO AND A HALF HOURS.  I honestly feel like I'd never driven so far in my entire life, I doubt I'd do well with cross country road trips.

The actual drive was fun, we had satellite radio, snacks, good conversations and lots of laughs.  It was really just the length that started to wear on me.  I am the girl who when I was little [cough and probably still today cough] would ask 'are we there yet?' before we even got to the end of our street, so yeaaaa.  This is really a surprise to no one.

Once we got to Ithaca we checked into our hotel, freshened up and headed to dinner at the Boatyard.  This restaurant is right in the middle of...you guessed it, a boatyard!  We grabbed drinks at the bar and settled in to wait for a table.  The place was packed, so there was a long wait, but we didn't mind, we had our cocktails so we were happy.  Behind the restaurant was a small park/seating area on the water, so Ratty and I walked around a little bit while regaling me with stories of his college years.  Like I mentioned before, I'd been hearing about Ithaca for 5+ years and I was so excited to finally be able to walk around and picture where all the ridiculous stories took place.  

We had a really great meal, lots of steaks at the table, plus wine, so by the time we were finished we were all totally beat.  Who knew that sitting in a car for 6 hours could be so exhausting?!  We headed back to the hotel to call it a night - we needed PLENTY of rest because the next day we were tackling 8 vineyards!