Northampton, MA

I'd forgotten how much I loved this town. It's so...bohemian. Driving here was a trip, though. As soon as we got in the car, my mom started freaking out because the GPS didn't talk fast enough...'she' (the GPS) was an 'old school marm', giving us directions to our hotel. The trip altogether took about 2 hours....I was asleep for part of it. Until my mom woke me up to inform me that the GPS had stopped 'talking'. (Which reminds me of something Sherry Turkle wrote, but we'll get to that in a later post.
Finally we reached the Penrose Victorian Inn, a luxurious B&B in Haydenville, MA. It's so beautiful here. The 1st and 2nd floors are all decorated in the style of the Victorian era (No Duh). We have the top floor - the Mesa Verde room - all to ourselves.







I wish I could live here forever. After we had settled in, we decided to go explore Northampton, better known to the locals as 'NoHo'. *snicker*

Anyways, in 2 days I move into my dorm, and since I didn't have everything I needed, I figured I could use a stop at FACES. If you're ever in Northampton, MA, and need anything....at all, go to this store. They have great prices for great stuff. Among my purchases today were:

• An Elmo mug, pictured here: ---->-->
• A Breakfast Club poster
• A Johnny Depp poster
• A hippo hot water bottle
• A 'come to the dark side...we have cookies' shirt
• A magnet that says 'Hippies Welcome', in honor of my college
• Fro-Yo...that was consumed immediately
• BRIGHT RED rain boots
• A vintage photo booth sesh with my mom and I making silly faces. I love photo booths.

All in all, today was a really great day. After FACES and Fro-Yo, we went to an Asian restau called 'Zen' for dinner. They have great prices for great food. We had shrimp and chicken dumplings, Mom got the Asian Salad, and I got the sesame chicken (I prefer cashew, but oh well). All of this plus wine (for mom) and iced tea cost us about $50. Try finding that in Kinshasa! After dinner we were so tired we drove home and went right to bed...well, not right to bed. I had to blog first! So that's it. It's midnight now and I can finally go to sleep. Goodnight everyone! Tomorrow is another adventure.