Hello, Cape May!

Almost every year Mark's grandmother asks for a giant trip (usually to Ireland) for Christmas. While we don't exactly have the time or resources to get her to Ireland, we did take her to Oregon to visit family a couple years ago, and this year we decided to take her to Cape May for a couple days. We found a week that worked for everyone, booked a rental house online, and in late May, met up in Cape May.

Ahh, beach.   :)

Mark's mom and grandmother got to the house first, then we met them later in the day after driving up from Virginia. The house was only a few blocks from the water, so we walked back along the beach after going out to dinner.

Mark and I were both pretty tired from working the overnight shift the night before, then driving to NJ, but we did at least save some energy for a couple games before bed. (Well, I played a round of Yahtzee, then buried myself in my computer with event planning stuff while they played more games.)

I really like running along the beach, so I wasn't about to turn down the chance to squeeze in a couple runs on the trip. Mark and I got up semi-early the next day, grabbed a snack, and were out the door.

We ran along the beach path until it ended. There was a neat view across the water to the lighthouse.

 We wanted to get a couple miles in, so we ran back the other way after leaving the beach, and wound up with somewhere around 2 miles total by the time we got back to the house.

The run made this breakfast even more delicious than it already was. Eggs Benedict with avocado and tomato...I could go for that right now!

Cape May has a fantastic zoo, so we decided to head there first.

The peacocks wander all over the place. Some of them were sitting on the fences, and one of them even made its way up onto the roof.

This one looked like it was partially albino; the colors were pretty neat.


The bird house was really neat, too.

This ostrich did NOT like when the giraffe walked by.

They have a pretty good reptile house, too.   :)

We had brought sandwiches and chips for lunch, so we had those before heading to our next stop...wine tasting!

We started at the Cape May Winery, did a tasting there, then finished up here, at Willow Creek Winery and Farm. Their blackberry merlot was especially tasty, and we decided to have some snacks, too, before heading back to the house.

Mark and I wandered down to the beach for a little while before dinner.

I certainly wouldn't mind having this view more often...
*adds Cape May beach house to shopping list*

We wound up going to Sapore Italiano for dinner. Oh man, have I missed good Italian food! My gnocchi was delicious. We went back to the house after dinner, and everyone else played more games while I did some marketing work for the event I was putting together. Beach day tomorrow!  :)