Slow Down by the Sea

The ocean area is definitely one of our favorite places to be. We spend so much time here, that we are definitely looking to figure out how to get some property here, but the challenge is finding one that isn't an exorbitant cost. People seem to overvalue things it appears, and property by the ocean is insanely expensive.

So in the meantime, we take day trips to the ocean! We thankfully don't live that far away from it, and my wife and I were just talking about that the other day. We could find a house within our price range but it would put us a lot further from the beach, where we are already a little far as it is and it's not a worthy sacrifice for my wife. I'm ambivalent to it, as I love the mountains and beach equally so I'm good either way. I do try to make her life easier as much as I can though, so living closer to the beach it is.

This weekend, we took a trip to a totally new beach town that we've never been to before. We've driven by it here and there on various other activities but we never stopped in. We decided to make it a point to stop into it this time, and it was pretty enjoyable! The biggest annoying factor is the parking situation. We are used to getting hourly parking for most of these places, which is annoying as it is, but you deal with it. This place however did day passes, and they were expensive as fuck! I double parked and let my wife and son go down to the beach for a bit while I made sure a cop wasn't going to come by and give us a ticket lol. They enjoyed it, snapped a few photos that we can see here and moved on.

What's really special about this place, and one of the places that we are going to look into renting a house or something next year maybe, is that it was very relaxed and quaint! Some of the beach towns are all hustle and bustle. This one, and the neighboring town, are pretty relaxed and the scenery definitely reflects that. There isn't a million cars zooming by, people causing a ruckus or anything like that which you would find at a beach somewhere like Jersey or something. This place was super chill, which made it nice to slow down a bit and enjoy it while we could.

This unfortunately also meant that there were no bathrooms easily accessible! haha. This was a challenge for sure if you are visiting for a few hours, but if you rent you're good. We would've just peed in the ocean if we had to, but thankfully we ended up scoffing at the ridiculous parking prices and went searching for greener pastures.

It wouldn't be a trip to the seaside towns without a trip to the seafood restaurants! This one is a local hotspot and definitely one of the best around according to people we know who enjoy the area. We ordered up some battered and fried deliciousness and got to work!

Thankfully the little man does enjoy fish. That's always a strange one with kids, where some love it and some hate it. My son wouldn't eat it everyday but he definitely has adjusted himself a bit over the last 2 years. The first year we got a similar plate, he preferred the clams over the haddock. Then last year he preferred the haddock over the clams. This year he's back to the clams over the haddock hahaha but the good thing is that overall, he enjoyed it and ate his fill. I'm glad that I didn't get the bigger serving of the stuff, because I almost did! The little man finished the clams, ate half a slice of haddock and some fries then was done. I had plenty of room to finish the rest of it thankfully, but that would've sucked if I got the more expensive one for sure.

We ended up finding a beautiful downtown area, filled with cute little shops and stuff. We were perusing around them, seeing if there was anything that we wanted. It was the perfect New England town feel to it; the smell of the fresh ocean air, seagulls (aka flying rats.. lol) flying around making noise, people mulling about and walking, the smell of fresh seafood being cooked throughout the whole place, and the smell of fresh seafood being brought ashore. Damn it was nice to spend a day here!

The funny thing about it as well is that we visited a shop that we remembered we wanted to stop in at. We ended up seeing the owner in there, and realized that he also had a 2nd shop that we visited last year in a different town, and had a nice chat with him for about 20 minutes while we were sampling the wares! It was a very random but enjoyable event to finish off the day that's for sure.

This is my entry for this weekends prompt, for the last one on what we did this weekend!

What about you, do you like to visit the ocean or would you rather go somewhere like a mountain, lake or somewhere different? Let me know in the comments!