We’re back! After a mid-week, mini vacay to Jacksonville for our anniversary, we’ve made it back to town this evening. But let’s go back in time to…

Tuesday

First things first, we dropped off both girls at school, and dropped off their suitcases with Grammy, and then dropped off Pennie at the doggie hotel.

We made the easy trip East down I-10 to Jacksonville, and went for a late lunch at The Local. (All of these spots were new to us, found mostly via Google, and a few via TikTok.)

I wasn’t in the mood for a big, heavy lunch, so I ordered the burrata from the brunch appetizer menu. It was a ball of burrata, on top of pistachio-spinach pesto, onion-balsamic jam, crushed red chili flakes, & Parmesan, with rosemary focaccia. And y’all, this was probably one of the very best things I’ve ever put in my mouth! I ordered a second plate of bread, just so I could make sure not to leave even a drop behind. Oh, and Jeff enjoyed his fried chicken sandwich too, but that DIP! I’ve been thinking about it ever since then…

Next up, was afternoon coffee and reading at Happy Brew. I got an iced “Happy Brew” latte, which was brown sugar cinnamon, and Jeff got a hot campfire latte.

We had a little extra free time after checking in at the hotel, in which we took a quick 45-minute cat nap, to rest up for a late night out. We went to the beautiful Florida Theater for a Johnnyswim concert! This is our second time seeing them (the first was for our anniversary trip to New Orleans two years ago – Day 1, Day 2, Day 3), and it was such an amazing concert! Jeff’s brother Brad was roommates with Abner (the husband of the husband/wife band) in college, and so Jeff and I have been listening to them our entire relationship. They are amazing musicians and put on a great concert! Even the opener was great as well, and we actually got to meet him after the concert.

If you’ve ever watched Fixer Upper with Chip & Joanna Gaines on HGTV, the theme song “Home” is sung by this band, Johnnyswim. Their new album came out earlier this year, so they sang that whole album, from beginning to end, with some of their older stuff and larger hits in the middle of everything. Then they ended the whole thing with the very last song on their newest album. Towards the end of the song, Amanda sang completely on her own, no instruments of mics, and it was beautiful. Although you can hear some staticky noise in the background of the video, it felt like the whole theater were holding their breath just being as silent as possible listening to her sing. It was incredible.

 

 

 

And this is Shua, the opened for the concert. He doesn’t have much music out yet (at least not on YouTube music, which we use, but we think he has more on Spotify, if you use that and you’re interested.

 

Wednesday

We were able to sleep in, and made it to the hotel breakfast before 9am to grab some eggs and such… Then Jeff needed to check something on his laptop, and I accidentally fell asleep on the little couch in our suit for an hour and a half! Once we finally got up and moving again, it was time for lunch, so we headed over to a place called One Night Taco Stand, and it was delicious. The weather was great, so it was perfect to sit on the outside patio.

We decided to bring our books with us, and read while we waited.

We both ordered a Taco Trio for $10.99 from the lunch menu, and ended up with six different tacos. Jeff loved his El Chamito, and I loved my Churri Taco.

We walked down the block to the other end of the shopping plaza, to get some afternoon caffeine from Jacksonville Coffee Co. Jeff got a pumpkin pie cold foam cold brew, and I got an iced banana bread latte. We found some cozy chairs to sit in to read some more, and was surprised to find a Little Free Library right there next to me. And would you ever believe I found another signed copy of an Anne Tyler book from a LFL!? Crazy right?!

We couldn’t resist a trip to roam the aisles and mazes of IKEA for an hour or two. As we slowly filled our buggy, we were actually kind of proud of ourselves, thinking we didn’t go too crazy… Until we scanned everything at the register and saw the total! Oopsies. But we had fun, and it really wasn’t too much…

We were very full after our late lunch, so we went back to the hotel to rest a little bit. Eventually, we went out to explore another little neighborhood of Jax, and found a cute bookshop. I ended up picking out a book that I hadn’t heard of before, a novel about books during WWII. And crazily enough, it was actually from a local author, and was a signed copy as well, which I didn’t even realize until I was checking out!

We walked around the block to Pie 95 for dinner. We ordered a carnivore lover’s pie to share, and sat on their back patio playing a few rounds of cards while waiting for the pizza to come out. The staff recommended we top it with hot honey, and that was a great idea.

As we continued to walk around and back towards the bookshop where we parked the car, we found an Italian restaurant, Primi Piatti, right next door, so we decided to stop for dessert. Jeff ordered chocolate mousse cake, and I ordered tiramisu. Both were super delicious, and both came with little pink & green dots of fruity flavored stuff that was so good. We asked what that was, and they said kiwi & raspberry sauce. So then we asked for a piece of the ricotta cheesecake doused in the fruity sauce, and that was so good too! The server was super nice, and actually ended up giving us the cheesecake for free!

Thursday

We stayed at the Embassy Suites on Baymeadows in Jax, which is a really nice hotel, for a totally affordable price. They have not only a continental breakfast in this beautiful atrium area, but also a nightly “reception” with complementary snacks and drinks. Jeff’s annual conference was held here in 2017, and Emerson and I tagged along while I was on my maternity leave, and she was just a week little 6-week-old baby girl. It was fun to be back there again, especially because I kept imagining my tiny baby there from back then!

After breakfast, I took a shower, and we got everything all packed up, and loaded in the car, and checked out of the hotel. We then went exploring all sorts of neighborhoods in the area, hunting down loads of Little Free Libraries. One book I found was this Nicholas Sparks book from 2005, and inside it, were two Delta boarding passes from Dallas to Jax and back, in 2006. My guess is that someone bought the book at an airport, and never even finished it, since the tickets were stuck in page 34 like bookmarks. That’s the story I made in my mind at least!

After finding as many LFL’s as we could, we went by St. Gabriel Bakery and purchased wayy too many baked goods. It smelled incredible in there though, and everything was beautiful, and it was just so cute!

 

 

For lunch, I wanted Greek, but Jeff wanted fish & chips, so we actually just went to two places. He hung out while I ate at Hovan Mediterranean, and then I had 1.5 soft pretzel sticks while he ate his lunch at Hoptinger.

And of course I had to try one more local coffee shop! This one was right across the street in the 5 Points neighborhood (where both lunch spots were located), called Brew Five Points. I ordered an iced brown butter pecan latte, and that was really tasty. (There were some sort of “particulates” floating in it, either coffee grounds or maybe something from the syrup, so I didn’t love that part, since it kinda got stuck in my throat, but the flavor of the latte had been yummy.)

Jeff started the drive home, but got too tired to drive, so I drove home the last hour and a half. I put my TSwift on though and sang along while he slept, and I did just fine! Grammy got Emmie to gymnastics for us tonight, while we unloaded the car super quickly, and so that Jeff could go get Pennie. We picked up Addie and she stayed with Jeff, and I went to the gym to get all of the girls’ stuff from Grammy, and then stay for the rest of Emmie’s class.

Loved seeing this beautiful sunset on our way home from the gym tonight.

We ordered some Chinese take-out for dinner, and Emmie finished her homework after we ate. We got the girls these cute little stuffed cheetah’s from IKEA, and they both instantly loved them when we gave them to them tonight, of course. Emerson was ultra tired after a long day and night, and she was also like half asleep for this photo.

Both girls were exhausted and went to sleep quickly and easily tonight. Writing this post has exhausted me now, since it was so huge and so full of info and stories and links and photos, so now I’m more than ready for bed myself! Jeff and I had such a great little trip away together. It had been two years since we had done that with just the two of us, and we very much enjoyed it. We were so chill and laid back, and just took everything minute by minute, relaxing and leaving plenty of free time to relax. We had a great time, but we’re glad to be back home with our girlies now!