Blog

A few weeks ago the gods of nostalgia, food, and long-distance friendships and marriages generously smiled down upon me to allow for a brief yet glorious 4-day visit to our beloved old stomping grounds: Cincinnati!

Ted was in town for a theatre conference, and my desperation for a nostalgic Cincy trip to the place we called home for two years as newlyweds had greatly intensified in the last year, and so we scooped up the opportunity as soon as we could.

In short, I drove around my old city for hours and hours enjoying the memories that came flooding back with each turn down familiar streets, devoured many of my heavenly foodie favorites (they were just as divine as I remembered them to be), drove past our old house about 14 times, caught up with two beautiful friends I hadn’t seen in far too long, enjoyed precious minutes with my husband, basked in warm spring weather while escaping the snow in Rochester, met a bunch of new friends-of-a-friend whose hospitality helped turn a rough Sunday saying goodbye to Ted into a fun-filled day, and lamented about how wonderful and beautiful this city was/is to us. What a life!

The Food Tour
Aside from a short description of what I ate and where, I’m not even going to bother waxing poetic about each food item because I’d say the same thing about every darn one of them: Incredible! Must try! Delectable! Best I’ve ever had! etc. etc. Just trust that if they made my short list of things I couldn’t leave Cincy without eating, you know they’re good and worthy of your highest consideration if you should find yourself in the Queen City.

{Jasmine mango bubble tea and Matcha cream cheese cupcake from Essencha Tea House}

{Harvest salad and Green Lantern pizza from Dewey’s}

{Bahn mi from Pho Lang Thang}

{Vanilla-raspberry Italian soda, coconut cupcake, and the black bean burger from Coffee Emporium}

{Hyde Park Pizzaria}

{Black raspberry chip ice cream from Graeter’s}

{Margaritas, street tacos, chips, queso, and guac from Bakersfield – double Texan approved!}

{This fancy flight from 1215 Wine Bar – I’m all about potting soil and barnyard notes….whatever that means}

{Tacos, black beans, a watermelon salad, and crepe cake from The Comet}

{Belgium waffles from Taste of Belgium – Photo credit via}

The Places

{Our old house and old apartment}

{The glorious grocery store known as Jungle Jim’s that puts Wegman’s to shame – I can hear all of Rochester covering their ears and shrieking “sacrilege!” and “blasphemy!” right about now. The truth hurts}

{Findlay Market}

{Eden Park and Mirror Lake}

{Twin Lake and overlooking the Ohio River between Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky}

{One reason to fly}

{Picked up this treasure for myself as a treat – get it here}

The People

{A fellow Texan and close friend from college was also in town for the same theatre conference Ted was attending. I hadn’t seen Erin in seven years, but of course we ordered some margaritas and Mexican food and picked right back up where we left off!}

{The main reason for my trip: this guy!}

{Despite the fact that Allyson – my very close friend from when we lived in Cincinnati – drove all the way to and from the Dayton airport twice to pick me up very late at night and drop me off obscenely early in the morning and graciously housed and entertained me for a night…I somehow do not have a single picture of us together from this trip. But her pup Gus makes a fine stand-in}

Though I miss Cincinnati terribly and nearly always associate it with many happy, wonderful things and a blissful period of my life, I don’t know that I/we could – or should? – live there again. Up until this trip, I thought we could; I’ve thought often of how great it would be to go back and live there again if the opportunity ever presented itself down the road. But as I leisurely and gaily drove around, a thought stuck with me: maybe some things are better left as happy memories from a certain period of your life, you know? Maybe, even though we loved it there, the experience wouldn’t be the same the second time around? And maybe we shouldn’t try to relive that? Of course, you never know where life will take you, and if jobs brought us back to Cincy, I’m sure we’d be thrilled, but maybe trying to get yourself back to a particular place someday in the future isn’t always the best plan. Maybe it is. But maybe it isn’t. I like to think Ted and I are pretty good at moving to new places, discovering what they’re really like, and falling in love with them. And I think we could probably do that pretty much anywhere. We did it with Lansing and Cincinnati and Rochester and Dubai – and we’ve learned to love them all. And I’m sure there are many more places for us to discover, and love, and call home in our future. Cincinnati will always be there for us to visit. And I’d be happy to go back again in a few years (plus, there’s a bourbon trail and some cave ziplining adventures just across state lines in Kentucky that I’m aching to get to!), but the thought has stuck with me lately that maybe we should let certain things live and breathe while they do, and appreciate and love them for what they were, and stop in for a visit every now and again, but not try to relive them. Everything has it’s season. Just a thought.

‘Til next time Cincy, you’ll be in my heart!