Posts tagged travel diary
A Little 'Too Sleepy' Hollow? Haunts, Hangs, & Happenings in the Headless Horseman's Hometown

Nestled up in the Hudson Valley, only an hour or so from the hubbub of New York City, is where you’ll find the small village that author Washington Irving once described as “one of the quietest places in the whole world”, where “the occasional whistle of a quail or tapping of a woodpecker is almost the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquillity”. Sleepy Hollow, forever immortalized in Irving’s writing, is still a quaint little place to visit these days; whether or not Ichabod Crane would recognize it in its current state is another question.

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North AmericaLogan T. Hansentravel, travel guide, travel inspiration, travelspiration, New York, Sleepy Hollow, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, travel blog, travel diary, travel advice, travel recommendations, travel reviews, travel ideas, travel planning, New Jersey, LaGuardia, New York City, autumn, autumn getaway, autumn inspiration, autumn travel, Croton-on-Hudson, Halloween, fall getaway, fall travel, fall, Hudson River, Hudson Valley, NYC, Andrew Carnegie, Headless Horseman Bridge, Headless Horseman, William Rockefeller, Edgar Allan Poe, David Neilsen, Old Dutch Church, Old Dutch Burying Ground, Old Dutch Church and Burying Ground, Pocantico River, Route 9, Broadway, Philipsburg Manor, Philipsburg Manor House, Twilight Village, Twilight Village at Sleepy Hollow, Spirits of Sleepy Hollow Country, Kykuit, Rockefeller estate, Armour-Stiner Octagon House, Octagon House, Sleepy Hollow Bookshop, The Horseman's Shop, Beekman Ale House, Bridge View Tavern, Beekman Avenue, Tarrytown, D23, Disney, Sleepy Hollow Film Festival, Sleepy Hollow International Film Festival, Tarrytown Music Hall, Lonesome Ghosts, Walt Disney Archives, Walt Disney, Rebecca Cline, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Coffee Lab Roasters Inc, Set Back Inn, The Taco Project, Little B's Burger Bar, Sweet Grass Grill, Lefteris Gyro, The Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze, Van Cortlandt Manor, American Gothic, The Scream, pumpkin art, pumpkin patch, pumpkins, Gourd & Goblet Tavern, Sleepy Hollow Lighthouse, Tarrytown LightComment
Road Tripping Across Arizona, from Hoover Dam to the Grand Canyon & Beyond

I had never been to Arizona — now the 35th state I have checked off my race to all 50 — so you can imagine my excitement as I first laid eyes on the sign that read: “The Grand Canyon State Welcomes You”. My main objective was to visit that gargantuan hole in the earth that has entranced visitors for centuries. So, after finally making a stop at the damn dam and a nearby overlook of Lake Mead, I instructed the Google Maps machine to take me to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.

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Two Peas in a European Pod: One Week in Ireland & England — Day 7

London had been a trip, as had Galway and Cork and Cobh before it. But we were back in Dublin, where we began (and then ended and began again), and it was finally time to give the Irish capital a proper spin. Thus, on a wickedly windy Saturday morning, we stepped out of the Ashling Hotel and onto Benburb Street, ready to take on the city.

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Two Peas in a European Pod: One Week in Ireland & England — Day 6

You might think the experience would lose a little of its luster the second time around, at least at the margins, but waking up in perhaps the most famous city in the world for a second consecutive day was no less thrilling. The only bugaboo this time is that we didn’t have a full day in London ahead of us. It would be but a mere few hours before we needed to return to London Stansted Airport and head back to Ireland for the very final leg of our whirlwind European adventure, meaning there was no time to spare.

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Two Peas in a European Pod: One Week in Ireland & England — Day 5

Waking up in London had been an item on my travel bucket list for years — years! — and finally the day had arrived. When my alarm went off at about 8:30 a.m. Thursday, I opened my eyes and found myself in a flat — a flat! — on Longmoore Street in Westminster, with one of the most iconic cities in the world waiting just outside the door.

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Two Peas in a European Pod: One Week in Ireland & England — Day 4

It wasn’t quite the crack of dawn, but Day 4 in Ireland certainly got off to an earlier start than any of its predecessors. Why, you ask? Well, because a mid-afternoon flight from Dublin to London was definitely going to sneak up on us faster than we would have liked — which meant we had but a few wee hours to see or do anything else in Galway before we had to hit the road, Jack, and not come back no more (no more, no more, no more…).

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Two Peas in a European Pod: One Week in Ireland & England — Day 3

Apparently not ready to leave the cozy confines of Gem’s place in any kind of a hurry, Day 3 in Ireland got off to a slow start. Once we got going, however, we began the day by heading over to the same place the previous evening had concluded: the quaint and colorful city of Cobh.

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Two Peas in a European Pod: One Week in Ireland & England — Day 2

As far as the day itself was concerned, we hadn’t looked up a ton of things to do or really put any kind of concrete plan in place, but one thing that was absolutely, without-a-doubt, no-ifs-ands-or-buts-about-it on the list was a visit to Blarney Castle. There, we’d have the opportunity to climb up to the parapet or rampart or battlement or whatever you want to call it and kiss the fabled Blarney Stone, which is said to bring good luck and eloquence (“the gift of gab”, so they say) to anyone who lays a wet one on it.

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Two Peas in a European Pod: One Week in Ireland & England — Day 1

It was only recently, as in within the last couple years, that I learned just how Irish I am. That sounds odd perhaps, but I’ve lived most of my life believing I was mostly Polish. That may still be true, but according to data from MyHeritage, my maternal grandmother was 94.1% Irish, Scottish, and Welsh, which no doubt means some of that Irish blood runs through me, as well. Armed with this information, I set out for my newly-realized ancestral homeland in late March 2024, looking to connect with my Irish heritage and maybe drink a Guinness or two.

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