...and then we visited Stars Hollow.

Well, sort of but not really. It's not the actual town that inspired Stars Hollow (for those of you who aren't Gilmore Girls fans, Stars Hollow is the town that they live in), but it sure does remind me of it!

For the Saturday of Father's Day weekend, we took a day outing to two nearby towns. Both towns are up on the north shore, and we'd been wanting to visit for a while. They're beach towns, so at first, we thought we wanted to go scout out a beach to walk on (yeah...swimming in the northern Atlantic waters would be COLD). We changed our minds after Googling the beaches and finding that almost all of them charged a minimum of $15 for parking. $15 to park for a walk? No, thank you. 

Our first stop was Gloucester (pronounced "gloss-ster). Gloucester is a working fishing village that is a quaint little New England hamlet. We got there in time for lunch at the Seaport Grille, where we had a great view of both the water and a warehouse that trucks leave from with shipments of fish. Despite the compromised view, the weather was awesome, and the food was good. Brad got a lobster roll; he had one last year when he first visited Boston and has kind of been dreaming about it since then. He was very happy with it. 

Lobster roll.

Happy baby.

After lunch, we drove through downtown Gloucester to see if we wanted to stop and check anything out closer. It was a fun little drive, but we decided to keep on going up the road to Rockport. Rockport was where I felt like I was in Stars Hollow. We drove through some neighborhoods, in search of a place to look at the water. We pulled off into a bed and breakfast parking lot to look, snap some pictures, and change a diaper. So glamorous. :) The view was beautiful. So lovely.

Lighthouses.

Sailboat fleet.

When we drove back through town, I was mesmerized by the Stars Hollow-ness of it. It was so quaint and cute. The houses were adorable, and the little shops were so small town-ish. There was one called "The Camera Shop." And another called "The Village Silversmith." I loved it! We want to go back some day (maybe when it's not a weekend) and wander around on foot. Maybe eat some gelato from the gelato shop or coffee from their little cafe. 

Sneaking a shot between a couple of (million dollar) houses. Brad Googled the average cost of houses in Rockport when we got home. Yowza.

Back in Boston!

On Sunday (actual Father's Day), I made scones for brunch. It was an ordeal. Goodness. But, they were good. We ended up skipping lunch and planned to eat an early dinner before church (our church meets at 4:30), but that got derailed after my afternoon culinary project: the piecaken. 

Nappers.

Last year, I read about the piecaken and showed it to Brad. If you don't want to follow the link, in short, a piecaken is a pie baked into a cake. I showed it to Brad, thinking he would join me in my "whoa...that is intense and waaay too much dessert." Instead, he said, "I must have one of those." I had intentions to make him one quite a while ago, but I never got around to it. I did this weekend. It wasn't pretty (I need some different equipment to make it "correctly"), but he loved it. I chose to make a blackberry pie inside of yellow cake, frosted with cream cheese icing. Oi...makes me feel full just writing about it. Again, though, he loved it.

The pie.

The cake surrounding the pie.

Brad didn't want to wait for it to cool before icing it. It wasn't pretty.

The cake with the pie in the middle. 

Happy first Father's Day, Brad! We love you. Also, that piecaken had a lot of gluten in it, so you should feel super strong.

(Don't worry, we ate dinner after church...in case you were starting to feel concerned.)