 |
A fellow food blogger friend of mine, Daniela of Food Recipes HQ, said she really enjoyed seeing my travel photos–her food photography & travel photographs are also beautiful, so this is a huge compliment–& a fellow photo journal blogger buddy, Cat of Silent White, was inspired by my last Ma Belle Vie post, & made her own. I figured it was best to follow up my Mushroom Mapo Tofu recipe with another Ma Belle Vie post. For those of you who haven’t seen this before, “Ma Belle Vie” is a category of posts cataloguing my day in photographs from when I wake up until I go to bed. I forgot to take photos of our night, but I can assure you, Josh & I take dental hygiene seriously – rest assured, we did brush our teeth before sleeping, despite the lack of photographs to prove it.
Click the first photograph & use the arrows on the center left or right to navigate through our day. These photos were taken at the end of summer in August when I flew with Josh to help him settle into Florida. I’ll be back with a Vietnamese noodle recipe, wait & see!
I awake at 9:30 AM to get ready for our day. Yeah, I sleep in, shut up.
Picked out my outfit: 50s inspired nautical one piece & a summer dress from Urban Outfitters.
Time to jump into the shower. Yeah so this picture isn’t very pretty. There’s no natural light so I tried to work with the light I was given.
Can’t leave the house without my face. Since the humidity tends to just melt my face off anyway, I stick to the basics: loose powder, blush, eyebrows (the most important makeup to do because your eyebrows frame your face!!!!!!!), & mascara. Spritz a bit of Rihanna’s Nude perfume on because it smells amazing.
Josh’s boxes don’t actually arrive until late September to his dismay, but his parents & aunt were kind enough to pack him some of the essentials, hence the plastic blue plates. He made us a quick breakfast of eggs, blueberries, & some cheese we took from our museum trip the day before.
Clothes on, check. Face on, check. Braids on, check. Sass on, triple check. Ready to explore the beach!
Got into the car & started driving toward Little Talbot Island & then onwards to Amelia Island.
Had to get another shot of this thing.
Don’t you judge me because I like this bridge.
Finally leaving the bridge behind us.
We’ve arrived!
Josh heads down the bridge toward the beach. Bridges for days.
Bridgin’.
Lots of shrubbery & verdant before getting to the beach.
Approaching the beach!
Josh before entering this wall of shrubbery.
It’s the hat. It brings out the sass.
The path to the beach.
Had to take shots of the plants.
Plants on plants on plants. There were holes scattered amongst the ground, indicating possible burrows of sea turtles. Did not see any though.
WHERE’S THE BEACH. WHAT THE GREEN.
When surrounded by greenery, might as well take a picture.
Finally arrived, but Florida decided to just dump rain all over our beach going parade. We were forced to rush back over the bridge, to get under some shelter.
Raaaaaainnnn.
I don’t even know what he’s doing.
So sad today.
Straight up movie rain! I’ve never gotten so completely soaked so quickly before, it was insane. At least it was warm outside so I wouldn’t really catch pneumonia.
Back on the bridge, still pouting, but here’s hoping we’ll make it out to the beach without getting electrocuted by lightning.
It stopped raining so it was time to get our exploring on!
The hat made me do it.
The beach!
Approaching the beach!
Josh grabs my hand & takes me to the beach.
Had to get some shots of water droplets because photography.
Had to get some shots of water droplets because photography.
Don’t you judge me, I wanted good photos & I couldn’t decide which one was better!
Didn’t get to see any sea turtles, but we saw a dead crab.
Lots of seashells adorned the beach.
Josh poses in the hot, hot heat in his rain-drenched shirt.
Lots of dead branches were scattered about the beach.
So, apparently we can’t swim in the water because we might die.
Guess we’ll just have to take photos of the beach.
Tried to capture lightning photos, but it’s kind of um…impossible without a tripod & patience.
Birds. Birds everywhere.
More seashells.
The beach!
The beach!
Lightning is all over the place, but it was so difficult to capture!
Took way too long trying to take photos of the lightning.
More wood.
We’re about to wrap it up because well, look at the storm.
Look how insane the clouds are!
Josh & I head out to Amelia Island after we got our fill of beach photos.
Plants.
We saw no sea turtles 🙁
Back on that bridge life.
Bye bye, beach!
This area of Florida is lush with greenery. We were off to Amelia Island with the storm all around us.
I love seeing bodies of water surrounded by greenery!
Had to take another shot of it!
As we entered Amelia Island, there were some really somber trees with an accentuated creepiness due to the downpour.
We’ve arrived in Amelia Island! It’s time to find us some food, but first, gotta take some pictures of the island’s landmarks.
Cute little downtown area. Pretty much no one here, well, about 40 people max. The streets were practically empty.
Walked into the Seafood Shak for lunch.
Ordered our food & awaited inside for our meals.
The menu was also displayed outside. I liked the color scheme & typography of the menu.
We decided to sit outside on the wooden benches. Up at the top I ordered a crabby patty burger, Josh ordered clam chowder & fish + shrimp tacos, & I got us some hush puppies. Everything we ate was delicious.
Here’s the Crabby Patty Burger!
Josh can’t get enough Clam Chowder, oh & look! It’s in an environmentally friendly cup.
I’m actually not sure if he got a shrimp taco or not, but I’m sure he got at least one fish taco.
These babies were great. Crunchy on the outside, fluffy cornmeal on the inside. Packed full of flavor!
Crabby Burger, assemble!!
Look at that goodness!
The sign.
The patio.
After our scrumptious lunch, we knew we had to top it off–because we’re on vacation–with some dessert. This was the inside of the fudge shop. They hand-make everything!
The display. So. Much. Fudge.
Cooling down with some delicious ice cream.
I don’t remember what flavors we got, but let me just say both were delicious. Both had some sort of chocolate component too.
A happy Josh is happy via his belly.
Posing with ice cream because I can.
The sun makes my eyes smaller than they really are.
10/10 would come back for more fudge.
A decrepit brick building on the island sat alone, asking for a photo.
Boats!
We walked over to the dock of the island to explore what the island had to offer. Other than food & souvenir shops, this dock was the stinkiest.
Had to fit in some nice shots of it at least.
A group of very nice elderly couples took a picture for us in return for me snapping photos for them. After this photo, we decided it was time to just head back home.
So, here’s the bridge again.
Josh remembered that UNF is conveniently located not too far from home, so we drove toward UNF before heading home.
He wanted to show me his office & the campus.
The campus is really nice! New buildings with the environmental friendly architecture in mind. Definitely not a swamp as you’d think! This concludes our day as we headed back home & went to bed. We were stuffed from the food earlier & were exhausted from chasing lightning.
The food looks really good! I haven’t had a crabby patty burger style before, so that’s probably why I was so excited to see it on your blog! I’ve had crab cakes before, and just wondering if it’s similar? And I have to say I love, love, love clam chowder, so I give props to your boyfriend for ordering that!
By the way I have a similar hat! 🙂
The crab cakes I’ve had in the past are really lightly breaded & not very much like a hard patty. Their patty was denser, held together well, but also had enough crab meat in them so you didn’t feel as though you bit into a ball of deep fried dough.
Thanks for mentioning me Tiffany, it’s an honor 🙂 The beach is stunning, the weather made it even more dramatically beautiful. I tried catching lightening once and failed, it’s so hard! The campus is so modern and tidy… I could live in there! When in Canada I spent 5 weeks in a campus and I had a great time. Wish I stayed longer.
I’ve got a silly question for you, now. Sorry about it. How do you keep your eyebrows so well in place? Do people normally tell you that your eyebrows are beautiful? 🙂
Please, the honor is mine! 🙂 Yes, the beach was really nice. I should’ve gotten some pictures of the sign. It was really dramatic. To summarize: go in the water & die because rapid currents.
Lightning is really difficult to capture, indeed! I’ll leave that up to the pros. Stars are much easier hah! Yes, UNF has a very new & modern campus. Where in Canada did you stay? I’d love to vacation to Canada again. I went when I was really young so I don’t remember much of it / didn’t appreciate it as much as I would now.
Hah! Not silly at all! I draw my eyebrows in because they’re not very prominent. I use either a brow pencil or the wax + powder kit (called Brow Zings) by Benefit. I’ve had a few people compliment my eyebrows since I started drawing them in bahaha. Thank you for your compliments – I strive for them perfect eyebrows!!
Love your photos! All the food looks amazing. Seeing that New England clam chowder makes me crave Quiznos’ clam chowder bread bowl, but they got rid of the Quiznos near my workplace 🙁
But yay for seeing what your day is like. I’d do a similar post, but my day’s boring! And I work with kids, so it’s not like I can take a complete photo of my day because I can’t take photos of the kids I work with. Oh, well, maybe I’ll do one for a non-working day — preferably on a day where I’m not being a home bum XD;
Woman, Quiznos?! Really?! Well, I suppose in Korea it makes sense that Quiznos would be the place you’d go for clam chowder. I feel as though you’re probably better off just buying the canned version of it though haha!
It’s precisely why I decided to do a Ma Belle Vie post while I was on holiday in Florida instead of my previous boring ones at home. You have to take them from morning until night though! I keep forgetting to capture my sleepytime! Hope you can find a fun day to document.
I love these types of posts! I’ve been wanting to do another one, but I need to pick a day that wouldn’t look the same as what I already did, haha. Thanks for the link too!
You got so many pretty photos of the beach, but that’s too bad that it rained on you guys! I like how much green there is around it. It adds some nice color to the photos. I’ve been fortunate enough to see sea turtles several times while I was at Hawaii 😀 There’s a couple beaches where they actually come up to shore to bask and rest, and I’ve run into them while snorkling.
Yum, your crab patty burger looks so good. The only time I had one was… I think Florida as well, haha. Also yay for ice cream! That looks like it was a fun day 🙂
You’re very welcome, Cat. It was the least I can do since you linked mine. 🙂
I liked how much green there was around the beaches too! It’s definitely a nice change from just cliffs, which are still pretty, but the greenery was quite the scenery. Lucky! I swam next to a sea turtle before, but I don’t think I’ve seen them on land. I was kind of blown away by their size while I was in the water – almost even scared even though I love turtles so much. You also have turtle pets! Just remembered. So cute, how are they doing?
hah! You’d think there’d be more on the East Coast with our plentiful fish over here, but I haven’t seen a crabby patty yet, just crab cake benedicts (delicious btw).
I’m totally loving how naturey Florida looks. That mixture of sand and grass has a different feeling than some of the ones in CA. Maybe because all of these pictures don’t have people other than you and Josh in it :o! There’s something about the woods sticking out of that sand that makes it interesting XD.
The food looks delicious! It’s 10:55pm here and I just got more hungrier. And you + Josh look adorable in the Anchor picture! Good luck to Josh with his doctoral studies!
It rains a lot in Florida so their scenery, including the beach, is much more lush & verdant. The dead wood also adds a bit of flare. Thanks for the compliment. Josh received his PhD this June so he’s all done with that, he’s teaching at UNF.
“rest assured, we did brush our teeth before sleeping”
I don’t believe you. PICS OR IT DIDN’T HAPPEN.
Ahaha, I kid I kid. I love your hat and dress! And that Crabby Patty looks so good. I haven’t eaten out in a while. :’D
I’d love to do this kind of post someday, but my days are horribly routine.
Thank you!
I’ve followed your blog for the past couple of years and you’ve always shared beautiful photos with us. I appreciate that because it inspires and motivates me.
Florida is so beautiful! I just went there a few months ago for the first time. Orlando, FL was amazing. Now I wanna pack all my stuff and go to school there.
The past couple of years?! Wow! I’m so flattered. Years is quite a while! So you’ve definitely seen me slowly change my blog’s theme to more recipes. I really appreciate your comment – it makes me feel like my blog isn’t completely useless. I’m touched that something I’ve done has inspired & motivated you. 🙂 Let’s hope I can keep that up!
Eh, I’d hold off on the packing your stuff & going to school there! Plenty of other states on the East Coast that are gorgeous & have better schools. 😉
your ma belle vie posts are always so beautiful! you’re always outside, aren’t you, chef bee? LOL sometimes i feel like doing posts about my daily life but realize that i’m a hermit and i don’t go out often so….there’s barely anything interesting to talk about. sucks.
did you take all these photographs with a camera? because some of them look like they’re taken using mobile which, of course, are as equally great. i mean, it’s like they have this vsco atmosphere in them…if that makes sense at all and i mean they’re GOOD. don’t get me wrong, all of them are beautiful. i totally love how they look like they’re from an old analogue camera :3 i love such colors. (i’m always so afraid i said the wrong thing to someone – anyone, actually)
the bridge really IS gorgeous. if i were there, i’d probably take lots and lots of shots on it too! i love taking pictures of urbanscape – buildings and stuff.
i forgot the last time i went to the beach. i hate the heat but i really want to feel the ocean – some serious dilemma here. also, the beaches in jakarta are mostly dirty unless you go to some of the tourist islands pfft… so whenever i think about going to the beach, i can only think of tourist places like bali or the famous raja ampat island in west papupa.
timoti’s seafood looks so delicious ugh *o* this may sound stupid but uh, the crabby patty burger is…made from…what? is the patty a fish patty or something? whenever i hear the word “patty”, i think about beef patty instead LOL.
dangggg the tacossss!! *o* i’m crying TTATT i want tacos too~ :((
“I take dental hygiene seriously” DO YOU REALLY~? LOL
what a beautiful campus *o* florida is really beautiful~ ;w;
Thank you! I’m actually more inside than I am outside, but I love nature & the outdoors, so I realistically should leave the house more, but my inner laziness says, “NO. STAY INSIDE!!” I certainly didn’t want to stay cooped up in Josh’s apartment while I was vacationing in Florida, so I had to face the humidity.
Do the photos look low in quality? Are they really noisy or are you asking me if I just edited some of them in VSCO because of the colors? All of the photos were taken on my DSLR & edited in Lightroom. VSCO is pretty good about making a miniature Lightroom app on your phone though, so you could easily emulate the colors via Lightroom. I’m glad you think they look like they’re analogue!! That’s exactly what I’m going for. 🙂 Only a photo enthusiast would catch that. 😀 😀 😀 😀 I WANNA HUG YOU.
Aw I’m sorry to hear that the beaches in Jakarta are mostly dirty, I’m sure you’ll have to adventure outside of Jakarta to find some beautiful isolated beaches. Indonesia is a BEAUTIFUL country with thousands of islands, I’m sure you’ll just have to take a day trip out to one of them to get those beautiful shots!
Have you never seen SpongeBob Square Pants?!?! Ahhhh! Patties are a common term for the protein substance in the burger so obviously it could be anything from a quinoa black bean patty, crab patty, fish patty, to beef patty. So just looking at the word “crabby” you can see that the word “crab” is in it, thus it’s made of crab, which is a crustacean (not a fish, but still a sea creature).
You could make your own tacos at home! They’re really easy to make & they’re almost always better than the ones you get at the restaurant unless the restaurant does lots of fancy things to the taco you just don’t have the equipment for at home.
I always love these posts from you! I love the pictures! They are gorgeous!
Thank you, Ciara! 🙂
Awesome! The photos are really really beautiful and I mean that, too. Also, I wish I could do something really cool, too on my own day. I just do homework and go to school. XD but you guys look so happy. I’m so glad!