VACATION PHOTOS

Good morning! We recently went on a road-trip VACATION to Washington D.C. & Philly.  I'm a chicken when it comes to flying, so road trips are super ideal. For this trip, Nissan provided us with a 1-week loan of the 2014 Versa Note in addition to a $500 gift card to explore our passions & things we love to do the most.

We took a ton of photos - but I'm going to post a few before you actually get sick of it all, ha!
The first few days we drove to D.C- & it was my favorite part of the trip. Seeing the historic sites - the White House, the Capitol & the Lincoln Memorial all for the very first time.  D.C. was a very clean city overall & we loved the architecture of the buildings.

Above is my husband sitting in the Nissan VersaNote in front of the capitol building - I love that this car was our door to more during this trip!

Our hotel, The Westin Washington DC City Center was fantastic, with great service & attention to detail. Their continental breakfast was top-notch too, with some amazing Eggs Benedict.  They also had a state-of-the-art gym facility where my husband & I worked out during our stay. We'd love to stay there again during our next visit because it was such a great central location. I took advantage of the room service breakfast & ordered almost everyday we were there. At one point, it was my husband's birthday & I asked them to sign a card & deliver it with the food, & they did.  Loved that!! The room we stayed in was spacious and clean & the hotel was pretty quiet & relaxing.

While in D.C. I also explored one of my fave things to do, getting pampered at a spa. Thanks To Nissan, I got to spend some time at the Paris Alexander Day Spa - with a long hot stone massage by Tammy.  If you've never had one, you have to. So GOOD.

While driving around the city, parking was super easy. D.C.  has a COOL parking system where you can pay at the meter directly from your mobile phone. HOW? By simply downloading a free app called ParkMobile. We don't have this in NYC (that I know of) - so we were blown away at how easy & convenient it was to park with this app. We could pay directly through the app and input the amount of time we wanted to park for. Let's say we were in the museum & the meter was about to expire, the app would notify us through my iPhone & we would just add more time & money directly through our phone.  You don't even have to rush back to your car! Brilliant. Please NYC do this! 

Parking was also made easy with the Nissan VersaNote - the car has a cool technology feature called Around View® Monitor.  It uses four small superwide-angle cameras mounted on the front, side and rear of the car which provide a virtual 360° view of objects around the vehicle, with selectable split-screen close-ups of the front, rear and curb views, helping us get into tight parking spots.

I love this pic of my husband getting the car from the hotel valet  - the car appears small & compact but when you look inside, it's quite spacious.

Went to the Lincoln memorial,  museums, then some shopping in Georgetown at Intermix.

 

Breakfast in the hotel Westin Hotel room - one of my fave things!

Healthy eating at The Westin Washington DC City Center.

Had to eat at one of the MANY lunch trucks in D.C. as well as head over to get gluten & dairy free cupcakes at Sticky Fingers Bakery.

After our D.C. trip, we headed toward Philly in the VersaNote & it was a smooth & quiet ride. You can't hear a lot of the outside traffic noise, which we loved.  The car was extremely roomy and the back seat could be pushed forward creating a large flat back area - perfect for luggage.  On our way to Philly we stopped at a few Starbucks locations. As many of you know I'm a BIG coffee fan & Nissan gifted us a nice Starbucks card which we used on the trip!

We arrived at the Hotel Monaco in Philly, which was super cute. I loved it!  They really paid attention to the details of the room. The view was gorgeous as well - with lots of greenery outside our windows. Check out the mirrored headboard - so chic. I have to say, the lobby was the most impressive, with a beautiful pink wall lined with hanging brushes and carpeting to die for, looked like a gigantic Franz Kline painting!

The blue velvet Chesterfield sofa in the lobby - how amazing right?

Check out the funky leopard bathrobe they had for the guests along with the bright yellow doors.

The lovely view from our hotel window while I had breakfast.

While in Philly - we decided to officially celebrate Mat's Birthday. We went to dinner at Alma De Cuba  - this was a modern Latin cuisine & by far OUR fave restaurant while on our trip. We enjoyed some lovely dishes as well as a gorgeous chocolate cigar dessert - which I surprised him with.

Thankfully we were able to get around without using a map because the NissanVersa note had a built in GPS system which we used for the entire trip. So handy.  This car is definitely on our list, if we end up buying another car. It gets great mileage - 40 MPG on the interstate, so we only had to fill the tank once and it's only $13,990 - super affordable.

this post is sponsored by Nissan.

-images by jen ramos