travel diary pt. 1 | road trip outfit, Foxwoods casino, food

This time last week, vacation had juuuust started. I mentioned in my last blog post that my husband and I took a week off work and went on our first vacation since December 2022! I took so many photos and have so much to share, so I’m breaking it up into one post per day of the trip. So let’s rewind to last Sunday…

I probably have the least to share from Sunday, since we didn’t leave until a little after one o’clock. After dropping Grandpaw (our cat) off at my mom’s, we hit the road for Mystic, CT.

For the car ride, I wanted to wear something a little special, but also be comfortable. I bought this olive green, bodycon, midi dress from Primark on my birthday back in February, but haven’t had the chance to wear it because it’s been so cold. The weather was milder last Sunday, and since we were going to be in a car, I figured I could get away with it. For a little warmth, I layered a cropped black sweatshirt on top, and styled it with thick wool socks poking out the top of some chunky, black ankle boots.

We were staying at the Hyatt Place, and we saw on Google maps that Foxwoods casino was nearby. Neither of us had been to a casino before, so we thought it might be fun to stop by on our way to the hotel.

I was pleasantly surprised by the casino! The place was BIG, and contrary to what I imagined, it wasn’t all casino. There was a whole tower just full of shops that felt like walking through a mall. In the areas that had casinos, they also had several restaurants, but the casinos were well separated from the restaurants most of the time.

Before dinner, we walked around and got the lay of the land. We went into one of the casinos and played the slot machines and video poker a little bit until it was dinnertime. For dinner, we had scoped out the restaurants online ahead of time, and knew we wanted to go to the Golden Dragon, but we had the hardest time finding the restaurant! Most of the other restaurants were located along this one bustling corridor, but even the ones that weren’t were still easy to spot. It seemed like we saw every restaurant except the one we were looking for. We even GPSed it on our phones with walking directions, and it would say that we were there, but the restaurant was definitely not there.

As it turned out, the restaurant had relocated, and the GPS was taking us to the old location, which I guess is now Hell’s Kitchen. So if you’re at Foxwoods right now, confused and Googling it like I did, the entrance to the new location, if you’re facing the Grand Pequot Casino, is around the left side of the Drip bar.

For our appetizers, we had fried oysters and bao buns – the two main reasons we wanted to come here. For our entrée, we went with a crispy seafood noodle dish. I really enjoyed the fried oysters! I think the bao buns could have used more flavor, but I didn’t mind it. The crispy noodles were good, but I’d say they’re on par with crispy noodles I’ve had at other Chinese restaurants.

After dinner, we stopped by the Fay Da bakery and bought a cookie for a late night snack. Then we headed to the hotel, FaceTimed Grandpaw, and called it a night. So Sunday was a pretty short day, but I hope you enjoyed seeing my road trip outfit and a couple snaps from Foxwoods nonetheless. Stay tuned for part 2 next weekend!

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