A couple days before the Fourth of July, I was asked by my aunt if I wanted to go to her river house on the Potomac. 

That sounded just awful, so I said yes.

After experiencing my first few months as a working woman living on her own in New York City, I understood the strong desire that most people have to disappear for a week at whatever vacation spot they have access to. While every other posh person from the city was in bumper-to-bumper traffic on their way to the Hamptons for a clambake (or whatever it is they do there), I was in the car with my cousins the day after my birthday, being driven down the East Coast to Virginia.

I spent the first half of the drive trying to call my school to make sure that my grad school had in fact gotten my college transcript, but was able to relax once that was behind me. 

It was a beautiful day all day everyday and would have been nauseatingly lovely had this been happening to someone I hated on Instagram. The jealousy-inducing weather was just the tip of the iceberg.  

The water was brimming with jellyfish at all times, looking like free-floating condoms in the water. Upon looking it up, the internet told us that the heavy increase of jellyfish during this time of year was the result of environmental concerns, so shoutout to climate change. 

The water was amazing and felt like bathwater. The jellyfish hurt like hell, but you deal with it when the water feels that great. When we weren’t doing that, we took the boat out across the Potomac to eat at restaurants in Maryland, a fun twist on going out to lunch. Family traditions were observed: cooking paella over an open flame and shamelessly drinking at whatever hour of the day we felt like. 

Some people like to rappel down glaciers and trek up mountains under the watchful eye of a Sherpa who does all of the work for them when they are on vacation. Drinks on a beach after sleeping in is the definition of a vacation in the books for me. 

That’s the definition we went with on this trip as well: sleeping in, soaking up sun, listening to music, and just letting the good times roll. 

On the actual day of the Fourth, the sky was lit up with fireworks– no surprise there– and a parade blew through town first thing in the morning. 

It was another perfect break from the city in the books.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel