Last weekend, my wife and I got up early to take a drive down to the Hyde Park area of Cincinnati. Hyde Park is one of the nicer areas in Cincinnati to live, with a small but very nice shopping area, with restaurants and non-chain stores. However, we started with a cup of coffee in the neighboring O’Bryonville, at what used to be a coffee shop where we could get waffles from Taste of Belgium. Now, the Bonbonerie Bakery owns the shop. It’s still a good coffee shop, and the variety of pastries is a bit broader. I just miss the waffles!
I ordered a double espresso con panna, which they didn’t know how to make without asking. I thought this was a pretty simple order, but they did it ok. My wife’s favorite part was the dog waiting patiently outside of its owner.
It wasn’t a bad breakfast spot, but we should have gone to Echo instead. Next time, we’ll know, but I miss the old coffee shop.
From there, we went over to Hyde Park. It was a gorgeous morning, not too hot, a great morning to walk around a shop. We were actually there to look for a jacket for me for the upcoming autumn weather. I wanted to see about a quilted Barbour jacket, so we went to one of my favorite shops anywhere, Delmere & Hopkins. D&H is a great outdoor/hunting/fishing type shop that specializes in high quality clothing and gear, a place where you can sign on for a fishing trip to Montana or hunting trip to Wyoming. What I found was that I didn’t like the jacket too much, but this is the place to be if you like Barbour’s waxed cotton!
My wife found something even better, though… For a while, I’ve been looking for a camera bag replacement. We’d actually been to D&H before looking at Filson hunting bags, but they were too small. Well, we should have gone back to the Barbour gear; she found a small overnight bag made of olive waxed cotton that looked to be about perfect.
It’s got a wide interior with one zip pocket and several outside pockets, and all the snaps are magnetic and close easily. This is going to make a great camera bag, and look a bit nicer than a Lowes or similar made-to-be-a-camera-bag bag. I just like the idea of the bag not looking like a camera bag. With a couple of foam inserts, it’s all ready to go!
I hadn’t decided on the bag or not, so we walked around the area a bit. About half a block away, we found a store I hadn’t been to before called Khakis. If you wrote down what you thought a preppy store should have in it, you’d be describing Khakis. From Vineyard Vines shirts to Leather Man belts and yacht racing clothes. And I’m not ashamed to admit that I liked just about all of it. I picked up a Vineyard Vines button down, and I’ll be back for more prep stuff in the near future…
So I ended up with a shirt and a camera bag, after a nice espresso. Sorry, no food really this time, but I did get a camera bag to help out with more photography stuff! And I was forced to admit that, at heart, I’m a prep. Maybe it’s because that was big when I was in college, I don’t know. But now that I’ve admitted it, it’s easier to take.
