Hey, we’re home! We got back a week ago from our two month long summer RV trip up and down the east coast and all over Atlantic Canada. It was an amazing trip, but it’s nice to be home. I gave myself a week, but now I’m ready to dive back into house stuff. I told Dave we should paint the upstairs hallway this weekend and build shelves for it and hang up pictures. We might not really do all of that.

Anyway, though, before that happens, I thought I’d do a photo intensive post about pretty stuff we saw on our trip. As in buildings and design-type stuff, as opposed to scenic vistas and whatnot. There was also lots of that. Last year I did a series of posts on historic buildings we saw (and it took me a year to finish). This year there is but one post, just kind of about how there is, of course, cool design to see everywhere you go.

You can read all about the trip over on the travel blog. Right now there are short summary posts up; over the coming months I’ll be posting the in depth ones.

But here is an eclectic collection of…stuff that caught my eye over the summer: old stuff, new stuff, weird stuff, beautiful stuff….

I found a lot of doors I liked. Like this one in Franklin Court at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia:

And this one, at Port Royal in Nova Scotia:

I guess I have a thing for chippy paint on old doors. But I like door with shiny newer paint, too, especially when they have crab door knockers like this one in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia:

Or a lion:

People in Nova Scotia are not afraid of color, and I love that about them. Here’s another shot from Lunenburg:

And here’s the little village of Pictou:

Always stop to admire the typography. The classic Helvetica of the NYC subway:

And this one from a craft brewery in Alma, New Brunswick. Any time you can incorporate a whale tale into your sign, do so. I always say:

Not typography, but another sign. Look how jaunty the walking guy on signs in Canada is compared to the US. He’s really going places, I think:

I found all the signage at the Dunromin Campground in Annapolis Royal, NS totally charming:

How about some sculptures? This squirrel lives in Central Park:

Evangeline is at the Grand Pre National Historic Site in Nova Scotia:

Of course we fit in a president’s house. FDR’s mother, we were told, kept pretty tight control over the interior design at Hyde Park. It…shows:

I think he got to cut loose a little in his study, though, and give it a little less grandmotherly vibe:

This room might get my vote for favorite bedroom of the trip, though. It’s Anne’s bedroom at Green Gables Heritage Place on Prince Edward Island.

Random cool artsy stuff. This mosaic map is on the floor of the visitors center at Hyde Park:

This stained glass mural showing the Acadians being forced away from their home at Grand Pre:

How about this tapestry at Fort Anne National Historic Site in Annapolis Royal, NS?

The historic gardens in Annapolis Royal had a section with a bunch of tiny little birds to hunt for:

And, of course, we saw buildings. Lots and lots of awesome buildings. Old buildings like at Fort Anne:

The Library of Congress:

Grand Central Station in NYC:

Nauset Light in Eastham, MA:

New buildings built to look like old buildings, like at the Fortress of Louisbourg in Nova Scotia:

A bunch of buildings together, from Central Park:

Not terribly old buildings like Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater:

Very new buildings like the impressive inside and out National Museum of African American History and Culture:

College buildings. We did a lot of college tours, and I mostly just used my iPhone for pictures, so as not to embarrass Ari more than necessary. But colleges have some really pretty buildings. A sampling: here’s one from Vassar:

And here are two from Hamilton College in upstate NY (Ari’s top contender for now). Hamilton was founded as a men’s college a very long time ago, and then Kirkland, a women’s college, opened across the street in the 60’s. They merged in the late 70’s, resulting in a campus with beautiful old stone buildings on one side and funky modern Brutalist architecture on the other side.

And that completes my whirlwind tour of cool, design-y stuff we saw this summer! I had some idea that I was going to pop in with posts like this periodically during the actual trip, but….that did not happen.