Simply, Karlee. :): Historical Albany

So today was my first day off work in almost a week and I decided to go to the city center of Albany and explore. What gave me the idea of doing this was last night I got extremely stir crazy in this apartment, so I decided to just get in the car and drive. Now normally in good ol' Eastern Oregon that would mean hitting the back roads, but unfortunately I don't have that luxury here. So I drove with all my windows down on this beautiful night and found my self at the city center. I began driving down residential areas and admiring what I could see of the houses in the dark. So I decided that today I would admire them in the daylight.

On my way I passed the beautiful clock tower at the transit center. What I really love about this was that the road around it glittered. I watched people hug each other goodbye and admired the beautiful flowers around the tower.

Which brings me to my next thing I love about Albany, these people have green thumbs! Everywhere I went there were flowers in bloom. My favorite part though? They have hanging pots on every block that are the biggest, full, and most magnificent ones I have ever seen! They are every where and they make me want to just take one so I can hang it outside my apartment to look at everyday ;)
I chose a place to park and walked down each street from there. I walked down the streets admiring the buildings and window shopping. I came across one shop and something about it intrigued me enough to go in and look.

It ended up being Albany's Antique Mall. Now when I hear the word antique I immediately think old and boring, but this store was absolutely fascinating and HUGE. It was two floors and full of stuff. There was no way they couldn't have what you were looking for. If I wasn't on such a tight budget my apartment would be fully decorated after leaving that place. The top floor had a vintage boutique with old wedding dresses, hats, coat, shoes, everything. There was so many beautiful silver dish sets as well. In one of their displays they had these old baby dolls that reminded me of the one my grandma still keeps in her closet from when she was a little girl.

They also had many hanging pictures and a lot of them were of people. It made me wonder what the story was behind the person in the picture and why the family would get rid of something like that?
The next shop that I found was called 'Not Too Shabby' which was another shop that had more of a vintage feel to it. Another place that if I had the money, my apartment would be decorated. Super cute stuff and the pricing was not bad at all! Very reasonable and such cute stuff.

Albany is the 11th largest city in Oregon, but the thing about Albany is that you don't really get a city feel, especially once you pull off into residential areas. They have large old homes that are absolutely stunning. One thing I kept noticing was that a lot of the homes had names on them, such as "Cathey House, Dawson House...etc, etc." They also had years on them. So as I returned home I got online and did some research. I didn't get a definite explanation for this, but what I did gather is that I think these houses with these labels were homes built by significant people of the community when it was still being founded. The houses are still in wonderful condition and some over 100 years old. One of my favorites being the Cathey House, also referred to as "The White House" for apparent reasons. This house was built in 1906. Absolutely stunning!

Overall it was a good day. Maybe when my grandparents come down and visit my grandpa would be interested enough to do some tours with me. We like that kind of stuff. So now it is time to clean my apartment and then maybe I will go for a walk. That is the beauty of living so close to the school I get to walk a lot! :) Saves me a lot of gas money! On another positive note I am down to 5 days till Jake Owen and Round-Up! Yay!

Have a good night bloggers! :)