How to survive temperatures around 100 degrees (without air-conditioning!) when even a dip in the lake isn’t quite enough to cool off?  Go shopping in Traverse City!  One of my most adored places in Michigan is Traverse City with it’s quaint downtown shops, great restaurants, and the beautiful sparkling water of Grand Traverse Bay.

I called up my favorite shopping partner (who was also on vacation without air-conditioning) and we headed over to downtown “TC.”  In between shops, we had a fantastically yummy lunch at a restaurant called “Red Ginger.”  A perfectly cooked ahi tuna club with Indian-style flat bread was a grand surprise when I was expecting just a regular sushi menu and it was served with these delicate, crispy, satisfying taro root chips – quite possibly the best meal I’ve had in months!

The heat was too much for even seasoned shoppers like ourselves to handle. So after we splurged on movie-star worthy sun hats we found a fun new cupcake cafe called “Sugarkissed” complete with a frozen yogurt sundae bar.  It was definitely a sugar rush for the shopping & heat weary with the cutest decor splashed with bright pinks, teal, and orange – and their cupcakes were some of the biggest I’ve seen!

It was my hands-down favorite way to spend a day OUT of the sun.  Heading back to the lake and savoring the cool air blasting in the car, my only wish was that I had gotten an extra cake-pop!