Vacation at last! Long hours in the airport were well-worth a long-awaited vacation. It was a whirlwind that felt like a lot more than five days. Stepping out of the airport may have been a highlight of the whole trip. The air was cool and refreshing, a drastic change from inland California’s daily triple digits. It was nice to be in a real city, instead of the strip mall-Applebees-Chilis- on-every-corner outskirts usually mandated by our schedule and the size of our vehicle. We went straight from JFK to a tasty home-made breakfast of yuca, platanos, salchichon, eggs and the best coffee we’ve had for six months, all lovingly prepared by the best friend a girl could have, Arismendy. Later that afternoon we went to a picnic in a newly-renovated park in the Bronx. There were 30 or 40 of us, with food to feed twice that many. The kids had fun playing and running around, and there were some impromptu soccer and volleyball games. It was great to see everyone. Excessive dancing at the after party led to an appetite for leftovers. Since several people mistook him for a cop (due to his quiet observation of the whole affair), Donny’s going to practice his merengue skills for next time. The photo below is Adonis and me. I can’t believe I used to carry him around on one hip, and now he’s starting high school. I guess it’s true: time does fly.
Sunday night we head to a small club in Brooklyn for the pre-wedding “Labor of Love” party for my friend Kavitha and her husband-to-be Chewy. As an added highlight, we got my good friend Joe to meet us there. The two bands and DJ were worth coming out for on their own, but it was also nice to be able to see Kavi before her big day. The music was modern jazz, later transitioning into some urban funk. The wedding will have elements from Hindu and Christian, Indian and African-American traditions, and that includes the food. I’m sorry to miss the greens and samosas. I know it will be a beautiful day.
Monday we drove up to Cape Cod, MA. Dinner at Dad’s the first night was sirloin tips on the grill, mushrooms and onions, squash and potato, asparagus and salad. Mmmm. The meal and visiting was followed by a round of miniature golf where someone beat someone else by three strokes on her home course. I won’t give Donny the satisfaction of going into detail. The next day, we walked around the harbor, played at the 6A playground, and did the boardwalk at Bass Hole. Salmon on the grill was for dinner at my sister’s, then we got my brother-in-law Tim hooked on geocaching during a walk in the dunes the next day. We were even able to snag a coveted Jeep Travel Bug from a cache in Mashpee. (For more on this see http://www.jeep.geocaching.com/.) Our last night of vacation we all got together for a New England seafood dinner by the Hyannis Harbor at the Black Cat. Thanks to Tim and Caroline we got a ride to the airport in Boston after a walk and lunch on Newberry Street on the way. For pics from Cape Cod, click here.
