Family Trip

My parents try to visit every year in May.

So I decided to spice it up this year and organize a little family trip to Cape Cod, MA and Newport, RI over Memorial Day weekend. We left the city around 1:00pm on Friday which could not have been a worse idea. We were stuck in traffic for over 8 hours. Thankfully, the driver-my parents' son in law- is generally speaking a calm person and drove us all the way while I was in charge of the atmosphere. I started with Leonard Cohen that my father loves so much, then a little ABBA to cheer up my mother after 2 hours at Mile 15 (she loved the Mamma Mia movie so much, it's embarrassing). After loosing inspiration and my father asking for classical music, I decided to shut it off and start a game. The "Portrait" game where someone picks a personality and the other ones have to guess who it is by asking questions. Bad idea.... My mother would pick the most obvious celebrities and it would take us 2 seconds to guess. My father on the other hand would pick unknown polish scientists and then would argue that all of us are a bunch of ignorants.

We finally arrived in Harwich Port at 9:00pm at a very cute B&B, Captain's Quarters where any flower lover would feel they've reached heaven. My parents picked the pink flower curtains-pink flower cushions- pink flower pillows cases- pink flower rug- pink flower wallpaper paper- pink flower comforter room. We picked the green plants curtains-green plants cushions- green plants pillows cases- green plants rug- green plants wallpaper paper- green plants comforter room.

Over the two days we went for walks across the Cape, visited cutes places and had meals in different types of restaurants one of them being Bucca's where we had dinner twice. My mother is tall, skinny, and out of my 3 sisters and myself she has the greatest body. She cares about healthy food, olive oil and steamed vegetables. Well... the virus got to her over the trip (I'm not talking about the swine flu). I'm talking about my mother eating fried clams, fried calamaris, French fries, four cheese raviolis in a creamy mushroom sauce, goat cheese risottos... and don't get me started on the cheese cakes.

We left early on Monday to drive to Newport spend the day and cut the road in half. We went for the touristy walk on the harbor, had lunch there and then went to the Castle Hill Inn for dessert and coffee. We sat in Adirondack chairs and ended up spending the afternoon watching the sail boats on the water. We did absolutely nothing and it was just perfection. That's when I knew my parents were really happy.

One last thing: at some point on our way back to New York, I saw my mother take a serious look at a McDonald's drive-thru. (Yes Mom, I saw you!)