Cape Cod Recap

Joint post written by Mikaela and Carolyn on Monday, August 10th (but wasn't published due to planes and exhaustion and maybe a little bit of laziness):

Hello friends! It’s Mikaela and Carolyn again, checking in before another awesome vacation with the Prestowitz grandparents. This year, we’re vacationing in Maui which, we agree, is not a bad place to spend the end of our summer. As we write this, we’re flying somewhere far above the Pacific Ocean. We likely won’t land for another several hours, so in the meantime we’ll leave you with a quick recap of our summer so far. J

In early June, Mikaela finally got to try summer skiing up at Mount Hood, Oregon under the instruction of her Sugar Bowl coaches. After enduring a six am wake up, a broken flip-flop, and a ten-hour van drive, she finally reached the famous glacier. Mikaela proceeded to have blast with the rest of her teammates (so much so that she didn’t take any pictures. Oops.) Five fun-filled days later, she returned home smiling, sore, and with a large pile of laundry. She’s crossing her fingers that she gets to go again next year!

In the meantime, Carolyn was busy goofing off at UNR soccer camp with all her soccer teammates. Carolyn played soccer all day with her closest friends under the guidance of the university women’s soccer team. They played scrimmages together, worked on drills, and had a mini match of world cup. Carolyn spent her nights in the college dorm rooms, her days at the college stadium, and every second having fun (once again, no pictures. Sorry. Heh.) All in all, Carolyn improved her soccer skills while having fun with her best friends.

Then, in mid July, the entire family waved hello to the east coast and our relatives on Mom’s side of the family. This time, we got pictures (although still not enough)!

                                                  First stop: Cabot's Ice Cream!

Cousin Leia digs into her giant sundae, while Mikaela prefers to strategize her plan of attack.

In the meantime, Carolyn digs right in! (Mom mostly just takes pictures and giggles at the green mint ice cream topping.)

To counteract all that sugar, the next day we helped Lola out in her garden and had loads of fun picking all of her homegrown vegetables.

Mikaela holds up the tomato harvest before adding them to the harvest basket.

Carolyn proudly holds up the day's harvest.

The next day, we drove down to Cape Cod to stay in Tita Krishna's gorgeous beach house (sadly, no pictures) where we mostly just hung out at the beach for the next several days (again, no pictures :( ). We do, however, have pictures of our visit to the nearby carnival.

Mikaela and Carolyn wait for their ride to start, while Mom tries (somewhat unsuccessfully) to wave to the camera as she passes.

We also visited our Grady relatives (Papa's sister Betty and her family) and splashed around in the lake behind their house.

From left to right: (Top Row) Uncle Mike Grady, Dad, Papa, Cousin Donovan, Cousin Savannah, Mikaela, Carolyn, Cousin Leia (Bottom Row) Aunt Betty Grady, Lola, Mom. (This would be a good family picture, if it weren't sans Uncle David, who was busy being the actual photographer.)

Mom always talks about getting candy at the 1856 General Store and mixing it with her ice cream, so we replicated the experience (in case you wondering, it was delicious).

We spent the next few days hanging around the house and the backyard beach again, taking a little bit of time to brush up on our musical skills.

Leia sings, while Savannah and Mikaela provide instrumental on guitar and ukulele, respectively.

One night, we treated ourselves to famous Cape Cod lobsters, completed with hard cider for the adults and lemonades for the kids, and followed up with delicious local-made ice cream.

After our fun filled week in the Cape, we eventually had to head back to Boston. We parted ways with Uncle David and Donovan as they start their drive back to Maine, while Tita Julie and Savannah stayed in Boston for Savannah's hockey tournament. In the meantime Lola recruited Mom, Carolyn, Mikaela, and Leia to help out Iskwelahang Pilipino (Boston's Philippine cultural school) make and sell food at the annual Lowell arts festival. As quickly as we could make food, people were eating it! There was a line stretching from our booth all the way around the corner, and we had to work hard just to keep up. One of the most popular foods was Lumpia, so Lola put us to work mixing up batches of filling. 

The gang gets ready to do some serious cooking.

While we were busy mixing Lumpia filling, others had plenty to do grilling a variety of skewed meats, which were also quite popular.

One of our favorite foods at the festival was Turon, a traditional Filipino desert made up of a plantain, a wrapper, and lots of sugar.

By the end of the day, we were tired, hungry, and smelled like food, but it was absolutely awesome. (Side note: If anyone ever finds themselves needing enough Lumpia to feed a small army, let us know. We memorized it.)

Anyway, those are all the pictures we have right now. If we receive any more pictures from our various relatives we'll be sure to post them, but in the meantime we're going to get ready for our imminent vacation in Hawai'i. We'll try and post soon!

Stay straight on this road for... A long time

Post written for Monday, June 23:

As much as we loved Paris, today was sadly the day we had to leave. After repacking our bags and saying goodbye to Montemarte, we took the metro back into Central Paris and rented a car. We plugged "Annecy" into our GPS (nicknamed Geraldine Petunia Sheryl) and voila! We were on our way. The drive was roughly six hours, and whenever we drove on the same road for more than 10 kilometers Gerry would tell us "stay straight on this road for...*pause*... a long time." We got a pretty good kick out of that. We got a fairly wide variety of views, ranging from cities to farms and everything in between, but even with the views I think that we were all glad when we finally pulled up to our new temporary residence. 

We unloaded the car and checked into our hotel room before deciding to explore the town. Annecy is divided into two different sections: old and new. The newer area (where our hotel is) features lots more modern style buildings which host banks, supermarkets, malls, etc. while the old area has more independent small clothing stores and restaurants serving foods of various nationalities. We made a (mostly straight) beeline for the old section. Once there, we explored some of the shops, but since it was already fairly late and French stores have tendencies to close early, it was mostly window shopping. Over diner we talked about our plans for our stay in Annecy such before heading home to get some sleep for our next adventure. Next up: biking!

*Sorry, no pictures!

Daft Punk on an Accordian... must be Monmartre!

Backpost for Paris on Sunday June 22:

After 3 lovely days of living in Paris just a few blocks from the Eiffel Tower, we left our awesome flat and hoofed it over to Monmartre... A hipster neighborhood of artists, musicians and tourists visiting the Sacre Coeur Basilica at the top of the highest point in Paris!  Using Paris' super efficient Metro system, we caught our 3 separate trains to get to our destination.  I forget the actual line names, but I think it was Pink to Green to Blue and then a 2 block walk up hill to the Funicular, which transported us up a couple hundred vertical feet, sparing us climbing a bunch of stairs. Not the easiest thing to do on a busy Sunday morning while transporting a couple rollers and backpacks through the metro crowds.... And then DEEP into the tourist crowds going up to see Sacre Coeur and Monmartre.  On the hottest day since we had been in Paris, we gutted and sweated our way to our new home.... And what a COOL new home!  

Relaxing in our cool apartment before heading out....

Here are the views from our 2nd story windows... to the Left and then to the Right

Our place was 2 stories above Chez ma Cusine

Honestly when I booked it, I was looking for something close to Gare du Nord (where we were going to pick up our rental car).... And we ended up in the HEART of Monmartre!  

After resting and decompressing from the stressful trek across Paris, we took a long leisure stroll through the neighborhood.  There were dozens of artists trying to hustle tourists into portraits.  While fun to watch them work, we passed.  Mikaela did find an original art piece that was pretty cool... And enjoyed talking to the humble artist.  I was most impressed with some of the street musicians, especially a duo playing and singing some funky reggae with French accents.  

The best was the accordion player who serenaded deep into the evening hours right outside our open windows.  

I can now say I listened to Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" played on an accordion while sipping a nice Cote Du Rhone Red, eating a fresh bagguetes with Brie cheese, and watching Belgium win their World Cup match against Russia.  

The neighborhood itself has some interesting architecture with narrow streets intertwined with STEEP long stairs going up and down. 

The following morning, I got up early and snuck out for some photos in the dawn light.... without the crowds.  While it was beautiful to see such a bustling city before it really woke up, I was really disappointed at the overwhelming stench of urine and shards of broken glass all over the steps of Sacre Coeur Basilica.  It just seems sad that people need to enjoy the sunsets over Paris, partying and then trashing the place :(.  I guess that is just the mountain mouse in me which has grown to appreciate the little things that the Sierra mountains offers....

We weren't supposed to take pictures from inside, but Michele broke the rules with her phone camera....

This is Paris at 6am... just waking up.  What is not pictured is the small army of sanitation works using leaf blowers to push and sweep the broken glass to be picked up.

And finally my walk back to the apartment with only one other person in sight...

Overall it was a great way to spend our last night and day in Paris.  This morning is a big travel day with a ~6 hour drive to Annecy and fresh mountain air!