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!

Try, try again

So let's try this again. I wrote a beautiful post (I swear!) about our first day in Brussels, but lost it due to some technical difficulties having to do with the fingers and the brain. Miss M says I'm not a real blogger until that happens. So here we go...

Post for Tuesday, June 17.

After 18 hours of travel, we arrived in Brussels to reunite with the girls! I'm a little fuzzy on the details since we didn't get a lot of sleep on the plane. Basically, we came back to the flat, cleaned up a bit, then went out to old Brussels.

We first went to the Grand Place, or central square surrounded by the City's old Town Hall (Hotel de Ville) and various guild houses (bread, cloth, meat, and beer?). They were all built around the 1600s in the gothic style, but each had their own character.

I didn't take a ton of pictures, but I hope Chummy can fill in the pictorial gaps.

This is the Bread House, or Maison Du Roi or the King's House.

Cookie peaking through the door of the Town Hall.

Grammy and Grampa taking their first selfie.

From there we wandered over to the Manneken Pis, or Piss Boy. I honestly don't know why he is there, or why he is famous, but he is. I know Chummy has a picture somewhere, so maybe he can share it later.

This being Belgium, there are dozens of chocolate shops in every direction, and just as many shops selling Gaufres - the real deal Belgian waffles with lots of toppings. Of course Grammy and Grampa wanted us to have an authentic Belgian experience, so they treated us to lots of samplings.

Curiously, there are also lots of comic stores around the city. We never went in any, but there was at least one on every block we walked on. There were also several building-sized murals of Tin Tin and some gift shops selling Strumpfs, the original Smurfs.

For dinner we headed over to the Petite Rue de Bruchers. I remember this as enticing alleyways crammed with vendors selling fresh seafood - a mix between fisherman's wharf and a flea market. There weren't as many stalls of seafood, but there were plenty of barkers prostituting their restaurants. To be honest, we skipped Grammy and Grampas favorite place in order to get a better view of the TV showing the World Cup game of Belgium vs. Algeria. The service was not unexpectedly slow, but the waiters were definitely entertaining. After each goal and the 2-1 Belgian win, the waiters would run up and down the street, bellowing, blowing whistles, and belly-bumping each other. The sounds of celebration were repeated in every direction and continued for the next few hours.

Girls being girls in the Rue de Bruchers

There must have been about 100 mussels in each of out pots of moules.

The girls enjoy another classic Belgian desert, Dame de Blanche, basically a hot fudge sundae.

I can't remember the name of this place, but I always thought it was beautiful. Essentially a covered mall.

Brussels is a beautiful city, and I would gladly come back. But tomorrow we are off to Ghent and Brugge, on the Flemish side of Belgium.

And Now We're There!

Ugh. I did have this whole blog post written out nicely with the pictures perfectly spliced into the text, but then my silly iPad deleted it and I really don't feel like writing it again. We got here yesterday, but didn't have wifi until now. Long story short, we took a long plane (7 hours!!!!) and watched a lot of movies before landing in Brussels. We spent a few hours resting in Brussels, which by the way is a really cool city, before driving six hours down to the state/region or something of France called Brittany, where we're now staying with friends Gilberte and Jeremy. They live in this really cool house in the smack dab mettle of farm country that was build centuries ago (in the French Revolution, it hid a priest) and they have a huge sprawling green lawn with these overgrown hedges dividing everything, and fruit trees everywhere. All the food is homemade, handmade, and/or extremely fresh, and I mean everything. Bread, butter, jam, fish, hazelnuts, cherries, apples, sausages. Everything. Anyway, the post about today's adventures will be posted tomorrow because it's really late here, and even withe the time difference I'm tired. In the meantime, enjoy the pictures:

A street view of Brussels from inside the car

Brussels is a big mixing pot of architecture. There are old stone buildings everywhere, with tall glass towers rising behind them. Actually, Brussels is a big mixing pot of everything. All the various signs are written in Dutch, German, French, and English, and there are people from around the world covering every street. It's pretty awesome.

A French farm we passed during our drive. Brittany is definitely farm country.

Carolyn catching up on some much needed sleep during the drive

Since our friends' house used to be a farm, this is their barn

Yup, the garden is even complete with a flower-covered gate

While our friends aren't farmers, their neighbors are. These are their sheep.

Artichokes growing in the garden

The stone former farm house we're staying at

Anyway, it's late now, but more updates tomorrow!

And We're Off!

Finally, us little mountain mice are on the road! Or more accurately, on the plane. Two nights ago we woke up at roughly four in the morning. Because Carolyn is 11 and thus still considered, in the airport's eyes, a "unaccompanied minor." When we scheduled our first flight ( a plane out of Reno, a connector in Denver, and a landing in Dulles), we were unaware of the new changes made to the UM system. In the new rules, anyone aged 5-11 MUST be in the UM system, and anyone in the UM system must have a direct flight, and as a result Carolyn and I had to have a direct flight. Problem is, there are no direct flights out of Reno to Dulles. So instead we woke up at four in order to drive down to Sacramento to find our elusive direct flight.

Us, waiting in line to check in:

After checking in, security, and all that other airport stuff, we were finally ready to go. We said goodbye, then we were off! I have absolutely no idea how it happened, but somehow Carolyn and I managed to get first-class seats. Neither of us have ever had those, and it was a blast. :D There were big cushy seats, blankets, warm hand towels, breakfast, and cookies ( oh, and as Carolyn just enthusiastically reminded me, mini Toblerone). While we were warned by the parents multiple times not to get used to it, we definitely DID enjoy it (and I, personally, wouldn't mind doing it again). 

At the end of our five-hour flight, we finally landed in Dulles International, and that's when the UM system finally kicked in. In the past, our experiences with UM hasn't been too great and mainly consisted of cheap cracker-and-banana lunchboxes and being locked in a plain white room for an hour while the only entertainment were baby toys and a little TV playing the Wonder-pets. This time was only slightly different from last. We were stuck in a BLUE room (that, thankfully, offered board games instead of baby toys) and a lady that repeatedly asked if we wanted juice boxes or to play on their non-existent Wii (we checked the entire room, and there wasn't actually a video game to be found). 

Anyway, after about half an hour our grandparents came and picked us up. We spent the night at their house, and are currently waiting for 2:30 PM to come around so that we can leave for the airport, catch our 5:30 flight, and be well on our way to Europe. We can't wait!