Lost in Yonkers

God I am so sick of getting lost every time we go somewhere. Yesterday it was not Lost in Yonkers but lost on the way to Yonkers. We had to go there to a Chevy dealership to pick up the leased car that had finally arrived. This is the third time this car’s been ready. The first time was three weeks before we’d even left Australia, the second was the day we picked up the Ford Escape rental, and now finally, two-thirds of this trip to go, and we get our proper actual vehicle. It’s really ready this time. No more rentals, and bugger it, we have to give back that baby SUV I love so much. So its back to a sedan. A Chevy Impala. White, very basic, very corporate and very leased looking. No-one would buy a car this ordinary, surely? You’d have to trick it out with some extras or at least get it in a colour. Ahmed’s chuffed about getting a new car straight off the lot. But god lord, there are any number of Chevy dealers between Yonkers and us – why on earth did we have to go through some convoluted lace-work of highway on and off ramps to pick up a car that we could have had delivered? I mean, new car, straight out of the factory and they had to offload it in Yonkers? I can’t see how they got the delivery truck there – the place is up a side road butted up next to a highway with only a concrete wall separating the street from a 20 ft drop onto the highway – a truck could never execute a turn in that tight space. And what, the local dealers don’t sell new cars? And of course we’ve got that map issue again. We are just so sick of arguing about directions that we do it in shorthand now. Each trip the argument gets quicker. Very soon it’ll be no more than a simple toss of the map onto the floor, or out the window, and the point will have been made.

I haven’t finished telling you about the Thanksgiving holiday as reviewing the first day with that damn map just plain wore me out. And since then there’s been Mother-in-law visit, Christmas preparations, Sister-in-law visit, Christmas itself, New Year and bang, here we are, right at the beginning of a New Year. By the way, Happy Birthday to my brother who turns 40 today. Welcome to Old-Fartsville, bro.

Thanksgiving Weekend Chapter 2

So, where were we? Thanksgiving weekend holiday in Boston. Great place as long as you’re up for random wanderings and not trying to go in any particular direction. The next day we decided to do something for Yasmin – it only seemed fair, one day grown up fun, next day kid fun – so we took her to the Boston Children’s Museum. At last I’ve discovered what everyone does with their kids here. Apparently there are a lot of these museums about and they work like a playcentre with an educational agenda. Lots of interactive things to do and the bigger ones even have climbing racks and tunnels and so forth. The four floors of the Boston museum took us most of the day to get through. Which was, of course, delayed at the start by those same map and directional issues we’d had the previous day. Once Yasmin had had enough of playing in water, pressing buttons, tossing golf balls and playing at supermarket checkout chick, we left Boston and headed on to Rhode Island. It’s a wee, tiny state squished up between Massachusetts and Connecticut. Providence is the capital and Billy Joel may have sung a song about it I think, or at least mentioned it in a lyric somewhere.

I’d internet-hunted restaurant deals and found Wes’ Ribs – recommended by many online and since we’re a long way from Texas and the barbeque capitals of the south, as good a place as any to try an American special. We encountered a bit less confusion finding our way off the highway and onto local streets in Providence than we had in Boston, but once we found the right street, we really wondered if it was indeed the right street. It was barely lit, a few broken bulbs here and there, alleyways and deserted warehouses, broken windows, long grass growing along fences – dark and creepy. We started to think that damn map was at fault again and that we were only likely to make it out without being mugged, murdered, or stumbling over a dead body by the good fortune of being relatively close to a major traffic route when, oh looky, there it is. Right in the middle of a completely neglected part of the city, Wes’ Ribs. And its no small building either. There’s a large carpark out the front, lots of neon beer signs in the windows and a wide staircase leading upstairs to the front door. It might look different by daylight, but as it gets dark at 4.30pm there wasn’t much chance of us catching it in a better light. It looked a bit like a beer hall/bar so I ran upstairs to check if it was suitable for kids and there were a bunch of families in having an early dinner, so we went in to eat. And eat we did! What a feast. Gigantic ribs, sweet Boston beans, slaw, corn bread. No need for cutlery here. All fingers and lip smackin’ and lovin’ it. You don’t want to be wearing your best clothes in a place like this. I was covered chin to tum in paper serviettes (napkins), Yasmin had a plastic bag with a hole cut for her head generously provided by the management. It’s so much more fun when you can really let go and do the caveman thing.

After paying a paltry sum for such a magnificent feed [look, I know I love gourmet food and fine wines, but I’m an everyman gourmet – if it’s good food, it doesn’t have to be posh to be a great eat] we drove on to Mystic for the night. Yes, the very same one whose pizza restaurant became a movie set and launched Julia Roberts on her particular trajectory into the Hollywood stratosphere. We weren’t expecting to see her there this weekend though, the girl’s just had twins.

Mystic is only about an hour or so from Providence and we’d decided to stay there the night and get straight on with the sightseeing in the morning rather than stay in Providence and drive for ages first. Kids get restless in the back seat and it’s easier to travel when they sleep in the evening than in the morning when they’re full of beans. Though this night Yasmin was full of beans (in a literal sense), she did however drop off back to sleep fairly quickly after dinner. It’s a fairly easy trip along the highway to the Mystic turn off. Along the way there’s the turn off for the local casino. They’re owned and run by Native Americans on their land and the profits, I gather, go back into the Native American community. We planning on heading back that way sometime to check out the casino itself and the Native American culture in the region.

So there we were, seeing the signs, noticing which way to turn off for which event or attraction and there we go, sailing right past the exit for our hotel – marked by a large sign pointing the way to that and all the other hotels in the area (they usually group together for some reason) – because that damn map told us to go to the next exit. We followed the road off the exit ramp, round to the left, down towards the ocean, around the bend, into Mystic itself – no hotel. We back track. We find the street name we’re looking for. It’s a suburban street with lovely homes, but no hotel. We call the hotel. We get another set of directions.

We head back towards Mystic, figuring the hotels must be somewhere near the populated area. We carry on further along a darker and more deserted road, across an estuary and towards distant houselights. We can almost hear owls hooting and sea monsters snoring. No hotel. We stop. We get out the laptop with a bigger version of the map. First we have to figure out where we are. We find a street sign, but no cross street sign. We guess which end of the street we are at and notice we’re a very long way from the street we’re supposed to be on. We’re halfway out to sea on a tiny peninsula. We call the hotel again. We head back into Mystic. We find a well-lit main-ish looking street heading in the direction of the highway. We follow it. Oh, wouldn’t you know it, hotels. Right off the highway exit we’d passed an hour before. Mindy or Sandy or whatever her name was at reception tells us that they regularly lose guests because all the in-car GPS’s send them to that suburban street on the other side of town. So much for technology. C’mon you techno-geeks – how about a bit of local research before you publish these maps. Check the street names, check that they’re actually where your information tells you they are. Lonely Planet would never stand for it. At least we were already fed, so it’s a quick cup of tea and telly in bed again. There’s not too much to do in a tiny hotel room when at least one of you has to stay in the room to babysit.

The next morning we were treated to a fabulous hotel special – a disposable breakfast. They called it a continental breakfast, but I’m pretty sure those elegant Europeans on the continent aren’t sipping café au lait from paper cups. Now I’m not complaining, it was part of the room fee which was relatively reasonable, but everything about breakfast came in a disposable container or was on a disposable plate. Cereal in disposable bowls where you opened the lid and added milk. Coffee in paper cups (yuck!) paper plates, plastic cutlery. If only they could figure out how to make crockery and cutlery out of recycled wheat product we could’ve eaten that too and saved on cleaning up a pile of rubbish.

The day’s outing was a trip to Mystic Seaport. It was a bit chilly and wet with drizzle but we decided to brave it anyway. Ahmed loved looking at the boats and all the complex engineering that goes into making wooden boats by hand. Yasmin was a bit bored until we climbed onto the ships to have a look, then once she got hungry and cold her interest level plummeted. As her mood slipped, so did the weather. The rain really set in and the whole day was done from under umbrellas. It didn’t take long before the half a dozen tourists had all but disappeared and the local volunteers on site had called it quits and headed off for a hot cuppa. That is of course, all the tourists except us and the other Australian family we met up with in the children’s museum. Yes, even the Seaport has one – a children’s museum and an Australian family on holiday. We were all hiding in there, escaping from the weather and the moody children when Kate struck up a conversation with us after hearing our accents as we talked to the local volunteer who was making snowflakes while supervising the museum. (Apparently she makes a lot of stuff to decorate for each festive season and the kiddies love it. I guess you’ve gotta do something to occupy yourself on a rainy day.)

At last, a kindred spirit. Kate and her family are over here on a transfer too and she went through many of the same things I have, but has adjusted and seems to be quite settled. It was nice to chat to someone with some useful advice and we’ve kept in touch, for now at least. And the kids played together for ages while the rain rained and we waited for it to stop. Eventually grumbling stomachs forced an evacuation and we headed to that legendary pizza place to see if it is as good as it’s marketing suggests it is. It is. It was the best pizza we’ve had here in the USA so far, and I’d even consider making a trip back there for another. No autograph from the new mother of twins (as if!) so we finished up and headed home. The end of the holiday for us and, on the other side of the highway going in the other direction, about a million other weekend travellers. We were obviously going the right way, as we were home by 6.30pm, unpacked and back to Sunday night routine before you could read a bedtime story.