Considering I hadn't been to the beach ONCE this entire summer, to say that I was dying to get to Cape Cod last Thursday night is an understatement. My poor pale skin was crying out to drink up some warm sun...not to mention my sinuses and overall health were begging for a long weekend away from the
basement dungeon dorm that L. and I have had to live in this summer. So when C.'s family invited us for home cooked meals, sun and salt air, and a big, beautiful, straight-out-of-Pottery-Barn (and clean!) house, I decided that L. and I deserved a weekend away to get some color and enjoy our last week of summer together. (I'll be going home to New Hampshire on Saturday and I'll be bringing him to the airport so he can fly home to Santa Barbara for a week and a half, and then we'll be driving back to Williamstown for our senior year.)
After work Thursday, L. and I hurriedly threw some weekend things together, packed the car, and commenced the five hour drive to the Cape. We stopped at McDonald's on the highway to save time and money, and once we got into Chatham, stopped at the grocery store so I could pick up a bouquet of flowers for C.'s parents. Finally, we got in just before 10pm, and C. and her brother Chris walked over to the house to meet us, since C.'s family had been at a dinner party down the street.
This house...you guys. It literally was straight out of a PB catalog. I didn't get to snap many photos of it, but luckily, it's for sale! So here are some
stock photos from the realtor. Sorry about the poor quality...I should have taken them myself!
When everyone got back home Thursday night, L. and I brought our things to our room. We were staying in one of the bedrooms that was clearly made for children. L. was basically like a giant walking around the room; he was too big for the bed, his head almost reached the angled ceilings, and he was about a foot taller than the closet doors. It was hilarious to watch! Here was our little kids' room in the upper-right. The kitchen was literally straight out of my future-house-design dreams. White cabinetry, brushed nickel (or maybe chrome) hardware, contrasting granite islands and countertops...sigh. I was in love. And C.'s favorite part of the house (mine too, I think) were the TWO giant window seats overrun by blue pillows, surrounded by four or five built-in bookcases that were, get this--color coded. It's so neat to use books as a design element, although I think finding my copy of
Anna Karenina mixed in with the Hemingways would probably drive me a little nuts. But perhaps the room that got the most action in the house, though, was the open living room/dining room, or, site of our straight-out-of-a-movie dinner party Friday night.
But now that you've seen the house (well, probably about a quarter of it), you probably want to know what we actually did in it! When everyone got back Thursday night it was about 11pm, so we all sat and had a glass of white wine and caught up a bit. C. and L. and I had planned to take a bottle of wine down to the beach (which was about a 5 minute walk from the house!) and watch the Perseid meteor shower around midnight, but we were so exhausted that we opted to just call it a night and go to bed. Looking back on it, I
really wish we had gone! The sky was so clear and it's so dark on the beach--perfect for viewing. Maybe we'll get another chance.
On Friday, L. humored C. and me by walking around town and poking into shops with us, and then in the early afternoon C.'s childhood friend who is also named Caroline (yes, it does get confusing) arrived and L., me, and the Carolines went down to the beach for the day. I was so absorbed in
Anna Karenina and L. was so absorbed in
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (I know, where have we both been?) that we lost track of time and sunscreen and before we knew it, we were r-e-d red. (Well, L. was bright red. I was more of a bronze.) But in any case, we were both pretty sore, and still are.
We also had fun trying to spot the little seals' heads popping up in all different parts of the water. But we didn't see ANY sharks!!! I was quite crushed, obviously, but I was still sort of excited knowing that if the seals were around the sharks probably weren't far off...
Around 5, C.'s parents, her brother, Chris, and her parents' friends Trish and Richard came down to the beach for some pre-dinner champagne and chips and guac, which was delicious.
You can sort of see my mandarin-colored Tommy Bahama bathing suit that
I scored for half price at Mohegan Sun. And there's that trusty H&M shirt
that everyone seems to have, which was perfectly nautical for the beach.
Then we all headed back to the house and got ready for what turned into quite an epic dinner party. As we were having pre-dinner cocktails, we all discussed what the college term "pre-gaming" was called when the adults were in college. Our Williams professors used to call it "getting primed," which I thought was pretty funny. Caroline said that while she was spending time in South Africa, they called it "getting on the jowl train," which was hysterical. But we all agreed that Trish and Richard's British (they're from London) version, "frontloading," was the absolute winner. We're hoping it catches on at Williams.
So, here we are, um, frontloading before dinner, courtesy of C.'s homemade Cosmos...
Then we proceeded to gorge ourselves on lobster and gourmet hamburgers...(and lots of white wine...)
And then...and then...things got sort of silly. This is the part of the evening that I said belonged in the credits of a romantic comedy, as we all danced to songs such as "My First, My Last, My Everything" and "Sugar Pie Honey Bunch" while doing the dishes and cleaning up...
Spotted: silliness.
After the dishes were done, we had conga-lined all throughout the house (I'm not kidding), and we had sufficiently pooped out the adults, the Carolines and L. and I headed into town to get ice cream at the famous Buffy's and then to get drinks at the Squire, which was surprisingly and sort of delightfully trashy for Chatham's standards.
Saturday morning we had to tear ourselves away from the house and pack up to go home. C.'s family went ahead while we stayed in town for awhile to get lunch and stock up on fudge before we left. We also couldn't resist a little drive on which we picked out our future houses...
C. and I both picked this one out as ours, and I didn't realize when I got a fleeting picture of it at the time, but it's the famed Hydrangea House of Shore Rd. Apparently artists periodically stop by to paint it, but they're more interested in the mounds of hydrangeas that line the walkway.
L. and I stayed over in Connecticut with C.'s family Saturday night and saw Eat, Pray, Love, which I thought was excellent, if a little slow. I thoroughly enjoyed the "Eat" segment the most...it also reminded me that after this vacation, I need to maybe cut back on that a bit! Maybe it was because we had just gotten back from a beautiful trip, but Eat, Pray, Love definitely gave L. and I the travel bug. Maybe in the next year or so I'll have some cities and places abroad to include in my travel recaps! We'd love to visit Italy and Spain, if mostly for the food!
[Most images are by me but some are also by C.]
