Vacation Part 1: Cape Cod

This will forever be the vacation that will ensure that I never travel without a sleep aid ever, ever again. Whether it be Tylenol PM, or melatonin or Benadryl, I will pack something, because there were three full night of almost no sleep, and one night where I was awake for four (FOUR!) hours after my husband went to sleep. But we’ll get to that.

We left on a red eye for Rhode Island. Unfortunately you can’t fly directly from Orange County to Rhode Island so we had a lovely stop in New Jersey. For almost five hours. (Next time, if there is a next time, we’re flying to Boston. It’s a more expensive flight, but you can fly direct. WORTH IT.) I was delirious from several hours of falling asleep juuust long enough for my head to drop toward my chest and startle me awake over and over again, so I was content to stare at a wall until our next flight. My husband wanted to do something! Let’s go to New York for breakfast! It’s RIGHT THERE.

For anyone who’s new here, I’m highly neurotic and never arrive less than two hours early for a flight. I most definitely was NOT going to chance early  morning rush hour traffic from Newark to Manhattan AND BACK.

We did finally make it to Rhode Island. From what I saw from the airplane it’s absolutely charming. We rented a car and drove to Plymouth. Also spelled Plimouth some places without any regard for continuity. I would have driven straight to our hotel as we had been awake for a lot of hours at this point, but we were (relatively) close and it wasn’t (really) out of the way (much.) My husband will be teaching 8th grade next year and couldn’t pass up this first hand view of his curriculum.

I would like to say that I had the appropriate level of appreciation for this wealth of United States history, but I did not.

I abandoned my husband in the middle of the Plimouth Plantation and hiked  back to eat trail mix in the shade. I would never make it on Survivor. Had I had a shower, or even a NAP in a non-upright position, in the previous 24 hours, I probably would be telling you that it was pretty cool the way that the plantation is set up, and if you’re into that sort of thing it’s totally worth stopping by. You can skip the Mayflower 2, however. Just look at it from the dock.

When my husband emerged from the woods I nearly tackled him and begged him to please take me to the hotel, where there are showers, and a place where I can dig through my suitcase for something that I haven’t been wearing for two days now.

He did.

We stayed at the Chatham Bars Inn. Cape Cod isn’t the land of the sprawling hotel, so many of your choices are small B&Bs or inns, which would have been totally fine with me.  My husband took one look at some of the places that I was looking at and declared them “grandma’s house.” The Chatham Bars is a full service hotel and more his speed. It was beautiful, but since the Main Inn was built 100 years ago, the rooms are tiny. Immaculate, and adorable, but tiny.  It should be noted that they have bigger rooms, but we booked a bit late, and some of their room rates rival my mortgage payment, so we opted for cozy and cute.

By the time we were checked in we showered, and walked down for a dinner on the beach.

This is where it felt like vacation really began for me. Because there was food, of course. (Hello to my first ever lobster roll!) This really is the point where I completely relaxed. The kids were fine, I had survived our tiny airplane seats (there was a bit of a melodramatic moment where I was convinced I couldn’t possibly sit so close to so many people for so long) and we were officially on vacation.)

About an hour later we would go to bed and sleep for sixteen hours straight, which would prove to be the best and worst decision we made all week.