We were planning to go to Quebec, Canada for the weekend for our anniversary which is this mid-week. Or rather “I” was imagining we were. And as it turns out “we” didn’t. Thursday night DH & I realized we had however applied to take Friday August 14th off and we could actually take an off if we wanted to even though Canada didn’t work out. Hence began this last minute planning which we are simply great at now. The net result of such last minute short or long trips is a. lots of fun 2. a dent in DH’s bank account due to lack of planning and advance preparation and then like it keeps clicking in my mind: the biggest irony in life I do “planning” (demand planning) for a living for organizations and do not apply it in my personal life.
Thursday night we booked a B&B in Eastham about 20-30 miles from Provincetown (as that was the only one available last minute) for 200 odd bucks at The Inn at the Oaks. I wasn’t comfortable with B&B (I feel they are haunted if they are over 50 years old and most of them typically are more than 50 years old, so much for getting wise with age!)
We started around 10am Friday morning and took our own sweet time driving and got to P-town by about 12pm. We grabbed a quick bite and DH wanted to go whale watching. Quick bite wasn’t that quick cos the sandwiches we ordered at this place near the main square on Commercial street where massive. Both of us ate half and threw the other half. Now I had this (mis) conception that whale watching might be boring. Someone had once told me that they take you into the ocean show you the whales and all you can see is their tail-end and you will get disappointed. So I was prepared for that. It was 36 bucks per person. There goes 75 bucks down the drain I thought. The next tour was at 1:30pm so we were just in time. We took the ‘Portuguese Princess”. It was extremely hot by now, by hot I mean temperature touch about 85+ I didn’t have any problem with the sun on my skin but my head couldn’t take the heat. I had a scarf/duppata with me luckily and I wrapped it. After a good 1 ½ hour to 2 hour into the ocean there we saw the most splendid of creatures – whales! It was a beautiful sight I must say. Thank God somebody downplayed it for me that I enjoyed this tour. We saw about 12-14 whales in all. Some of them babies some of them a bit grown up. Two of the baby whales where also being nursed by the mothers apparently as per the guide who was a research scholar on marine life in New England area. They were a little below the water surface to see that part anyway. They somersaulted, inhaled/exhaled, twisted and turned, went under our ferry, made their whale-like noises and they were fabulous. It was totally worth it! By the time we got back it was 4:30pm at least to the main part of the Commercial Street.
By this time my headache set in and I was tired, we headed towards our accommodation we had booked. I called them that we were running late only to be informed we were double booked and they had booked us at another place in Orleans further away from Eastham and hence P-town. In the mean time DH pointed out there were a few cottages and hotels with vacancies why don’t we check them out. We found this ‘White village’ cottage. Very old cottage with no air conditioning and fan or microwave – included 1 bedroom and a small kitchen and it was not water front for about 135 bucks. I called the B&B and they agreed to cancel it, so we took this up, it was in P-town and so close to the water we didn’t have to bother driving back too far the next day. So much for last minute planning! The lady from B&B called back again that we had to call Hotels dot com for the refund through whom we had booked. I did that immediately and it was settled.
We relaxed for an hour and drove into the city again. Parked and strolled down Commercial Street. It was very lively and colorful due to some summer Jazz fest. Loved the antique stores, galleries and curious stores! Perfect short vacation I must say. One main street, so don’t have to walk too much and since I get tired so fast, don’t have to feel bad I may have missed too much as there weren’t too many stores nor was there too few. I totally loved these Tibetan & Nepal stores. A lot of them had Indian stuff too. I loved this Antiques store called “Forbidden Fruit” I was so tempted to buy so many things but clenched my fist! There was this statue of a maiden, riding the dragon playing an instrument like the sitar, it was just wow! We decided to eat Thai and stopped at this restaurant that served Thai and Sushi. It was called something else on my Urban spoon App and hence we weren’t sure if we landed at the right one, but we did as they changed their name. The food was fab. Slightly priced above average but great! Well it’s a touristy place, active for just the summer months, what can you expect. We sat down on the benches and obviously it being a Gay friendly town saw a lot of couples, more males than female couples. It wasn’t anything different because of that. I mean it was comfortable to hang out considering we were the only Indians out there. Yes! Surprisingly didn’t see any Indian. Well maybe if we had gone to a lounge/pub, club at night we would have seen or felt different? But we were too tired and hit the sack, (that age thing I tell you!)
Next day checked out of that place. Had breakfast and went to see the pilgrim’s monument. It was ok. It was a bit of a walk up stairs not too much but just a bit. We were informed it had great views. But hey after Sears tower and Empire state building this is not impressive obviously. Its just 7 bucks entry per person so no biggie. Picked up some souvenir there anyway and strolled back into town, walked and walked. Oh and also this tower like monument had stones engraved with names of cities around Boston, showed the city name and the year when it was established. Turns out all those cities were established in early to mid 1600s. Waltham, Boston, Cambridge for example are all established1630. Hmm! Cool! We got back onto the street again. By now there were more guys – more guy couples. Strolled a bit more. We had seen the light houses previous day on the ferry and we decided to take the motor boat ride to go see it up close. We took the ‘flyer’ service and got there its just a 10 minute ride. And it was unimpressive. Too many pebbles and open sea shells on the bank and dangerous to walk and light house was ok! Well there were 3-4 of them don’t remember which one we saw. We headed back and spotted another Thai place for lunch – Monkey bar! Yeah don’t know why we attacked Thai so much, but anyway. Meal was ok, good, not bad not too great as the previous night’s. Cant get over DH’s Vegetarian fried rice slurp! The waiter was a very friendly person. Ah! This place seemed to have the best customer service ever. Obviously cause it’s a touristy place so they thrive on summer tourists so they are very courteous and other big reason is because so many of them are gay! I think they must take over customer service completely in America if it’s the latter. They seem to enjoy and seem so naturally good at interacting with people. Or not sure if I am judging too quickly? San Francisco is a very big city so didn’t really see such huge concentration like here. Well! There was this gay parade when we visited SFO though. Anyway after that we started to drive back home it was about 4:30 pm. DH decided to deviate and we took a peek at another beach near by. It was beautiful, calm water and sandy (no pebbles and shells to prick your feet) we regretted we should have come here instead. I forget the name of the beach its not at the top of my head cos I was almost tired by then. We got back home at about 7:30pm and settled down. Only to head to an Indian club for August 15th and got back at about 3am. Yes! I wasn’t too happy about it but I gave in cos DH took me to Cape Cod as requested and he wanted to go clubbing (plus I may have to trick him and use this as a barter for some place he is suppose to take me which he is not interested in at all, typical guy thing!) J. I had a good time anyway so why complain.
