(By the way, we're still waiting to hear about our luggage, waiting until Best Buy opens to replace my deceased hard drive, and waiting until USPS deigns to deliver the last week's worth of mail. We took lots of pictures on our trip but as it is impractical to unload them to my laptop, I'll wait until my desktop is up and running again to post them.)
On Friday, the second day of our vacation, we had breakfast at Dunkin' Donuts with the rest of the population of Plymouth. In the few minutes we were there, we saw at least 100 cups of coffee sold, and heard "How ahya?" about 25 times. Yes, they really do talk like that in Massachusetts.
We headed into downtown Plymouth, and despite the reconstruction of the surrounding stone pillars, we saw the famous Plymouth Rock. The kids were distinctly underwhelmed, as it's not very big anymore, broken in half, and mostly hidden by scaffolding. We stopped at the Mayflower Society house, which wasn't open yet, and then went to Pilgrim Hall Museum. Sounds boring, but it was actually quite cool! Jim and I were there three years ago and it was awful - no AC, falling apart, jumble of exhibits. Now they have added a whole new wing, remodeled the whole building, reorganized all the exhibits and really tried to make it interesting for children. The kids were each given an age-appropriate packet of paper with a guided scavenger hunt of things to find, and upon successfully completing it, were given a free postcard to bring home. Quite neat.
Returning to the Mayflower Society House, we found it open and manned by a "volunteer," who, true to the Society's unspoken policy, made it clear we were inconveniencing her by showing up at all. We left.
We had some lunch at a little cafe by the sea (it was a beautiful day), and headed for Groton, CT, our next stop. A lovely nap was had by all who weren't driving. Once we arrived, we checked into the hotel (the Hampton Inn), checked in with the Qins, and went out geocaching nearby at a memorial to a very early settler of the area. It took us a while and we had to use the encrypted online clue, but we found it and signed the log. Then we went back to the hotel where the children and I had a swim in the pool. Which reminds me, the kids' lifejackets are in our missing luggage, as well. Oh dear.
We were invited to join the Qins, along with Laura's mom and cousins, at Koto, a Japanese hibachi restaurant right by our hotel. I think we will all remember the experience for a long time! It was terrific to get together with our friends and meet baby Ada. It was really cool to watch our food being cooked right in front of us - Aidan said it was like watching the Swedish Chef on Muppets, except that our chef could actually catch things! He had fried rice and shrimp (it was neat to see fried rice being made), Esme had shrimp and noodles, Jim had a lot of very good sushi, and I had salmon and white rice. Yummy dinner, great company.