February 2016 - East Coast College Visits

East Coast College Visits - February 2016

In a cold week in February, my daughter and I traveled to the East Coast to visit five universities to kick off her college visits as a high school junior. Why we selected the East Coast in February is still a mystery and it was a snowy and cold week. We flew into Newark, rented a large SUV to combat the winter weather and drove south to Princeton, arriving late at night.

We stopped in for a late night supper at an Italian eatery on a very cold winter’s night after arriving in Princeton. We were staying across the street at the Nassau Inn, a few steps away. The cafe had been very crowded earlier in the evening when we arrived at the hotel. When we walked in after 9 pm, they sat us at the bar, which in hindsight was not the most comfortable place for us. But, there was a group of men to our right and a couple drinking their dinner to our left. In the end, upon hearing that we were visiting Princeton, the men at our right paid for our meals. It was a surprising and kind gesture. We were so surprised that we left and later I realized that I had not even left a tip.

We stayed at the Nassau Inn in Princeton.

This historic inn is in the heart of Princeton and just a block’s walk from campus. Its location is perfect if you are visiting Princeton campus. The inn's restaurant really filled up for Sunday Brunch or lunch; by the time we left, every table was filled. Luckily, it was so cold that things were not moving on time on campus either. 

We enjoyed our tour of Princeton campus, even though it was about 5 below zero.

We loved our tour guide, who, Alle was quick to note, joined the crew team even though she only started rowing in college (which is something Alle hopes to do). One thing I noted was that although the tour guide and students were casual and looked like any other college students, the tour participants looked decidedly posh. Most of the mothers were wearing furs and jewelry. Alle and I were in our Iowa standard parkas.

 Although it was cold, the glass in front of the art museum on campus caught the sunlight beautifully. 

We had to get to NYC for the afternoon, so we wanted to grab lunch and go. We stopped by a great small corner lunch shop for a quick carry-out soup and sandwich before getting on the road. The lobster bisque was some of the best I have ever had with lots of chunks of lobster in it. We also stopped in a chocolate shop and it was hopping (it was Valentine’s Day). We purchased a box for a gift and got a box of dark chocolates to try for ourselves. For the duration of our drive from Princeton to New York City, we ate chocolates.

We drove from Princeton to NYC to stay with a college friend of mine and visit Columbia. It was a great stop on our tour. It was good fun, as always to see Deep and Alle loved Columbia.

We drove into NYC through the Lincoln Tunnel and I love the feeling of suddenly being in the heart of Manhattan.

We had a lovely home cooked meal at Deep’s apartment with him and his son for Valentine’s Day and spent the night there. The next morning, we drove to Columbia campus for our morning intro session and tour.

It was snowing for our time at Columbia, but we both really loved campus.



It is sits up a few floors above the streets of New York and so still has a separate campus feel.

The program is more structured that others we had heard about and it was a good visit.

From New York, we made our way during a snow storm to New Haven. It is not a long drive, but it is a difficult one, especially in snow. Miraculously we made it out of NYC without hitting anything or another car and we arrived in New Haven before 5 pm.  We had arranged to go to the Haas Art Library and visit the Kredel Archive. I am in touch with the librarians there often, but rarely see them in person. This is the location of many of the books and papers of my mother’s father. We got to see some of their new purchases and then the librarian took us to the roof of the library to see the snow storm and campus from that elevated viewpoint. It was beautiful in the evening light.

We stayed at The Study at Yale.

We loved this modern, quirky hotel.  Our room did not look out to campus, unfortunately. However, The Study is around the corner from the start of Yale campus and very convenient for visiting campus. Our tour guide was quirky and fun and the next morning, we had a great tour and intro to Yale.

From New Haven, we drove to Middletown, CT to see Wesleyan. This was the low point of our tour. Neither of us liked Wesleyan as well, sadly.

I don’t know if it was the cold, rainy weather or our negative tour guide, but we did not get a good impression.

We stayed at the Inn at Middletown one night after a tour of Wesleyan University. The town of Middletown seems to roll up its sidewalks at 9 pm and so there were not many food or dessert options open late at night as you might expect in a college town. The Inn is conveniently located a few blocks from campus. We walked down the main street from our hotel for pizza at Mondo Pizza. Afterwards, when we could not find any dessert options open, the bar at the hotel did serve us ice cream and sorbet, which we appreciated.

From Middletown, we drove to Providence, RI to see Brown University. We loved Brown. We had a very positive tour guide who was a trombone player and was able to talk to my daughter about options for playing trombone in college. The weather became sunny and warm and campus was walkable, very active and easy to see.



Alle loved the program summary at the intro session. 

After tour, we drove to Bristol and got dinner for an old friend of my mother’s. We visited her in her apartment, which has as a highlight one of my first glass commissions!

She has since moved into a retirement home. I am glad we got a chance to visit her before she moved.

We flew out of Providence the next day and returned home with many more college visits to come in the next year. 

July 23 - August 3, 2015 - Camano, Orcas and Vashon Islands, WA

Camano, Orcas and Vashon Islands  

July 23 – August 3, 2015

After a week in Michigan, the boys and I flew to Seattle and met up with Alle, who was coming from California and with Ricardo. We all drove to a rental house on the beach on Camano Island. Camano is an hour and half north of Seattle and west of Pilchuck Glass School. The house we rented sat on a warm-ish bay, looking southeast with views of Mount Baker, still covered with snow,

and on a clear day, Mount Rainier. We rented it for a week so that Ricardo’s immediate family could come together for a reunion. All of the kids had not been together before. Ricardo’s older son Jordan, his wife Magda and their two year old son Lazaro arrived later on Thursday. Ricardo’s older daughter Annika and husband Jake arrived the next day. We spent a long weekend together, Thursday through Monday.

Our house was on Iverson Beach near a wilderness preserve called Iverson Spit Preserve.  To get there, we took a bridge to Camano Island and drove down the Iverson Beach Road, which was bathed in beautiful light by the time we reached it at sunset.

Being on East Coast time after our week in Michigan, I was rising earlier than the rest of our group, which is not typical. This was one of my early morning views.

The interior of our cabin was rustic, but comfortable.

The Camano Island beach was rocky with lots of drift wood, perfect for building forts

and for kayaking.

After the older kids left, we drove east and spend a morning at one of my old haunts, Pilchuck Glass School. Both Ricardo and I have served on the Board there at different times. Our sailing buddy, Mark Haley, a mutual friend on the Board introduced us to each other many years ago. Here's the view I never tire of from Pilchuck, looking north towards the San Juan Islands. 

The staff have added these flags of all the countries represented in Pilchuck glass classes to the lovely log entry of the lodge.

The weather became sunny and warm towards the end of our time on Camano; the last three days we were on the beach were lovely summer days.

We even tried swimming in the very cold water. One of the days, we walked down the beach to the preserve. 

There are paths in from the beach; one was called the Hobbit Trail, which the boys liked.

It is wooded and magical.

From Camano, we drove north and boarded a car ferry at Anacortes to Orcas Island.

The whole process takes about two hours. Orcas is one of the San Juan Islands and is more sunny and drier than the Seattle area.

We arrived on Orcas and were met by our old friends Mark and Nancy Haley, on their lovely wooden sailboat.

We were all so happy to sail with them for the latter half of the day. Everyone got a chance to try steering the boat while it was under sail. It was a beautiful afternoon.

Chatting with them felt as if no time had passed although I haven’t seen them in at least four years.

For two nights on Orcas, we stayed in an apartment above some shops in East Sound, a small quaint touristy village in one of the bays.

It was a great place to stay. A nice bakery was downstairs and lots of shops dotted the street below us.

Everything we wanted to see on the island was within easy driving distance.  One of the reasons we had booked a few days on Orcas was that other friends from Des Moines were also there visiting family. The boys’ preschool friend Anna Lucy and her family were there. So, we saw them on one of our days there. We met up for breakfast and also for dinner, which was fun.

From Orcas, Alle and I drove Ricardo and the boys south to the King Street Station in Seattle. It was a long process to get south. We started on Orcas at 11 am, caught the 12:30 pm ferry, made it to Anacortes around 2 pm, drove to northern Seattle around 3:15 pm and to the train station by about 4 pm. We were lucky and the legendary Seattle traffic (in a bad way) did not hold us back going in our direction.  The boys were ready for their 4:40 train to Minneapolis. Alle and I made our way to Vashon Island via a stop for red bean pastries and bubble teas in Chinatown.

We visited some of our favorite people on Vashon, Shirley and Bill.

We had a lively, less-than-24-hour time with them, but even a visit that short can be worthwhile. We had a sunset dinner and long breakfast each filled with good conversation. Aunt Shirley's Studio walls have inspired many a creative project and summer cousin's camp adventure.

We had a chance to swing by our Vashon farm and meet our new tenants, who seem to be very excited about the house, two acre garden and ten acres of grass.  

Alle and I decided to spend our last few hours of holiday in downtown Seattle at Pike Place Market. We ate our way from one end to the other and then went out for a light dinner.

We stayed in my favorite downtown Mayflower Hotel and flew back to Des Moines the next morning.  The only saving grace of being home with too much laundry, unpacking and reorganizing to do is that we are bringing a new puppy into the family. That will have to be a different story. 

July 18 - 23, 2015 - Visit to Michigan

After our three week trip to Barcelona and Paris, I was home for eight days. I am not sure why I booked my summer travel so close together, but that is how it worked out. I played with the boys, unpacked, did laundry and repacked. 

The boys and I flew together to Michigan to visit Uncle Fred, Aunt Betsy and Omi in mid-July. It was great fun as always to visit Uncle Fred, Aunt Betsy and Cousin Mel in Ann Arbor.  Their vast garden was looking like a park. 

This visit, they had a new puppy dog named Maizey Blue who enjoyed the boys and whom the boys enjoyed in return. Together they exhausted each other.

After two days and many nice meals together, we drove to Rochester to visit my Mum. One of our cats Gusti is home with Omi. Both my Mum and our cat were happy to see us and as chatty as ever. The boys had fun playing with Gu, since they haven’t seen her since the Fall. 

During our four day visit, we played with the train set, made many fabulous arts and craft projects, took Omi out to dinner and played in the yard. Here's the front yard with a cat sculpture from us. 

Here's the back yard and gardens:

One of the days, Uncle Fred, Aunt Betsy and Cousin Laura came and took the boys to the Detroit Zoo, which was a big adventure. I tried to help Mum document all of the wonderful treasures at her house so that she can move someday, if she wants to. We have been cataloging all of my mother’s and father’s books so that perhaps we can donate the academic books, also.  Our time in Michigan seemed too short; we flew from Detroit to Seattle. 

July 3 - 9 , 2015 in Paris

Six Nights in Paris - 3 - 9 July 2015

After a wonderful week in Barcelona, we took a high speed train to Paris. I’m sure we could have flown there more quickly, but I thought it would be more interesting to see the country side heading along the Mediterranean and then up north through France. We arrived at one of the downtown stations and took the Metro to Saint Paul’s. From there it was a short, nice walk across a bridge or two to Il Saint Louis, which is the second of the two islands in the middle of the River Seine. The first island holds the Notre Dame Cathedral and is better known. Il Saint Louis is filled with lovely buildings, shops and restaurants and is very central. Here's the view down the street from our apartment window.

Crossing one bridge put us on the Left Bank and St Germain neighborhoods of restaurants and art galleries; crossing another bridge put us on the Right Bank and heading towards the Louvre, gardens and shopping areas. We even had a french cat living in one of the restaurants a few doors down from us. 

One of our favorite things about living on Il Saint Louis was walking back from dinner each night. We would walk back passing either in front or behind Notre Dame. This was our view on the 4th of July at sunset looking down the Seine from one of the bridges to our island. 

On the Sunday that we were in Paris, we attended a service at the church on our island and walked to Notre Dame to listen to the choir there, also. Seeing modern windows in an old, traditional cathedral such as Notre Dame was unexpected and breathtaking for me.

Later that day, we walked to Sainte Chapelle, built by King Louis IV and one of the only churches in Paris consisting of primarily stained glass.

I had booked most of our dinners via Trip Advisor on-line before we left. I like to try “foodie” restaurants and while in Paris, I wanted to try some of the best restaurants there.  So, every evening, Alle and I returned to our small flat, changed into less touristy clothes and tried some great Paris restaurant. Most of them were really good; our favorite was Pur in the Four Seasons Hotel near the Paris Opera House. All of the special Parisian treats we tried were really good as well, such as macaroons at La’Duree and Mont Blancs (a ground chestnut dessert) at Angelina’s.  Luckily, the best ice cream in Paris was just down the street from us on our own island at Berthillon.

We did all of the traditional Paris tourist things to do, I think. We took a boat tour down the Seine. We visited the Eiffel Tower.

We toured all of the Impressionist art we could find at the Musee d’Orsay, L’Orangerie

and Musee Marmatton. We looked at the exterior of the Louvre, but did not go inside. We assumed that we needed at least three days to do it justice and I have seen it before. We took great walks all around our island, around the gardens of Tuileries

and Palais Royal, 

the new galleries of Bastille, and interesting shopping areas. Here is the entry to one of the traditional indoor shopping areas, Galerie Vivienne, the precursor to our shopping malls, but so much more civilized. 

We could have spent any number of more days in Paris; there was still so much to see and do.