provincetown

My favorite place to eat in Provincetown is Cafe Heaven on commercial, it is one room, tiny tables, and the best simple breakfast food. It is exactly how I picture my restaurant one day.





I like when a restaurant makes you slow down.

I suck at blogging

I'm actually surprised Fran hasn't given me more crap for writing absolutely nothing while I was in Grenoble, on the upside, this means I was not wasting time plunked in front of my computer screen and instead enjoying my mountainous surroundings. I did manage to jot down a few details, but they are scattered and do not detail even 15% of the interesting and bizarre encounters I had with the French while in Grenoble but its better than nothing.

• Twenty men sit and play cards in the same pastry shop on Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau, smoking but never eating pastries and stare at the meandering jeaunesse every night from approximately 9 to 2 in the morning.

• There is an old man with whiskers who buys apricot sunfreezes(the French equivalent of a slushy) from the sandwich stand and sits on the tramway bench eating them and never geting on a tram.

• The row of angry lady cashiers at the Monoprix, our Grenoble grocery store, watch you carefully as you bag your alimentaires after paying, do not help you at all, and refuse to begin scanning the next customer until every last jar of nutella is off their line.

• When a french punk asks you repeatedly "Where is Bryan? Is Bryan in the kitchen?" he is not actually looking for a friend named bryan, he is mere reciting the two English phrases he was able to remember before he dropped out of high school to harass poor american students.

• The Doyon family is possible the most beautifully french family you will ever meet.

• I lived on Rue Lakanal in one of the more artistic quartiers in Grenoble. My window faces a shop entitled, “FAB…” There is nothing fab about this store. It is full of junk and hello kitty.

• Do not go to London Pub unless you want to dance to horrible 90s american pop classics like whats my age again with homophobic University of Michigan students.

• Italians speaking French are nearly incomprehensible.

• Flics (cops) do not care about drunken fist fights even in the event of a 50 year old Iranian hitting a 22 year old girl in the face, which I whitnessed, but at least she threw the first punch.

In place of spending time in and out of magasins and becomeing depressed about the state of my wallet, I instead focused my attention(and money)on a research study comparing the overall food quality of American to French cuisine. Yes, I know, everyone thinks French food is the shit, but my research thus far has proven a fairly competitive rivalry.

Team France(they kick our ass in…)

Jelly/Confiture (especially apricot)

Bread…duh

Cheese…duh

Wine…duh, and it's cheap

Baby pickles/cornichons

Mini quiche: my new downfall

Passion fruit sorbet/sorbet in general (ps look for the sorbet in the metal tins and not the ones that are all whipped and pretty, apparently those are not as wonderful and they floof it up to make your mouth water but it really just has more air...good to know)

Chocolate pudding- noir extra only I cannot resist it, I eat it for breakfast, I do not know how I have not gained 15 pounds.

L’equipe Les Etats Unis(we kick their ass in…)

Movie theater popcorn: which here is the equivalent of our kettle corn but tastes like cardboard and a big letdown

Strawberries: which are tiny and mooshy and a waste of my 3 euro

Gin and Tonic: because they are not big enough

Cream Cheese: which they do not have

Ice: no one in France uses ice…how is this possible…I do not have the forethought to chill my beverages.

Basil: no, I do no want to buy an entire basil plant, also, why are all the herbs kept in boxes in the freezer? This is strange.

And despite my beautiful surroundings, the most redeeming aspect of this trip has been the beautiful people, both French and American. My group of classmates has exceeded my expectations twofold and gave me perhaps one of the best birthdays I have had thus far. We are all bonded over the fairly uncomfortable feat of trying to make ourselves seem as French as possible disguise our blatant American tendencies: laughing too loud on the tramway, trying to roll our r’s but failing, and robbing every bookstore of their postcard selection. And the french aren't nearly as intimidating as they say, well, at least in Grenoble.

Yesterday, my family and I piled out of two very sweaty cars, one large, one small, and entered the Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia. This being the first family excursion I have been on in some time, the trip reminded me of the arduous week-long family trip we took some 5 years ago tracking the historic sites of the East Coast all the way down to Colonial Williamsburg by RV that left me in a state of historic resistance. This trip, struck a different note, one that did not make me want to run screaming and yelling from a camper full of 5 other similarly irritated Barrys. The slow walk through the cemetery past the graves of Thurgood Marshall and John F. Kennedy put my nerves at ease and set me in a snap-happy spree of landscape and gravestone photography. I realized while comfortably sitting on the cemetery sightseeing trolly/bus: I love cemeteries.

Perhaps I am merely the desensitized granddaughter of a funeral director, finding nothing abnormal about the discussion of death over dinner conversation, or the occasional casket disasters that arose at the Barry Funeral Home in Worcester, or what epitaph my mother/father want and how this differs from the words of wisdom my brother, sister, and I plan to send them off with. My brother sister and I have been raised knowing the difference between the joking rolls of laughter my grandfather expressed as he shared an inappropriate, embellished story from his days in embalming school and his prideful dignity as he opened the church doors for the family of the deceased, who had come to him with half the money and been cared for no questions asked. At my grandfather’s funeral, I watched this same dignity emanate from the strong, steady pace of my father and teenage brother as they led the casket down the aisle, carrying a man I admired more than any.

The cemetery where my family is buried, is an oasis amid frantic Worcester streets, there is no commotion, running babies, or honking cabs. The Arlington National Cemetery was no different. It was a cemetery filled with men and women who carried the same self-assured knowledge and acceptance of life’s gifts as my grandfather did. The rows and rows of white, perfect headstones, each weighing a surprising 250 pounds left crowds of visitors silent. Even children could sense the gravity of their surroundings and find no alternative but to stand quiet, to watch. I loved the hills and the way the stones rose and fell neatly tucked in the grass and protected by the overbearing arms of trees rocking in the wind. It was hot today, the kind of thick heat made you light-headed after climbing four tiers of steps up to another plateau looking out over the tombs of the unknown soldiers onto a landscape of city and sky.

Today, the Barry’s were on to D.C. where a large amount of time was spent in Union Station for no reason besides to make a trip to the Verizon store. Our visit then took a more interesting turn as my mother, brother, and sister visited the National Gallery of Art. I stood before John Singer Sargent’s Street in Venice, Yves Tanguy’s Rhadbomancie, and Jackson Polluck’s, Number 1 (Lavander Mist.) Yes, I spent 20 minutes searching the painting for cigarette remains and so did the French couple beside me. Jack (brother) and I then spent the next two hours like two true museum enthusiasts, fervently consulting our museum map and planning our tour of the east and west wing so as to hit all the big spots: Monet, Toulouse Lautrec, and the scary looking Rembrandt babies. By the end I was tired and collapsed on the grass courtyard of 6^th and Constitution Ave but felt I had made the most of my time at the Gallery. Museums to me have always presented a challenge: Kate- you have 3.25 hours, you must hit every 18^th and 19^th century European gallery, you must try to understand the modern art within reason or at least appear to, and take as many secret pictures on your cell phone as possible without getting badgered by the gallery cops.

Last stop: the Vietnam Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial. My mother cried reading the messages tucked against certain walls, we are thinking of you Harry, love the Wilson family, while I stood trying to read all the names on the longest numbered wall and again taking pictures my dad would call boring. Most visitors simply passed through at a steady tempo, but few, stopped at a number, intently reading and searching for a name. I realize the theme of this trip may appear…morbid but our last stop at the Lincoln Memorial and reflecting pool renewed my faith in the humor of my family. Our circuit through the gems of D.C. has deepened my appreciation for our nations capital and left me with some constructive insights. The most foremost being: I enjoy being a blatant tourist.

You're gonna have to give me some slack...

A disclaimer: I am by no means a writer, blogger, internet savvy individual and this may turn out to be neither interesting nor engaging. I am a terrible speller and have blocked out any grammar lesson I received after my 75 average quiz score in English my freshman year of highschool. My strengths exist elsewhere, in the areas involving cooking, eating food, teaching how to make food that you would want to eat, caring for privileged children, wooing seemingly un-pleasable brookline restaurant patrons, and avoiding near death experiences while on two wheels. I do not know if any of these talents will translate into interesting blog posts. I have never kept a journal because I found myself trying to make my life more interesting than it was, although I do believe everyone's life is interesting but more so from an outsider's perspective. For example, my discovery that a classmate of mine was born completely colorblind is exactly the type of fascinating discovery I am talking about. To her, it was an annoyance and common fact about her life that she has learned to cope with (color coding clothing, relating other shades to the shade of grass in order to decipher what was called "green.") But to me, it was an extraordinary gem of knowledge that led to endless questioning and repetitive exclamations of "you are kidding me!" and "that is incredible!" Therefore, I have come to realize that perhaps my daily life events could amount to an interesting few paragraphs, and perhaps my daily life events will become increasingly interesting given my approaching change in surroundings. I was told that it is crucial to document my experiences if for no one else but my mother who will probably similarly not be able to figure out how to read these posts. So mom, here goes.