Back When Julia Roberts Was Portugese

So, for the Labor Day weekend I had planned on going home to Rhode Island to see my pop and I invited this dynamic duo of my German colleagues to come with, because sometimes living in the city gets us all down and organizing their own road trip was not gonna happen for these guys. We rented a car and with me behind the wheel of a fawn beige Chevy Impala (and sitting about three inches away so I could actually reach the gas and brake pedals) we set out for the Ocean State. I had to explain twice that Chevy was my abbreviation for Chevrolet. Mercifully no one asked me what an "impala" is. It's a deer, right? Am I right? Der Man was bummed that I had printed directions from Mapquest, so he didn't get to navigate using the Road Atlas the Jaegermeister had brought along. All through the drive they passed the Atlas back and forth. Germans love to look at maps.

Anticipating lots of holiday weekend traffic, our plan was to stop in Mystic, CT for lunch. I had spent some time looking up good restaurants in town on Chowhound. I would have been game for a trip to Mystic Pizza if the guys would have had any idea what I was talking about. However, once we got to town, the guys were interested in actually visiting the historic seaport despite the $17.50 entrance price. I had taken a school field trip to Mystic Seaport in the 7th grade and so figured that had fulfilled my lifetime obligation on that front, but in we went.

The weather was very overcast, and the historical park was largely quiet and peaceful leaving us to climb around on big old ships and for me to explain clamming and the anatomy of lobster traps. As we were standing on the deck of an old whaling ship, Der Man said to me, "Oh, so America really does have history." It's kinda cute once you get beyond the impulse to punch him in the face. Europeans think that everything in this country is 200 years old or younger, sometimes you have to set them straight.

The photo above is an ingenious set-up framed to give you an example of German irony. See, we all work at a bank in New York. And there we are standing in front of the old Mystic Bank. Hold for laughs. I just said Germans had a sense of humor, I didn't say it was a very good one. We ended up eating at the snack bar to get out of the drizzle, but I promised to take them out for a real sea food dinner when we got to Rhode Island.