Our summer vacation this year was a 10-day trip to Washington DC and Colonial Williamsburg. I can’t imagine that anyone who visits Washington for vacation doesn’t manage to stop at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, since it is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world. Even as we first began to think about our trip, there was no question that it would be one of the must-do attractions, even if it meant missing something else as a consequence.

All of which makes it hard for me to say that it was probably the thing I liked the least of all the things we were able to do in the course of our visit. Perhaps my expectations were too high from nearly a lifetime of imagining what it would be like to visit in person. This was my very first trip to Washington DC, after all, and I’ve had a lot of years to imagine what all of these places were going to be like when I finally got to see them in person. But beyond that, it seemed to me that, unlike the other Smithsonian museums we visited, Air & Space was more like a children’s museum than a serious attempt to curate and present a collection of truly unique and predominantly American historical artifacts. I certainly appreciate the thinking behind making museums as fun learning experiences for children, and I also totally get why the Smithsonian went that way with Air & Space, but my own selfish interest made me actually resent it.

Having said that, though, there is one aspect of the museum which is utterly and undeniably heart-stopping: stepping into the main lobby of the building and seeing all those historical aircraft and spacecraft all in one place. The Spirit of St. Louis, Chuck Yeager’s “Glamorous Glennis” X-1, John Glenn’s “Friendship 7″ Mercury capsule, and the Mack Daddy of them all, the “Columbia” capsule of the Apollo 11 mission.

That’s it in the picture at the top of the post. It’s positioned somewhat inside the lobby so that it is one of the last things you come to on your way into the museum, and it’s frankly rather non-descript compared to the bright orange bullet of the X-1 or the rickety-looking Spirit of St. Louis. It’s completely encased in clear Lucite to keep the millions of little fingers that would otherwise despoil it away, but the exterior of the capsule is dirty brown with scorching from the heat of re-entry, making it look like a large, overused tagine casserole more than the first spacecraft to put humans on the moon. Every replica of an Apollo capsule I’ve ever seen has had the spiffy white, black and red paint job, not the look of one too many macaroni-and-cheese dinners spilled over.

Nevertheless, as soon as I genuinely realized what I was looking at, my whole body buzzed. This was not some model of a space capsule on display, a replica with pretend toggle switches for overstimulated kindergarteners to yank on ten thousand times a day and a worn-out video loop of Neil Armstrong’s “One Small Step” playing over and over. This…ohmygawd…THIS is the Real Thing. And for a second, I was six years old again myself.

Later that day, as we explored the Museum of American History, I started to get used to that feeling. Almost every single object you see in that museum is the Real Thing, and it seems like there is not an imaginable treasure of American history that they do not possess. When we saw the Star Spangled Banner, I actually had to sit down for a minute. But the first and best thrill was seeing that burned-up little capsule.

The museum is roughly divided into one half about space and the other half about aircraft. The space half has to content itself with mock-ups and replicas out of necessity. The original rockets, satellites, and such either remained in space or burned up on the way back down. All of the actual lunar modules that landed on the Moon are still there, of course (in fact, you’ve probably seen these new photos from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter just in the last couple of days). The LEM I am standing in front of in the photo above was actually built for use in the space program, but was surplussed after the Apollo program was cancelled. Even that degree of provenance, though, makes it a very weak sister to the three mission capsules in the lobby (Apollo, Mercury and Gemini), and it’s location down with the other mock-ups is an acknowledgment from SI that it really doesn’t count.

Tucked away in a weird place, though, is ANOTHER real Apollo capsule, fastened to a wall just high enough to keep it out of reach of visitors so that it does not have to be sealed in plastic. If I remember the signage correctly, it is the Apollo 8 capsule that orbited the Moon during the Christmas before the Apollo 11 mission and told all of us enthralled little children on Earth that they had seen Santa Claus.

The lack of protective Lucite and the angle at which the capsule is mounted to the wall give you a much better look inside the capsule than is possible with the Apollo 11 craft. The “couches” for the three astronauts look decidedly uncomfortable and reminded me more of Dick Cheney’s torture chambers than a ship that sailed to the moon and back.

Even though we’d like to go back to see Washington in a couple of years, I doubt I’ll bother with the Air & Space Museum again. Still, as we’ve all been reliving those exciting and tense moments of 40 years ago these last few days and watching the joyful giddiness of Walter Cronkite announcing the moon landing every time the news programs eulogize him, I’m genuinely gratified that I had the chance to see the Real Thing in person once in my life.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned here that we’re going to Washington D.C. as part of our summer vacation, but now you know. We’re going to Colonial Williamsburg first and spending three days there, then driving back up to Washington for the remainder of the week. It’s something that Bridget and I have talked about for years, and now that Charlotte is old enough for bigger adventures, it seemed like this year would be a good time to do it.

We decided to go just as soon as school let out for the summer, so we set our departure date for Saturday, the 13th, since school was scheduled to get out the day before. Of course, as soon as Bridget made hotel reservations, we got a big snowstorm at the beginning of March that necessitated a school closing. That knocked the last day of school around to the following Monday, but we decided not to change our travel plans; Charlotte can manage to miss the last day of school, which is only a half-day anyway and not exactly critical to her education. It’s at least an eight-hour drive from here to Wiliamsburg, which will be the longest roadtrip the three of us have ever done together, so we are even considering the possibility of leaving Friday evening to get about as far as Southern Connecticut to break things up a little.

Charlotte is still a big colonial history fan, and she is pumped to go to Williamsburg. Bridget made her this dress for Christmas, and she can’t wait to bring it with her and wear it on site. Charlotte had another growth spurt this spring, so I don’t know if the dress still fits, but knowing her she’ll find a way to make it fit somehow. My prediction is that she’ll really enjoy Williamsburg but may not like Washington as much. It’ll depend a lot on the weather (I’m hoping our early trip will cut us a break on the notorious heat and humidity of summertime Washington) and on what things we can come up with outside of visiting every stop on the Mall. We were able to score a Capitol tour pretty easily, but we won’t know whether we got on the list for a White House tour until the last minute. She will have just seen the “Night At The Museum” sequel, which takes place at the Smithsonian, so I hope that movie will have her excited to see it in person. Depending on how things go, the boat ride to Mount Vernon might be in the offing as a break from the monument-and-museum march.

Over the last several weeks, as I have been acting in my official capacity as Charlotte’s Chauffeur, I’ve been listening to other parents at dance rehearsals, softball practices, and the like all talking about trips to Disney World. When Charlotte was a baby, Bridget and I talked about the eventual pilgrimage to the House of Mouse and agreed that we would consider it when she was about eight. Well guess what. That day has arrived. Charlotte will be eight years old two weeks from Thursday.

It was Bridget who said she wanted to take a trip as a summer vacation, and it was Bridget who came up with the idea of going to Washington. Which is fine with me. I am completely on board for a trip to DC. I gave a little internal sigh of relief, though, that she didn’t suggest that we follow through on our agreement to go to Disney World. Frankly, even though Charlotte is indeed old enough for a big trip, I don’t think we’d all survive a week in Orlando. Neither Bridget nor I particularly like amusement parks, and we can just about manage to spend an afternoon at the modest digs of nearby Canobie Lake Park. A whole week, trapped in a place that is ALL amusement parks ALL the time, would be torturous.

Lucky for me…us, Charlotte isn’t seriously fixated on going to Disney World. She might mention it once in a while, but it isn’t a constant drone from her, so I know it’s not something that occupies her thinking. Taking her to places like New York and Montreal and spending our weekend activity times in Boston regularly have acclimated her to the idea that it’s fun to go to the city and see and do interesting things, so that’s her idea of a fun trip (my evil scheme is working perfectly!). It helps that she is still terrified of people in giant character costumes and knows that Disney World is crawling with guys dressed up in Mickey suits. Also, Bridget and I had not anticipated that eight-year-olds are at an awkward spot for amusement parks — too big for the little kiddie rides, too small for the thrill rides — so she might find the whole thing frustrating.

I suppose we’re not quite out of the woods yet on having to go to Disney, but I’m feeling positive that it won’t have to be a must-do for us. Meanwhile, I am starting to get excited about the forthcoming trip to DC. As usual, I’ll be dragging along a fair kit of electronics to document the entire experience, so you’ll get all the gritty details. Stay tuned.

We stayed at the Hyatt Regency, which turned out to be remarkably well-located for us. It’s right on top of one of the malls of the Underground City, including a Metro station. We used the Metro extensively on Sunday, going all the way out to Olympic Park, then back into the city to go to Schwartz’s Deli for lunch and then out to Parc Jean-Drapeau to go to the Biosphere. By the end of the day, we were exhausted, but at least we knew that once we got off the subway we were basically at our hotel. It was also easy walking to the Basilica Notre Dame and from there to the rest of Old Montreal/Old Port. The downtown isn’t as compact as Boston (though much more accommodating for automobiles), but isn’t as far removed from other parts of the city as midtown Manhattan is from other parts of New York. The northern part of the island has very little of interest to tourists.

We had absolutely no problem being primarily English speakers. We did not encounter a single waiter, cashier, ticket taker, shopkeeper, or anyone else who did not speak and understand English easily (although some people had some pretty thick Quebec accents). The trick was to say “Hello” instead of “Bonjour” whenever greeted, and this is the cue for the other person to speak English. Clearly, though, this is limited to the city itself. On Monday we drove out towards Sherbrooke to a water park before heading home (about 45 minutes from the city), and the park employees spoke little to no English at all. Later, stopping for lunch at a restaurant near the park, we were once again faced with a waitress who spoke no English and whom I could not understand well enough in French to get a couple of service questions she asked. My comprehension of French is good enough to be able to handle most brief interactions like ordering from a menu or reading instructions, but I just could not make heads or tails of what the waitress was asking. I presume there was some degree of Quebecois idiom involved that was outside my limited knowledge. Overall, though, it was far less intimidating to be in Montreal as an English speaker than it was in Paris, and we did not encounter any of the “I speak English but won’t do it for you” bullshit that used to be the Francophone reaction to Americans in Montreal.

I sweated A LOT. Montreal has a reputation for humid summer weather, and Saturday was a prime example. It was in the low 80s, hazy with periods of overcast, but the dew point must have been 75 degrees. All day long I looked like I had just gotten out of the shower (or needed to get into one quick). We would go into some air-conditioned place and cool off, then go back out and get sweaty all over again. In this particular photo, I have just emerged from a 30-minute multimedia show in the Basilica Notre Dame, which is NOT air conditioned. The weather was better on Sunday, but several of the indoor attractions we visited were hot and humid — the Amazon Rainforest exhibit at the Biodome might as well have been a steam bath, and the aquatic center at the Olympic Stadium was also purposefully warm and humid, though not quite as intensely so.

Yes, Schwartz’s Deli is every bit as good as they say. We went in the middle of the afternoon on Sunday, so we did not have to wait the customary hour for a table, even though the place was still full. We only waited maybe five minutes and shared a table with a young couple to fill it out. I ordered the small plate of the famed smoked meat and still could barely finish it. The smoked meat is beef brisket, but it’s not corned beef. It’s dry rubbed and cured like pastrami. It was simply delicious. Plus, the restaurant is air conditioned.

Bridget never did man up and order poutine, even though it is a routine menu item wherever french fries are served. She kept calling it “putain”, and I would have loved to have seen her ask some fast food worker for THAT.

The Bateau Mouche boat ride was probably the least scenic boat ride I have ever taken, but we really just needed to sit down someplace cool for an hour, and it fit the bill. If you are hot and your feet are tired, take the boat ride. Otherwise, it was the most skippable thing we did all weekend.

The tour of the Olympic Stadium was interesting, but the stadium itself is very depressing. It’s almost never used anymore because the roof collapsed from the weight of too much snow during an auto show a few years ago. It’s too expensive to maintain, impossible to insure, and too large for the lackluster professional sports teams in Montreal. So it sits empty most of the time, with only a small handful of expo shows during the good weather. I remember watching hour after hour of the 1976 Olympics and the crowds in the stadium for the track and field events and wishing so hard that I could be there. It was a weird and sad experience, but I’m very glad we took the tour.

On the tour of the tower, Charlotte and I were with a group of elderly New Zealanders. It must have been their first stop in Montreal, because they didn’t seem to know anything about the rest of the city. There were no tour guides on the observation deck, and I ended up fielding all sorts of questions from the Kiwis. “Where’s that American fella? Ask him what that building is!”

Necessary French vocabulary I picked up: at Starbucks all I needed to know was “venti glace”, though elsewhere it’s “cafe glace” or just “glace” (as long as you’re in a coffee shop). Lots of places serve “moka glace” or “cappucino glace”, but what you get is more like a milkshake than a coffee drink. At the water park we learned that “changing room” is “salle de deshabillage”. All sherbet and sorbet is just “sorbet”, but sherbet is “sorbet de laitier”. “Queue de Castor” is a unique Canadian confection which translates to “beaver tail” in English. It’s a big piece of fried dough topped with gooey sweet stuff like chocolate and bananas, fruit toppings, and so on. How this has not spread here to New England, where we get a ton of Quebec tourists in the summer, is a total mystery.

We really had a very good time. I think we managed to hit most of the family-friendly destinations, so we might until Charlotte’s a little older before we go back, but I’d love to go back for one of the bajillion festivals they have during the summer. Next time, though, I’m bringing an economy-pack of sweatbands and double the number of shirts.

I asked around at several of my online haunts for recommendations of things to see and do that would be appropriate for small children. You can always tell if someone has a kid or not by the things they seem to think are kid-appropriate. Pro tip: titty bars on Rue St. Catherine — not appropriate. But there were a few suggestions that a little research did confirm as perfect. We’ll probably spend most of Saturday afternoon at the Biodome. That’s near the Olympic Park and you can even include tickets to go up inside the tower that holds the roof over Olympic Stadium as part of the price of admission. On Sunday we’ll check out the Old Port and Old Montreal. Within the two adjoining areas there are some museums, historical sites, and various outdoor events, so I expect it will be possible to spend just about all day (with time off for good behavior). With these little trips, it is simply impossible to do more than hit a couple of significant attractions, so we’ll have to be satisfied with those and leave some of the other must-do Montreal attractions for another visit.

I’d like to find something interesting for Saturday evening. The Montreal Fringe Festival begins this weekend, but it’s hard to know what, if anything, would be kid-appropriate. We’re not very uptight about a lot of things, but sometimes the vibe of “alternative” theater is a little more than I’d want my little girl to see. An online acquaintance happens to be involved with one of the productions, and even he wasn’t sure which things might be okay. We might just have to take our chances…or skip it entirely in favor of some other event.

I also need to put a little thought into where we might like to try to eat. Montreal is a world-class restaurant city, but circumstances will insist that we scale down our gastronomic expectations. I refuse to go away for a weekend and eat in crap chain restaurants or Le Poulet Frit Kentucky, but it is usually possible to find interesting places that won’t refuse you service because you have a kid with you. Bridget wants to make sure we go to a poutine palace, so I suppose we’ll have to do that. And I do want to visit Schwartz’s Deli; Montreal is famous for having great delis and bagel shops, and Schwartz’s is like the Katz’s Deli of Montreal.

To help us flesh out our itinerary a bit, we bought a copy of the Rough Guide to Montreal. On our trip to Europe a few years ago, we found the DK series of travel books to be the most suited to our interests, but we couldn’t find a DK book about Montreal at our local Barnes & Noble. So after a bit of grousing, we settled for the Rough Guide. This morning, though, this comparison chart from GOOD Magazine specifically refers to the Rough Guide Montreal book as being only so-so. If we were going on a longer expedition and were really going to do some serious exploring, I’d probably go back and look for a better guide book. The guide book they liked best, City Secrets, only covers four cities and none of them are Montreal, but I’d probably search harder for the DK books.

Photos a plenty will be taken, I’m sure, but you’ll have to wait until late next week for them to appear on my Flickr page. If you’ve got any Montreal suggestions, especially for good restaurants, speak up quickly.

We spent our President’s Day weekend in New York City. It was a bit of an impromptu trip; Bridget was able to cash in some reward points to score a cheap rate on a Midtown hotel room, so we drove down as far as Stamford, CT on Saturday morning, hopped the commuter train, and stayed until early Monday afternoon. We squeezed in plenty of things to do and see and eat without feeling like we were on a forced march, only got rained on a little bit, and there were no major meltdowns or arguments. I’ll tell you more about it after the jump.

I first started travelling to New York City on a semi-regular basis about ten years ago for work and found that I really liked the city. On one of my trips, Bridget came along and we spent the weekend sightseeing, and thus was born what has become a more-or-less yearly tradition of going to New York. Charlotte’s first trip with us was two years ago and we all had such a miserable time that last year I did not go with Bridget and Charlotte; they went with Charlotte’s buddy Camille and her mom instead. (to be fair, I went to Ireland last year without either of them, so I think that all evens out)

While I would not pretend to say that we are extremely familiar with Manhattan, it is safe to say that after our various trips together and separately Bridget and I are comfortable being there. We almost always stay in Midtown because that’s where she can use her business travel rewards points, but also because it positions us well to go anywhere in the city and get back afterward. Midtown is crawling with tourists because many of the big attractions are there — Times Square, Broadway, shopping on Fifth Avenue, and so on — and we, too, did our time as gawking touristas looking at the billboards and videowalls and such, but now it’s mostly just our base of operations.

After our arrival around midday on Saturday, we hopped a cab downtown to the Lower East Side/Chinatown area. We made our way to the Essex Street Market to have a look around. On our last family trip, we’d gone to see the Chelsea Market over on the southwest side of Manhattan, but the two are very different. Chelsea Market is more of a shopping experience with a bunch of restaurants and food businesses; in fact, the Food Network has their studios in that building. Essex Street Market is an actual food market featuring produce, meat, general groceries, and only a couple of eating establishments. One of those eating establishments is the new home of a New York culinary legend: Shopsin’s. Kenny Shopsin became famous much to his eternal chagrin after Calvin Trillin published this article about him in the New Yorker back in 2002. He’s almost the stereotypical irascible aging New York Jew, and his original restaurant in Greenwich Village was one of those places that people loved to discover. Shopsin was notorious for his huge and eclectic menu, for kicking people out of his place if he didn’t like them, and for telling people what he would or would not cook for them. He closed his place a couple of years ago, mostly because he was tired of the attention I think, but he reopened with a small space in the Essex Street Market last year.

All the tables were full, the line for a table was long, and they close for the day at 3:00, but I insisted we stick it out. After about half an hour, which we spent wandering through the rest of the market, we got seated right at the soapstone counter in front of the tiny kitchen’s ordering window. When Kenny is not cooking, he sits in a chair next to the counter and engages in incessant yelling with his adult children who also work there. One of his twin daughters is the other cook, and the other twin daughter runs the “front” of the restaurant. His son also handles orders, cooks, and spends a lot of time yelling at his father. It was a total blast to sit right in the middle of the whole thing, with Kenny right next to me and the other Shopsins in front of us. Best free floorshow in town. And beneath the bluster they were all really nice — they brought Charlotte extra watermelon slices when we told them she loved watermelon, chatted with us the whole time we were there, and made it an extra-special experience.

After that, we wandered around a little bit. We’d hoped to go to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, but they limit the number of people on the two tours they do on weekends. So, we’d found a website for the Museum of Chinese In America that was also in the same general area and thought we’d check it out. It was cold but sunny on Saturday, so we walked; our stroll took us through parts of Chinatown and also Little Italy, which is sort of surrounded on all sides by Chinatown. The Museum itself is in an old warehouse building on Mulberry Street that also houses other Chinese cultural groups. It’s only a couple of large rooms and a corridor, but the entry fee is only $2.00. There was a Chinese woman running a children’s craft workshop and a bunch of kids (of seemingly every imaginable ethnicity) decorating paper masks. Bridget and I took turns sitting with Charlotte as she made herself a mask, alternating with looking at the few articles on display. The fun and the cozy space made up for whatever disappointment we might have had about the museum. Sometimes finding little unknown treasures like that is far more satisfying than the big and glitzy stuff.

By the time we finally got back to our hotel, it was late afternoon, so we crashed for a bit before going out to dinner. The restaurant was a little French place on West 55th called La Bonne Soupe. From the website, we expected something a bit grand, but it was a tiny, cramped place with a menu that probably hasn’t been changed since 1975. Very old fashioned basic French dishes. The place was packed, and we were lucky to get there when we did, because the lobby filled up as soon as we sat down. Most of the diners were older couples — no coolness factor whatsoever here — and I would wager every single one was a tourist eating early to go to a show. Bridget and I both had a crock of French onion soup, but something was off about it because I was queasy for the rest of the evening. I had gigeau d’agneau in a tomato-thyme-garlic sauce with dauphinoise potatoes and Bridget had a brandade (a puree of potatoes and salt cod); Charlotte had a burger and fries.

Luckily the stomach queasiness was temporary and I felt better by morning. Our day’s plan was to have brunch, go to the American Museum of Natural History and the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, then off to the Union Square Theatre to see a show. It was a busy agenda that would have been unbearable if I’d been sick all day. We took a bus uptown to the Upper West Side, where practically every other shopfront is a restaurant serving Sunday brunch. We’d decided on a place called Good Enough To Eat and once again arrived only moments before the rush began. We got a table in the back and by the time we left the line outside was half a block long. The food was magnificent, so it was easy to understand why the line was so long. Here’s my travel tip for you if you are going to be in New York on a Sunday morning: most of the places seemed to open at 9:00, and if you can be at whichever place you want to try before 9:30, you probably won’t have to wait.

It was only a couple of blocks to the AMNH. Bridget and I have been there before, but Charlotte had not and she had loved “Night At THe Museum”, which took place there. Once we got inside, though, she was scared to death of the display of taxidermied elephants in the main exhibit hall and it took quite a while to get her to calm down enough to step inside the halls. It’s hard to get too excited about 100-year-old dead animals posed in “lifelike” dioramas, but once she got into the swing of it, the kid was a trouper. She wouldn’t go anywhere near the dinosaur exhibit, though. We did, however, really enjoy the Rose Center, which is their new addition with all the cool space stuff, and we LOVED the awesome planetarium show.

We futzed around a bit looking for a place to get a refreshment after the museum, but finally found a coffee shop that wasn’t packed with mid-afternoon brunchers, then walked to the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, which was right across the street from the brunch place. They had a fabulous exhibit about Ancient Greece, including a “Trojan Horse” the kids could climb in. Even though the museum says its intended audience runs right up to kids as old as 10, it’s definitely more for younger kids, even kids younger than Charlotte. But she had fun with the Greece exhibit, and then we went upstairs to a classroom where she got to make her own rain gauge and decorate it.

Still full from a big brunch and the coffee shop, we opted to skip dinner to spend more time uptown, then a quick stop at the hotel to clean up and back downtown to Union Square. It started to rain just as we reached the theater, but we had umbrellas at the ready. The show we saw was a Korean martial arts show called Jump. It’s presented as a comedic play and the performers portray a Korean family trying to marry off their daughter to a bookish young man who is possessed by a fierce martial artist. There’s a plot with a pair of burglars who break into the house, but basically everything is a setup for a ton of corny (and VERY funny) slapstick and displays of tae kwon do and gymnastics. It was utterly perfect for Charlotte, who laughed nonstop for the entire hour and a half.

By the time we left the theater, the rain was coming down pretty hard, and we weren’t having any luck finding a place to eat that wasn’t fast food crap, so we caught the bus back to the hotel and I went out and fetched a pizza, which we feasted on in the hotel room while watching some cheesy Disney movie about ice skaters.

Since we were planning to leave by midday Monday, we stuck close to the hotel Monday morning. Charlotte got to go back to American Girl Place and buy overpriced doll crap. We also went into the Hershey’s store and the M&M store which are right across the street from one another near Times Square. I liked the Hershey’s store better because it was more about the chocolate, but Charlotte and I each bought our own custom-mixed bags on M&Ms, too. Then we walked over to Rockefeller Center, watched the skaters on the ice, and had some lunch on the food concourse at 30 Rock. Then it was time to catch the train back to Connecticut and head for home.

We had a really good time, and I was very pleased that we were able to explore around the city a bit more and get away from the hardcore tourist traps in Midtown. Now that it’s a lot easier for Charlotte to tag along, we can do a lot more stuff and be a lot more open to interesting things that aren’t just shopping or seeing famous places.