Our Inaugural Adventure

As much as we love STX, we want to take advantage of the school calendar and the wonders of telecommuting to experience something new as a family. We have consider various options for our summer adventures and are still unsure about whether we should pick one place in which we fall in love and go there every summer, or explore new places. This is our inaugural journey, so we decided upon visiting a plethora of places by driving up the East Coast and then spending some time in Portland, Maine. There are a couple of reasons for this decision: 1. We have lots of family and friends to visit. 2. We thought Sabine was a little too young for any meaningful trip to Europe, the Galapagos, or other spots on our list. 3. We are thinking about going back to school, so we wanted to check out possible future hometowns. 4. We did not want to live out of suitcases and drive the whole time and Cesar needed a place from which to easily work, so we chose Portland, ME. It seems like a perfect place to escape the summer heat of STX, eat good food, enjoy the great outdoors, shop at Target and Whole Foods, and enjoy outdoor summer festivals and music.

This is our itinerary:
Miami, FL
Disney World
Savannah, GA
Chapel Hill, NC
Charlottesville, VA
Red Lion, PA
Pennington/Princeton, NJ
Westchester, NY
Cambridge and Concord, MA
Camden and Portland, ME
Touring Vermont and New Hampshire
The Berkshires
New York City
Cayey, PR
Plus multiple bathroom breaks along the way!

Things we are looking forward to doing, in no particular order:
-Eating Indian and Mexican food
-Seeing good theatre
-Water parks at Disney
-Seeing family and friends
-Going to farmers' markets and petting farms
-Listening to music outside
-Tanglewood
-Going on hikes in forests and swims in rivers and waterfalls
-Whale watching
-Target and good grocery stores(at least I am excited about that...)
-Che is very excited about seeing lions in New York City---I am not sure where he got the notion that there are lions in NYC, but if I remember correctly I think they had some in the Central Park Zoo, so we will be heading there!

So why do I call it Adventures in Babylon?

Adventure:
Although it is true that we are "just" traveling up the East Coast of the United States and not hiking Mount Everest, any trip with a 21 month old and a four year old is bound to be an adventure. Plus, Cesar has never been to some of these places and has never been on such an extensive road trip, so it will be an adventure for him. Let's just hope that with our handy GPS, lots of books and games for the kids, and coffee for me, that it will not be too much of an adventure.

Babylon:
Definition: from Rastafarian thought, in the Virgin Islands used mainly to refer to America (often implying a strong but corrupt, immoral place), but also to anything that fits that definition, such as elements of local government or police.
Example: "You betta be careful before Babylon roll up on you."
Also: Bab. See "The Bob."
Source: Page 71, Say it in Crucian!
Definition: "a biblical allusion of Rastafarian thought, used to refer to aspects of government or commerce."
Source: Page 58, A Brief Description and Dictionary of the Language Used in the Virgin Islands.
Example: "Hide your weed, babylon coming."
Source: Vernice, on Facebook, 2006.
(http://www.cruciandictionary.com/cruzandictionary/b.html)