Vacation: Part 3: Eureka: 02/21/07
Over this 3-day weekend we took our first vacation as a family of four. I've been posting photo montages of each place we stopped on my livejournal site but I plan to post a more in depth description of what we did here, one stop per day.
We stopped one more time en route to Eureka for gas, a diaper change and something to drink. It was also a chance for me to properly adjust the seat. The driver's seat was too far forward and the pedals didn't feel like they were where I expected them to be. Then we had a straight drive through dusk and early evening to Eureka.
Harriet cried around six as it was her usual bedtime and she wanted to know why we were still in the car. We finally got into Eureka and to our hotel (at the north end of Eureka) around six thirty. By seven we were in our room and a bell hop had brought up a roll away crib for Harriet. I should have taken photographs of our room but it completely slipped my mind.
There were two amenities that our room didn't have that I wished it had. The first is a safe to lock up our valuables and the second is a mini fridge so we could have kept the left over baby food Harriet didn't eat at one meal to use at her next meal. Ultimately though we made do without either of these amenities and had a comfortable stay.
Before going to bed we still needed dinner. We had thought about going to Denny's or perhaps doing room service but Denny's meant driving to the other end of town (and negotiating the unfamiliar one way streets in the dark and the rain) and room service sounded too messy. We decided instead to eat in the restaurant next to the lobby.
The restaurant is in the process of being remodeled and wasn't really set up for a tired family of four. We were stuck in the back at a booth next to the worst of the construction mess. By now Harriet was really hysterical. We got her fed (a jar of baby food and a bottle). There just wasn't room to comfortably breast feed her. Once Harriet was better settled we were able to better enjoy our meal. Sean had a grilled cheese sandwich and we had crab cakes (my first since my trip to New Orleans in 2001).
After dinner we were all exhausted. We decided to go to bed. Certainly the kids needed to go to sleep. I was worried that Harriet wouldn't sleep in her roll away crib but she took to it happily. We did bring her sleep positioner and her two favorite purple blankets and that helped her feel at home in her temporary bed. Harriet ended up going to sleep before Sean but both kids slept until a quarter to seven in the morning!
eureka | hotel | sleep | vacation | dinner | weather
