You know that song by Vampire Weekend about getting out of Cape Cod? I never got what they were talking about until spring break.
I grew up the daughter of German immigrants in New York and attended Yeshiva grades K-12. Obviously, I had never vacationed on the Cape. And yet those words, "the Cape," always managed to evoke a kind of American enchantment I had encountered only in books and movies. The sound of those words alone seemed to carry in them the implication of beautiful people, more specifically, of Nate Archibald from "Gossip Girl." And so I was fully expecting to meet Nate Archibald from "Gossip Girl" or at least someone with equally beautiful green eyes and cashmere sweaters when four friends and I vacationed there over spring break.
A note: Nate Archibald from "Gossip Girl" does not spend spring break on "the Cape." Neither does anyone else. Spring break on Cape Cod is cold — which shouldn't have necessarily come as a shock in seaside Massachusetts at the end of a relentless winter — and people don't like to be there. I can probably count, with fingers, the people other than us five with whom we interacted, and it doesn't amount to many: the construction workers who built an entire hotel next door in one week and, I think, said ‘Hi' to us once; the cute lesbian couple that gave us directions in P-town; our various waiters and bartenders; one college-aged couple that seemed equally as confused by their surroundings as we were. Yep, I think that's it. There was also an old man sitting by the pool while we were there. He didn't actually talk to us, but when human proximity is rare, it counts. No one, other than the above-mentioned people, goes to Cape Cod in the spring. Including Nate Archibald from "Gossip Girl."
Don't get me wrong — time off from school spent with friends would have been enjoyable in a cave. But our itinerary was a little off. We went to the beach … in coats; we sat in the hot tub … while it snowed. So there wasn't really much of an option but to forget about the faintest idea of spring and spoil ourselves rotten.
The key, we decided, to exercising temporary hedonism would be to spend money on one thing and one thing only and spend a hell of a lot of it on that. It wasn't too hard because we weren't traveling far enough to have to pay airfare, and, luckily, we got to crash at a friend's parents' timeshare for free. There was no sun, no nightlife, no shops open, no people. So we ate. A lot.
My daily diet at Tufts generally consists of a muffin or cereal during the day and a burrito or another bowl of cereal for dinner.
On Cape Cod, a normal day looked something more like this: Mornings commenced with an outing to the nicest brunch place we could find and plates full of French toast, pancakes, waffles, etc. Lunch, more than once, consisted of more than one course. And every evening, we'd get dressed up as though there were actually people to impress on the godforsaken peninsula and book reservations at the nicest restaurants in town, noses up, heels on, where we sipped on expensive cocktails and tried bizarre, experimental dishes like sashimi in cones (not so awesome) and truffle-oil pizza (AWESOME). And there's just something about cold, post-drinking-games pizza that is so much better when there's truffle oil on it.
Our attempt to tan through the glass walls surrounding the indoor pool was somewhat hindered by several storms. But where are your tans now, all of you who recently returned from Puerto Rico? Meanwhile, we've got a good five pounds, at least, as souvenirs.
