Little Havana

My parents are up and out of the place by 8:15 in the morning and

 texting us that Palm Springs is amazing, they’re having coffee at Denny’s and other things like that, while we’re just taking our time waking up and doing things that don’t take a lot of energy like Oscar playing with all of his toys hanging out and figuring out our sight seeing for the day.  After some time spent with his toys, Oscar agrees to go ride the Little Havana trolley that

 is free here and we figure it will be a good way to get the lay of the land so to speak.  We head two blocks over to the trolley stop and Oscar waits impatiently for it to arrive.  We get on and get to head out to the

  metrorail station (if we were really adventurous we would plan something on that) and then out to the river, over to a casino and the last half of the ride is dominated by Oscar asking when we can go have McDonalds.  What kind of traveler am I raising here? 

Myaamian a

 Taco Bell for dinner and McDonalds for lunch?  UGH!!  We find one of the several we pass and get out to have some lunch and wait for the next trolley to take us closer to our home base.  We pass the tourist section of Little Havana where all the hop on hop off buses and  double deckers are letting people off left and right to wander around the cigar factories and Cuban eateries.  It’s only a few blocks from our place, so we make a mental note to return here and head

 back home for siesta time.  It’s getting hot at 1:30pm in Miami and our winter white Michigan skin can feel the heat.  I’m going to have to remember to reapply sunscreen to all of us multiple times a day.  After some siesta time, we head back out and down to the memorial parks for Cuban Americans and Bay of Pigs.  Oscar keeps asking where is the park that he can play in, but I distract him with donuts while John looks for cigars.  We

 stumble upon a donut place that would give Cops and Donuts in Clare, Michigan a run for their money.  Velvet Crème donuts where Oscar is able to get a white frosted donut crusted with m and m’s and John and I can half a Nutella donut.  This is a pastry

like donut that is cut in half and filled with Nutella, then topped with powdered sugar.  It’s like a beignet from New Orleans got lost in Europe and it’s heaven.  They also have a maple donut topped with bacon, so don’t know if they had that first or that’s a cops and donuts original.  I always thought it was, but maybe I’m wrong.  But this one is not a long john, the bacon is crumbled on the top, which

 leaves cops and donuts in the lead because you have those two strips of bacon down the top of the maple long john.  But Clare needs to hear about this Nutella donut, or maybe not because it shouldn’t be any easier for me to get.  Oscar gets

an extra tub of m and m’s from the donut chef, so he is on cloud nine and covered with icing.  We take pictures with all the roosters we find on the streets of Little Havana, we walk through Domino Park where people are playing very serious looking games of

  dominos and chess.  There are a lot of barbers down this stretch too and we had been talking about cleaning up John’s neck line, so duck in and both the guys get haircuts from men we can’t really communicate with in Spanish or English, but they come out 

         looking great.  Oscar has never gotten such a thorough going over by a hair stylist.  But he sat still through multiple levels of razors, blowing hair spraying and brushing.  His cut took twice the time that John’s did, but he was still through it all and even said “gracias” at the end when I asked if he knew “thank you” in Spanish.  He must have learned that at school,

happy boy

because I haven’t even tried to teach him any Spanish yet.  Thankfully, someone is teaching him something because going through the alphabet flashcards that Julie gave him today, I realized how hard even the alphabet can be.  For some reason, only the flashcards made me

Christmas tree still up

 realize that this letter “b” can be 4 different ones depending on how you hold the card.  It’s a d, b, p or q…..and you can see Oscar hazarding a guess in his eyes because he isn’t sure at all.  By the end of the flashcards, I’m amazed that I can read or write….