Socal Mom by Donna Schwartz Mills

Multi-Generational Fun at Kew Gardens

 

 

Several years ago, we decided to check out the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. I'd seen photos of the famous Victorian glass houses and wanted to see them first hand.

The surprise was how much the entire family enjoyed the excursion - especially my husband, who knows a good photo op spot when he sees one.

He is also a very considerate son.

He knew that his garden-loving mum had never been to the 300-acre site that's been a center for the study of plants since the 17th century (even though she's lived just 130 miles away for her entire life). And so when we planned their Wimbledon visit, we decided to stay on in London so we could take her there.

But we had not planned for the London weather. 

I'm an LA native and have lived in the San Fernando Valley for nearly 50 years, so I can handle a little heat. But my mother-in-law (who turns 81 next month) has spent her life in Britain, and until recently has had little experience with temperatures that get close to the 90°F mark.

And I don't think anyone enjoys humidity.

The day we visited Kew, it was sweltering. The place is huge, and while there are plenty of trees (it is a botanical garden, after all), you had to walk along a lot of hot, shade-free asphalt paths to get to them.

We were cranky and eating the lovely picnic lunch we'd brought did not put us in a better mood.

Then I noticed that it was possible to tour the site on a nice, covered tram. The Kew Explorer is a 40-minute hop-on, hop-off service complete with tour guide. It costs £4 for adults and £1 for children -- and on the day we visited, I thought it was well worth it.

Family Activities

I knew that my mum-in-law would enjoy the gardens at Kew -- but was surprised at all the facility has to offer for children (even an adolescent like my 14-year-old).

We hopped off our tram to admire a large lily pond and noticed a banner for PLANTastic Play: a playground in the form of a giant plant, designed to introduce youngsters to the concept of biodiversity (yes, as beautiful as Kew is, it's primarily an educational facility... and they aim to teach people of all ages).

This installation appears to be part of Kew's "Summer Festival," which also includes a guided biodiversity tour and a fabulous exhibition of live butterflies in the Princess of Wales conservatory (which enthralled our entire party).

I was surprised to learn exactly how many kids' activities are on offer at Kew all year round: there's an indoor playground, a treetop walkway, and an aquarium. The different glass houses are architectural gems; many of them are designed with stairways that allow visitors to climb right up into the trees. And if you visit during London's usual chilly weather, it's nice and warm inside.

The Royal Botanic Garden has an extensive website, with so much information it could take you hours to get through it all. Suffice it to say, if you're planning to visit Kew with children, you'll want to read their Parents' Survival Guide here.

Disclosure: I was not compensated for this post.

See the rest of my London photos on Flickr, here.

Hollywood By the Thames

 

I never think about SoCal's geographical latitude... until I've gone somewhere quite a bit north of Los Angeles. That's when you notice how short the days are in winter...

...and how long they are in summer.

Here in LA, the variation is noticeable, but not dramatic.

But while in the UK the last two weeks, we could not get over the fact that the sun didn't set until after 10:00 PM. I think that's how Megan and I managed to stay awake as long as we did that first Saturday. Without the visual cue of darkness, it was easier to forget our jet lag and keep on going.

This is a good thing, because Gareth's day at Wimbledon lasted past sunset, and I found myself meeting him for dinner at a place called Garfunkel's, where we managed to seat ourselves just before it closed at midnight. But the long day meant that I also had to decide what to do with Megan after we'd finished our shopping excursion in Camden Town... and she was feeling jet lagged and cranky. 

The muggy London weather wasn't helping. It was like walking around in a steam bath.

"It's hot. And my feet hurt," she complained. "Can't we go somewhere cool?"

This seemed like the perfect opportunity to catch a movie. My friend Catherine had other places to go, so she helped us navigate the Tube system to Leicester Square, which is home to several bars, clubs, restaurants and about a half-dozen cineplexes. And - unlike most of the shops and restaurants we'd been visiting so far - they're air conditioned.

This is the site of many a movie premiere in the United Kingdom, and someone involved in city planning has taken a page out of Hollywood's PR book, by embedding bronzed handprints of some of the celebrities who have opened films there. The result is a kind of cross between the Chinese Theater and the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Megan didn't recognize many of the stars commemorated on the pavement... until I found one for Ralph Fiennes.

"Hey, Megan - Those hands there belong to Voldemort," I told her.

I took several shots of her posing with his hand prints.

We had been hoping that the next Harry Potter movie would be opening in the UK during our visit (because it would be kind of cool to see it where it was filmed), but were disappointed to learn that this one is reverting back to a November release. So in true teenage fashion, my little girl announced that the only film she wanted to see was "Get Him to the Greek."

Yes, I know it is rated R, and I know that indicates a comedy that would make me wince with her beside me. But I was just as hot and tired and jet lagged as she was and didn't feel like fighting that particular fight at that particular moment. So we walked into the theater where it was playing and attempted to buy two tickets.

"How old is she?" the cashier asked.

I answered truthfully: Megan is 14.

"I'm sorry, I can't sell you the tickets. It's rated 15; no one under that age can enter the theater."

Not even with a parent.

Way to go, Britain!

"If I had known, I would have told them you were 15," I told my daughter. But secretly, I was relieved.

We ended up at a showing of the more age-appropriate "Letters from Juliet." This one had been on my daughter's list too, and it was actually a perfect choice for a mother-daughter movie date. Total chick flick; romantic and sweet.

We walked a long way back toward the Hyde Park area where our hotel was located before finally grabbing another subway at Tottenham Court Road.

It was a good first day.

Disclosure: I was not compensated for this post.

See the rest of my London photos on Flickr, here.

2010: A Fresh Start

Last week, I did something unthinkable.

I went on vacation... and never took my laptop out of its bag.

I intended to use my time to catch up on work. I'd hoped to do some blogging, and even had a couple of afternoons when my husband and daughter left me alone (which means I had the opportunity).

I just wasn't in the mood.

2009 was a crappy year for my family. It was even worse for some of my friends. After all, the stuff I had to deal with only cost me time and money. But one of my closest friends battled breast cancer. That was bad. My friend Debbie lost her mother just before Easter... and her mother-in-law the week before Christmas, after a long bout in the hospital.

"We need to do something normal for the holidays," she said. "We've reserved both units in Park City and want you to join us there."

Debbie's family is in real estate and they own two condo/guest rooms at the luxurious Hotel Park City. Her invitation meant we could stay in one of them for a week and pay just a $75 cleaning fee.

We usually spend the New Year up in Sacramento with my family -- but this year, thanks to the easing of travel restrictions for Cuban-Americans, they were all going to be in Havana. We would have gone too... if the home renovation hadn't eaten so much of our savings.

The house has been a monster, soaking up all our time and energy as well as our cash reserves. My husband had already arranged to take off the week between Christmas and New Year, with the intention of wrapping up some of the loose ends (i.e., we still haven't installed the microwave hood in the kitchen or found all the stuff we'd stored in the garage... or even settled on where to rehang our pictures).

But we hadn't taken a vacation all year. Gareth had a week off in April while his mum was visiting us... but issues that came up at his office meant that he spent much of it working at home. The same thing occurred over the Independence Day holiday - he was on the phone during most of the six-hour drive to Sacramento and never felt relaxed because he had too much to take care of when he got back to work.

It was a no-brainer. We hauled out our rarely-used snow gear and drove up to Utah. And then, we chilled (in more ways than one).

I am badly acrophobic (not a surprise to anyone familiar with my other neuroses), so I did not ski with my husband and daughter. However, I did go tubing with them one night at Gorgoza Park. We enjoyed the hotel's heated outdoor pool (where the two families engaged in a snowball fight... yes, right in the pool)... and shopping at the nearby outlet mall, which was having an amazing after-Christmas sale.

We walked about the cute little downtown and shopped at our favorite bookstore, Dolly's (where we pet the resident cats, Mr. Dolly and Che). We enjoyed excellent meals at Main Street Pizza & Noodle, Yuki Arashi, Hapa Grill and Ruth's Chris. We took a horse-drawn sleigh to dinner in a mountain lodge. We greeted the New Year at the Canyon resort, with fireworks in the snow.

Most of all, we relaxed. We felt so good that we were barely phased by the 16-hour drive back home. This was largely due to our decision to check out of the hotel at 5:30 AM, only to get caught in heavy snow a couple of miles out of the city - my first experience with a "white out." We ended up spending 90 minutes at a McDonald's while we waited for the storm to pass and the snow plows to do their thing, and this put us in Las Vegas at the height of the holiday line of cars traveling back to Los Angeles. Our friends didn't set back home until 2:00 PM, sailed through the Nevada-California state line and arrived home just an hour after we did.

We feel refreshed and ready to take on the world this new year. 

Park City Hotels

Christmas Spirit - SoCal Style

I'm in a cantankerous mood over at Los Angeles and 50-Something Moms Blogs today. The topic: the ever-earlier beginning of the holiday season.

It's a short post that only touches upon my very mixed feelings about the December holidays. It's short because -- as usual -- I spent Thanksgiving at my sister's home in the Sacramento area, and she doesn't look kindly on it when I hover over my computer when I should be socializing with the family. So the post was dashed off very quickly on Saturday (while she was in the shower).

In that post, I remarked on the fact that the soundtrack of our Thanksgiving meal was a selection of Christmas carols, and this struck me as a little bit strange. For one thing, I don't take my Christmas stuff out of storage until AFTER Thanksgiving. But that brings us to the other thing: We're Jewish.

As a Jewish American, I have always had a strange relationship with the Christmas season. When we were kids, it felt like the entire country was having a party and we weren't invited.

Of course, that's not really how it went. We had our own celebration: Chanukah, which is a nice little holiday. But even a fully lit menorah doesn't hold a candle to the seductive glitz and glitter of an American Christmas, with its shiny ornaments and lights and holly and wreaths and bells and Santa Claus... and all those presents.

It is possible to enjoy the holiday season in America when you're not a Christian - but sometimes you're walking a very fine line. We were not one of those families that put up a tree and called it a "Chanukah Bush." However, we fully participated in our schools' holiday programs (which were allowed to be all about Christmas back then). And while that's where I learned to love Christmas carols, I never felt quite right singing some of them in school choir. My 9-year-old self was so afraid G-d would strike me down if I actually sang all the words in "O Come All Ye Faithful" that I would merely lip sync "Christ the Lord" at the end. 

We opened presents on Chanukah from my parents and grandparents, but there was still the matter of Christmas Day, which can be kind of lonely if you're not invited to enjoy a meal with your friends or neighbors. Most years, my parents would look for some way to distract us: A trip to Disneyland.

Read the rest of this post on my review blog here.

Halloween Fun at SoCal Attractions

It's October, which used to mean cooler days, fallen leaves and (oh yes)... trick or treating at the end of the month, which when I was a kid, was kind of an afterthought.

Somewhere along the way, Halloween became one of the country's major holidays, with chains of stores devoted to the event, and elaborate decorations that rival anything families put up at Christmas.

And so, Southern California's many themed attractions also get into the act. Here's a rundown of some of the spooky fun you can have in the area's theme parks:

Knotts Berry Farm - Our oldest major theme park has also been doing the Halloween theme the longest (since 1972). The 37th edition of "Knotts Scary Farm" opened last weekend, and it's not for the faint of heart. The folks at Knotts are serious when they describe their Halloween festivities as "adult scare entertainment": they do not recommend it for children under the age of 13 (or people like me, I'm afraid). But if you're into that, you'll probably love the mazes with titles like ""Doll Factory," "Lockdown: The Asylum," "The Slaughterhouse" and "Club Blood."

Mazes are also big at two other parks that are clearly going after the teen/young adult market.

I love the tagline for Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios: "You'll Wish it Were Just a Movie."

They've taken their Hollywood connection and put it to use in their mazes, with traps from "Saw," an appearance by Michael Myer from the "Halloween" horror series (of course!), flesh-eating zombies from "Shaun of the Dead" and the masked miner from "My Bloody Valentine."

Entertainment includes a Bill and Ted Show, and a tribute to "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" (which is actually something I'd like to see).

And of course, there's still the tour, which takes place this month on a  backlot "Terror Tram."

Beginning tonight, you'll be able to thrill to Magic Mountain's Fright Fest: more mazes, roaming zombies, and scary clowns. Unlike Knotts, Magic Mountain is offering a Trick or Treat Trail, Scaryoke and Costume Contest for younger kids.

Note: Only children ages 12 & under are allowed to wear costumes to Six Flags Magic Mountain. No scary/gory costumes are allowed.

Halloween Time at the Disneyland Resort: The mother of all SoCal theme parks jumps on the Halloween bandwagon in a big way. They've spooked up some of their most popular rides, decorated the park with pumpkins and ghosts and come up with spectacular new shows. I actually got a chance to experience this one last weekend - read all about it here.

Sea World Spooktacular: If live near San Diego, you won't want to miss the Halloween festivities at the home of Shamu, where you can commune with Sesame Street stars in costume, Clyde and Seamore's take on MJ's "Thriller" and trick-or-treating around the park. The party kicks off tonight with a special appearance by Jack Hanna.

h