January 02, 2007
Oceanside X-mas
One by one, as the airlines and the weather allowed, the Ramsays all arrived in Portland. The last straggler arriving just in time for dinner on Christmas day. Of course we had been planning on having Christmas dinner at our rented beach house, but somehow we all managed to get around my tiny dining table in my tiny house. Turkey and all the trimmings, delicious, if I do say so myself. Even my stepmother (a chef and friend of Jacques Pepin) said I was a good cook.
Next morning, we all piled into the van to go to Oceanside. I picked Oceanside because it was off the beaten track (highway 101), and more of a quiet little town. It was perfect. The house was one block from the beach access, and across the street from Roseanna's, a pretty nice restaurant for such a small town. We had my grandmother's 82nd birthday dinner there, great chowder and heaping bowl of steamer clams.
Mostly we did the usual coast stuff: Tillamook Cheese Factory (curds!), Oregon Coast Aquarium (claws!), lighthouses, beaches, and a bit of shopping. Mobility was a bit of a problem for a few family members, so that limited our choices, but we did get to see some sights all together. With this crew just getting out of the house requires about two hours of planning and another hour of execution, so many of our days out were shorter than they could have been.
I think everyone had a good time, and by the end of the week had forgotten about the frustrations of Christmas air travel and bad weather.
