Rotterdam

Dana leans back in her cafe seat, arms crossed, face a resigned combination of amused and embarassed. "I'm a regular here," she admonishes with a glance to the counter.

Rick puts down the rind of the lemon he's eaten out of the teapot. I continue to nibble on the slice of ginger I've fished out of the tea. Eileen pushes her nearly finished bowl of butter beans across the table for Rick to finish.

Dana (of course) has a great list of places to eat in Rotterdam, and we're systematically destroying her local cred with our usual highjinks. But we do appreciate the good food. In our 36 hour stay, we've had a 6 euro breakfast with croissants and avocado toast, an excellent Vietnamese lunch in a maximalist-decorated restaurant (tea sets suspended in bird cages from an indoor false cherry tree, acrylic rod chandeliers in the bathroom stalls), and tapas and pinchos at the old waterfront, staying late enough over our bottle of red that the waiter brought around free pinchos from the closing food bar.

I last saw Dana in November for a Hamburg weekend. Rick and Eileen haven't seen her since July, when she came home briefly (I was in Alaska). She hasn't seen Ryan since her wedding in India in 2022, and she still hasn't; he went home to Taipei last week when we got to Cape Town. My family doesn't do a lot of long-distance hanging out, but everything is natural when we do visit.