How I Spent My Summer Vacation, part II

View from our rooftop bar

Grenada Day 2

We awake to rain and a swarm of mosquitoes outside. Oh, dear! We spend the morning and early afternoon at the villa, swimming and reading. Breakfast is fresh fruit & toast, lunch is peanut butter & bacon sandwiches. There’s more rain than sun and in the afternoon we decide to drive out to explore the neighborhoods of L’Anse Aux Epines. Although it’s highly unlikely we would at this point stay anyplace besides one of the Antoines’ properties, it was fun to see in person the various villas from the Spice Isle Villas website.

a neighborhood villa

For dinner we chose Red Crab, for convenience as much as anything. Because it’s in our villa’s neighborhood, we always give it a try on each trip and each time we’ve come away with varying levels of disappointment. Not this time, though. At last it lives up to its reputation for us! I opted for the mahi mahi, prepared with a garlic sauce and served up with provision. DH chose two appetizers—the French onion soup and a dozen snails. All three were really quite good, along with the rum punches. Our meal came to EC $160, which included tax but not a service charge. (NB: Though the restaurants on Grenada might not compare to the ones on Anguilla, the prices don’t compare, either. If this had been Anguilla, the tab would have been at least US $160.)

Went “home” after dinner to see if we could go up to the rooftop deck and play some Bananagrams, but alas, with all the rain the mozzies were unbearable despite the combined efforts of breeze, ceiling fans, and our insect repellant. We retired indoors instead and read.

I woke up that morning with the preposterous fear that I would run out of books so I grabbed one from the villa to read that day instead. It was You Are Not the One by Vestal McIntyre, a collection of short stories. I’d never heard of him. It was readable enough but nothing to really blow my skirt up, as DH rather irreverently says.

Grenada Day 3

Socked in. By storms, that is. All. Day. Long. It rained so hard all day that we couldn’t even read outside because the wind was driving the rain all over, even in the middle of the rooftop pavilion—our pages just kept getting too wet. And our internet access wasn’t working, either. We ate brunch in the villa and then got a little stir crazy, so we hopped into the car for a drive. We drove all over LAE and then got a hankering to see the SGU campus, so we drove over to True Blue to explore there, too. Then we stopped at the Spiceland Mall to see if we could purchase a couple of umbrellas, but as it was Sunday, everything was closed. Undaunted, we kept driving and thought we’d see if the vendors market was open on Grand Anse. Two stalls were open, so we chatted with the proprietress while we poked around, eventually settling on a sarong, some hot sauce, and some vanilla to take back home with us.

a cow on True Blue peninsula

Back to the villa again where DH wanted to get back to his book, but I was still feeling restless and decided to go for a walk instead. Man, there are some KILLER hills in LAE! I got soaked through, of course, but there was something fun about seeing the neighborhood on foot and making friends with the dogs along the way. They all seem to come on strong with full bravado but then melt into full-body wiggles with their tails going ninety-to-nothing the moment you stop and greet them cheerfully.

a pothound playing in the water

For dinner we called in a take-out order at La Boulangerie for one pizza and one order of Boscaiola pasta, similar to a Bolognese but with mushrooms added. Our least expensive meal yet at EC $50, or around US $20. Between the rain and bugs, we ate indoors and turned the TV on for the first time, vegging out on the daybed and enjoying the good food.

This is only our second vacation where rain has had a tremendous impact on us, so we’re pretty lucky. But it was our first time on Grenada with so much rain and it became clear that Turtleback Villa, while wonderful in so many ways, is not particularly well-suited for long periods indoors—there’s no table inside for eating meals or setting up a board/card game. And because there are no screens on the French doors, we couldn’t throw them wide open because of the awful mosquitos, so whenever we stayed indoors, we inevitably had to run the a/c. We tried playing Bananagrams on the bed, but every time our weight shifted, so did our playing tiles, so we gave up on that, too. (There is a low coffee table by the daybed, but my husband is of an age where he simply cannot lean over that far in comfort for any length of time, so that table wouldn’t work for us, but it might for other folks.)

our spiral stairway leading to the rooftop bar

Today I read the first book in a wonderful new(ish) mystery series – The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation, part I

June 2010 Grenada & Anguilla

Travel Day 1:

Travel on American nonstop Hartford to San Juan—totally full flight, unfortunately with a high proportion of screaming and otherwise badly behaved children (at what point did it become acceptable to watch portable DVD players with no headphones?). With the ridiculous layover that comes with the Grenada transfers, for the last few trips we’ve opted to leave the airport for a leisurely lunch at Pamela’s Restaurant, part of Numero Uno Guesthouse. This year we opted to save a bit on taxi fare by staying a little closer to the airport and chose to give our custom to the Ocean Bar & Grill at the Ritz Carlton instead. I had called ahead a few days before our departure to see if it was possible as a non-guest to spend a few hours there enjoying a long luncheon and I was assured that we would be very welcomed, indeed. In fact, we were. Now, resorts are not our first choice for accommodations, and even if they were, the Ritz would in all likelihood be beyond our means for a two-week-long vacation (not to mention that it’s all a little too, well, corporate for our tastes). But if the San Juan location is representative of the chain, after our afternoon there, I can totally see why people are devoted to the brand. No staff member, from the concierge to the hostess to the busboys, could do enough for us. To a person, they were pleasant, congenial, and professional. Before being seated, we mentioned that we would be hanging out for about 3 hours and that we would be happy, therefore, not to take the first row of tables closest to the sand and the view. Nonsense, they said! We were the first to arrive for lunch and therefore must have our pick of tables. So we settled in with our books and backpacks to enjoy the view and the ambience.

Sonny was our server and she was delightful, checking in with us just often enough that we could add another beverage to our tab, but not so often that it felt pushy or that she was rushing us. Really, she had an uncanny sense of timing. We ordered an appetizer of chips & salsa to share, the kosher foot long hot dog (DH), the Puerto Rican Cobb salad (me), an ice cream, one iced tea, one Medalla (the local light beer), one Diet Coke, and two lattes. With the exception of the Medalla, which was a whopping $6 (really? for a local beer?!), everything else was priced slightly less than I would have expected for such an upmarket location. Our total before tip came to $72. (For comparison purposes, our meal at Pamela’s the year before for a comparable number of drinks and amount of food, came to $91. It just so happened that the mini notepad I was using for this trip had last year’s trip tallies still in it.)

Help me--I'm sideways!

We took a taxi back to the airport a little after 3:00 (fare is $10 each way, plus $1 per suitcase) and hunkered down in the terminal to bide our time for another few hours. Between reading and people-watching, the time actually went pretty quickly. We boarded the American Eagle flight (all but two seats were filled) around 6:00 for an on-time departure with our noses still buried in our books, so even the two hour flight went by quickly. DH was absorbed in the new behemoth Vietnam novel called Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes while I was involved with Julia Glass’s forthcoming novel called The Widower’s Tale. I had started Paul Harding’s Tinkers that morning, and while the beauty of the language really struck me, the story itself did not, so I put it down until I could devote more attention to it.

Once we landed, it took very little time to make it through immigration, grab our checked luggage, and then maneuver through customs. Outside Jude, a friend of our hosts, was waiting to drive us to our villa, the charming and ever-so-reasonably-priced Turtleback Pavilion. Low season rates here are always a good value, but because of the economy, the owners were offering 30% off the rack rates this summer. Spice Isle Villas or Reef View Grenada to see the websites. Our fourth visit to Grenada and our third stay at that villa (on one of our trips we traveled with friends and stayed at the larger, sister villa of Tradewinds, found at the same websites above), so clearly we’re devoted fans. Almost 16 hours exactly from the time we left for the airport that morning we tumbled into bed, filled with that odd combination of exhaustion and exhilaration that so often accompanies travel days.

Grenada Day 1

It might be a gigantic pain in the ass to have such a long travel day, and I ain’t sayin’ that I wouldn’t rather get to Grenada in a more timely manner, but boy howdy—there is a real and certain reward for landing on the island well past sunset, and that is waking up to its sunlit splendor first thing in the morning.

Our hosts, Anthon and Sharon Antoine, had done some light provisioning for us ahead of our arrival, so after the usual exclamations over the beauty of our surroundings and our great good fortune to be there, we immediately set about making coffee before heading out to the pool. One of the best things about Turtleback is the number of nooks tucked around the villa for reading & relaxing, so there’s always an option to be social or solitary, in the sun or in the shade. Between the main level and the rooftop lounge there are two pairs of padded Adirondack chairs, two padded sets of chaises longues, three sets of tables & chairs for dining, two rocking chairs, and a set of the most amazing padded swings whose backs can adjust up or down like a chaise longue. It’s truly a limer’s paradise!

A bit more about the villa: it’s an open plan studio with a king-size bed, a compact but complete kitchen, and a full-size day bed all sharing the living space with a compact bathroom off to the side. French doors on three sides can be thrown wide open, but the best part of the villa is the outdoor living space. There’s a swimming pool big enough to actually swim in, surrounded by mature foliage, plus the rooftop deck with wet bar, which has lovely views over the bay and out to the Atlantic. For a couple traveling without friends or children, I don’t believe there’s any better value for that level of comfort and style on the entire island.

Shawn, from Y&R car rentals, showed up shortly after 9:00 to drop off our two-door Toyota with four-wheel drive and get our paperwork taken care of. Since we were just sitting down for breakfast when he arrived, we invited him to join us. After the rental was squared away, we decided to put off our grocery shopping for a couple of hours and just relax around the villa instead. If we had known that our first day would be our only day of sunshine on Grenada, no doubt we would have enjoyed it even more.

At noon we cleaned ourselves up and headed to our favorite decadent place for lunch on Grenada—Spice Island Beach Resort. If we were resort people, this is exactly the kind of place we would be drawn to—gracious, open-aired, and unmistakably islandy. As always, the service was charming and the food was excellent, but this year we noticed two differences: the dearth of guests and the slightly increased menu prices. One local salad, one lamb roti appetizer, one smoked salmon sandwich, one order of ice cream, two Tings and one frozen fruit punch took our total to EC $166, including tax and service charge. Now I understand that that translates to less money than we’d spent on lunch at the Ritz the previous day, but it still felt higher than usual, particularly for the small portions served.

After lingering for a while over our books, we left Spice Island to head over for some grocery shopping at the IGA in Spiceland Mall. It’s a tad more expensive than the Food Fair closer to St. George’s, but we have always found the selection to be greater here. A brief pause to buy some mangos from a guy under a tree in the parking lot and then we headed back “home,” where we spent the day in a circuit of swimming, sunning, and relaxing on those marvelous swings.

Dinner found us at Charcoal’s, a new BBQ restaurant in Lanse Aux Epines, just down the road from our villa. It’s clean and casual and fun, not to mention reasonably priced. DH selected the grilled lambi platter while I opted for the babyback rib platter, each accompanied by our choice of 2 sides. One beer, one rum punch, and one order of ice cream brought our total to EC $101, or about $38 in US. They also offer take out, which seemed to be a popular choice the night we were there.

Charcoals in LAE

Another early night back to the villa for more reading and then bedtime—I finished Myla Goldberg’s forthcoming book, The False Friend.

Stay tuned for Part II

Did I really miss all of May and most of June?

June I've been away for most of the month, but May I have no excuse for...except for the part of having only 4 hours off that month (or so it seemed at the time). Here's what I did and what I read while I was doing it:

Travel Day 1 (June 6)

Spent night at the Doubletree Hotel in Windsor Locks, CT. Morning American flight on time but crowded since the Miami flight was cancelled. With an extremely long layover in SJU we opted to leave the aeropuerto and head to Pamela's Restaurant at the Guesthouse Numero Uno in Condado. Taxi ride was about 10 minutes, $17 + tip for the two of us and our bags.

Lunch was a pleasant and unhurried affair. The beach is wide and as it was a Saturday there was a pretty good crowd forming. Couples and families alike, with lots of dogs. Perfect for people watching. Lunch was delicious but expensive: two Medallas, one mojito, one fizzy water, two appetizers, one salad, and one cappuccino came to $90. A 15% gratuity was already included and marked plainly on both the menus and the bill. The organic salad was great—mixed greens, manchego, red bell pepper, red onion, slivers of mango, and a mango/balsamic vinaigrette, lightly dressed. Oysters on the halfshell, served with a wonderful frozen cherry-melon concoction for sweetness, plus the usual lemon, horseradish, and red sauce. Jerk chicken satay—big enough to be a meal in themselves. Unfortunately I forgot to specify no cilantro as a garnish, so there was a cilantro coulis on the plate. I could wipe most of it off, though.

So we ate, read, chatted, and enjoyed the view. There were half a dozen kiteboarders. Some close to shore, some perilously far at sea, or at least so it seemed to me. It was very windy—you could see a haze of sand hovering about the beach. Passing showers just shy of being intense enough to drive us inside.

We left Pamela’s around 3:00 to head back to the airport. Slight lines to get through security, then a wait at the gate. American Eagle flights now board at the other end of the terminal—Gate 16 instead of Gate 1. Barry bought a bottle of vodka so we’d have something to sip when we arrived. Flight to Grenada also on time. Landed a few minutes early. Breezed through immigration , got our bags, then breezed through customs. We didn’t get any forms back, which is a little unusual. Grabbed a taxi and made our way to Turtleback. We arrived around 8:45pm, early enough so that Sharon and Anthon didn’t have the gate unlocked yet, so I called softly out to them through the gate and Sharon came right away.

We settled in for the evening with our feet soaking in the pool, vodkas and Ting in hand. Finished book 1: Making Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin.

Grenada Day 1

Woke to overcast skies and finally got out of bed around 9:00 am after dozing lazily on & off for about three hours. Sunrise comes with a vengeance, all at once, around 6:00. We padded about the apartment, made coffee, and went outside with our books. I took a swim and alternated between sun and shelter during the brief showers. Car from Y&R was delivered around 10:00, but instead of leaving to get groceries right away we settled back into our books. Made toast, drank more coffee, went swimming again. Finally got dressed to have lunch and started off toward La Belle Creole. Felt we were a little underdressed for Blue Horizons/La Belle Creole, so we doubled back and made our way toward the Lagoon to try Tropicana. On the way we saw dense black smoke on the horizon but I assumed it was bush burning. We found out later that the older stadium (not the new one for the Cricked World Cup) had caught fire. Lunch was very good and very leisurely. Felt very local. I had stewed pork, Bubba had oyster chicken for EC $30 each, accompanied by the usual provision plus a green salad. I had ting, he had iced tea with a small pitcher of sugar syrup to sweeten it. Lots of rain while we ate. Traffic noise sometimes impeded conversation, but we brought our books to read. Lunch came to EC $80, including tax & extra tip. 10% gratuity was included but I added more to it.

We drove around a bit to orient myself to driving on the left and to see if we could easily find BB’s Crab Shack where we’d like to go for dinner one night. I always prefer to find things by day first and then find our way back by night.

Finished my second book of the trip, Jonathan Tropper’s Here’s Where I Leave You. At first it felt a little light, a little wah-wah. One of those books about how hard it is to be an upper middle class white man, you know? . But it was casual, honest, funny, and with some actual insight into human nature. Like Jim Harrison, it’s his sense of humor that saves him from being ordinary and annoying. Sometimes it’s nice to read a book that confirms exactly how hard it is simply to get by. That acknowledges that we’re looking for more, that we’re all perhaps a little disappointed with ourselves and where we’ve ended up. But there’s a dignity to it, too.

Went back to the villa to try to connect to the internet, but still no luck. We’re reading a full signal from the air-port. We’ve tried turning the thing off & on, restarting the computer, but nothing is working. I even took the cable and tried it directly in my laptop, to no avail.

Now we’re kicking back with cocktails and trying to figure out where and when we’ll go for dinner tonight. We have a few things in the pantry & fridge now from grocery shopping. It’s Sunday night, so our options are limited. And without a phone book and without an internet connection it’s going to be hit-or-miss driving around to find someplace that’s open tonight. Today at lunch we were the only patrons for the first hour we were there. The island’s tourist economy is way down, even for the off season.

We decided on La Belle Creole, the restaurant at Blue Horizons, for dinner since we bypassed it for lunch earlier. We were one of only two tables tonight. Food was excellent and a pretty good value. Two soups, two appetizers, one dessert, one coffee, three cocktails came to EC $151. Barry had the cold christophene soup served in a vichyssoise style and I had the hot cream of tannia soup. Then we moved on to the sugar cane shrimp and the callaloo soufflé. For dessert we shared soursop ice cream. I had the coffee (decaf) and he had the Grand Marnier to end the meal. 10% gratuity was already included and we added some more for the very good service we received.

NB: We learned from our server tonight that it was not, in fact, the stadium that burned today but a private home behind the stadium. Burned entirely to the ground but at least nobody was injured.

Now I’m in bed, about halfway through J. M. Coetzee’s Slow Man, which I believed was published as Elizabeth Costello abroad. I’m not sure if I like it yet or night, but it does have my interest piqued.

Here are some photos of the gorgeous Turtleback Pavilion where we stayed. The rooftop pavilion and the swings were my favorite parts!