First Day On the Island

Stormy morning on Barnes Bay

When I woke up on Friday morning after the big thunderstorm in the night, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but rain or shine, I knew it would be a good day.  I went outside to snap a few photos while Michael was still sleeping, but since we had decided the night before to drive to Geraud’s together (rather than my driving there to bring breakfast back to the villa), I couldn’t let him linger too long in bed!

Chairs, umbrella, and hammock for our private use

Geraud’s had moved to their new location since my last visit to the island and I was curious to see how it looked.  The new location provides more seating and shows off their pastries to greater effect, but there was something about the old location that I missed that I can’t quite put my finger on.  Oh, right -- it was the use of real plates & silverware, not styrofoam and plastic. The environment notwithstanding, the quality of the pastries and the coffee has not diminished, and it’s a little bit easier to pull back out onto the main road now, too, in the new location.

We selected a coconut & a lemon danish, an almond croissant, and a cheese turnover for our repast and tucked into them with considerable gusto. The iced coffees were excellent, and we talked over our plan for the day at a leisurely pace, and then drove back to Villa Ella to pack a beach bag and head out for the day.

The Place on Rendezvous Bay became my favorite beach bar around the same time that Rendezvous Bay became my favorite beach. I fell in love with it for its gorgeous location, ample shade, good food at decent-for-Anguilla prices, and its wonderful staff, particularly Mo and Dave.  Unfortunately, those two no longer work there, but the current staff was genial and bid us choose whatever location we desired for the day.  They had been so recently re-opened that they didn’t have their beach umbrellas yet, so we selected a shady spot under the palm fronds, started a tab, and settled in to read, always keeping an eye to the sky, where the clouds were constantly in motion and threatening to rain.

Terribly crowded, these Anguilla beaches

We read, we walked the beach, we swam in that glorious, glorious water, and did a repeat of that throughout the morning.  While Michael had been on a Caribbean cruise before, this was his first time staying on a tropical island and the first time he’d stepped foot on a tropical beach. As a Yankee whose ocean swimming was in latitudes of Rhode Island and farther north, swimming on Anguilla was a revelation. If it weren’t for our sunburn-prone skin and a ridiculous tendency to prune, we could have stayed in that water for simply hours.

Our server came out around 12:30 to let us know that a large group would be arriving for lunch at 1:00 and to recommend that we put our food order in before that.  Happy to oblige, we shifted from our beach chairs to our lunch chairs and ordered the jerk chicken sandwich, a hamburger, and a couple of Tings to quench our thirst after such a hard morning. They brought out the wrong hamburger, but by that time we were so hungry that we decided to just keep it. My jerk sandwich wasn’t spicy at all, and the French fries were pretty pedestrian, but both sandwiches were good and filling, and at the right price. Meanwhile Michael continued his quest to try every rum punch on the island (verdict: a bit too sweet for me, just right for him).

It started sprinkling, and then raining in earnest, so we hastily moved our chaises longues under the shelter of the roof on the western side of the building and there we were content to continue reading for a while. One of the families who had been traveling with us on the public ferry drove up for a late lunch and we had fun chatting with them about their trip.

After a while, the sky cleared enough for us to take a walk, followed by one last swim and one last rum punch before packing everything up around 3:00. Once back at the villa, we went for our first swim on Barnes Bay.  Because of the rocks, getting in and out of the water here can be tricky, depending on the surf, but we managed to avoid getting banged up. Napping and getting ready for dinner took up the rest of our afternoon until sunset, when we had a good bit of color in the sky -- moreso the light reflecting on the clouds than from the sun itself.  If we had known then that it would be our last good sunset of the trip, we might have made even more photos.

We had been looking forward to trying a new-to-both-of-us spot for dinner that night -- Criss Conch Shack on Sandy Ground. Since their menu says that they’re open Friday-Saturday-Sunday at 6:30, and since I have some experience with island time, we showed up at 7:00, eager to sample some conch and other local delicacies. We parked across the street from the Pumphouse and carefully made our way in the dark towards the Conch Shack -- that part of Sandy Ground is not well lit AT ALL -- but they were still closed and nobody was around to ask about it.

Undeterred, we walked towards the lights at Elvis's to have a drink before giving it another go. Michael did the rum punch while I opted for the less-sweet planters punch, both of which we enjoyed. By 7:30, there was still no light on down by Criss Conch Shack and we were decidedly peckish, so we went with the item on the menu that featured something Michael wanted to eat while on the island -- the “goatchos” are a nachos platter for two, featuring slow-roasted goat. I’m not sure if it was a matter of how good the food was or a matter of how hungry we were, but we practically inhaled them.  We did, however, have just enough to share with a couple who walked up while we were eating to offer them a bit -- they had never had goat before and were very, very curious.

By that time, Michael had walked up the beach again to see if the other place had opened.  They were nearly ready, but by that time we were feeling more than sassified from our meal and not inclined to order more food, despite how much we were looking forward to it.  We had one more round of drinks at Elvis’s, and by the time we left, the Conch Shack was open for business...two and a half hours after their advertised open time. Were we disappointed not to try a new place? Sure. But we agreed that our time at Elvis’s was a great night -- we talked to everybody at the bar and still had plenty of quiet time for the two of us to chat. There were expats and locals and tourists all there, and of course Elvis is great for telling a story or two.

We hit the sack almost as soon as we got home, knowing that we’d have another full and wonderful day ahead of us tomorrow.

Anguilla, Once More

As some of my readers know (“my readers” -- not that there are many of you left, so if you’re reading this, thank you), 2015 was a difficult year, personally speaking.  While 2016 held many improvements, blogging regularly was not one of them, so it’s a little difficult to break back into the game at this late state.  But after being two years absent from my favorite spot on earth, I returned to Anguilla earlier this month, and what’s more, I was traveling with my new beau, whom I wanted to fall in love with the island, too. So I’m hoping that my two loves combined might give me a little extra oomph to get back in the blogging game before 2016 expires.

And so I bought my ticket with frequent miles and in early November, we made the 12-hour journey from home to my home-away-from-home. For the first time ever, I made the transfer on the public ferry.  We took a taxi from the airport to Marigot, which was around $20, plus tip, and we bought our tickets on the public ferry.  We waited around about 25 minutes and before long, we headed out for Anguilla. There were about 30 of us on board, and with the rain falling, we relied on the many small rotating fans to make the journey more comfortable -- including the rickety one that creaked a scant inch or two over our heads and threatened to brain us with the crest & trough of every wave.

Waiting in Marigot for our departure

We arrived at immigration at Blowing Point and stood in line for a longer time than one would think for such a small point of entry, and even so, we saw at least one small private charter disembark after we arrived that had some of our fellow passengers from the MIA-SXM leg of the trip.  So take that for what it’s worth when you decide which way to get from SXM to AXA in terms of time and cost.

I had arranged with Ronnie Bryan to leave our car at Blowing Point for a small fee -- he rents a parking area less than one minute away from the ferry terminal exit, and he may be the only rental car guy on the island who can arrange a pick up point there. So we drove straight from Blowing Point to Villa Ella on Barnes Bay to let our vacation begin straight away. It was difficult to believe our good fortune getting to stay right on the beach like that. Barnes Bay has long been a favorite location of mine, but for this trip we wanted to find a place I hadn’t stayed before, and Villa Ella charmed me from the first time I saw it from the beach many years ago. I felt very lucky, indeed, to be able to call it home for the week.

We unpacked and hurriedly changed out of our cold-New-England-travel-clothes into something more beach appropriate to catch the last light of the day. It had been raining off and on since we arrived in Sint Maarten and there wasn’t much color or fanfare, but it was pretty special anyway -- marking my return to Anguilla after so long and sharing our first Anguillian sunset.

I was surprised to see a scattered bit of fiery color come through the storm clouds, but it felt fitting after our twelve hours of travel. The waves were crashing on Barnes Bay, there was significantly more exposed rock than I’d ever seen on that end of the beach and everything looked so different from my previous visits, yet I can’t begin to explain how thoroughly I felt at home there.  If you have ever loved a place like that, a place that is neither of your birth nor of your people, then you will know exactly what I mean.

The villa owner and manager had kindly provided some bottled water and soda in the refrigerator upon our arrival, so as we were quite hungry from our long day on the road, we settled in to share the last of our protein bars and drink the libation.  We’d debated the merits of leaving then to pick up some more provisions before dinner time, but we had an early reservation and were planning to go out for breakfast the next day, so we stayed at the villa to unpack and unwind before walking up the beach for our dinner at Mango’s.

You can see the size of the waves in the background photo here

Surprisingly we were not the first table to arrive, despite the fact that it was only 6:30.  It was wonderful to see Andrea again (whose table we of course requested!), and we chatted for a while about our families and the island. I started the meal with my traditional mango martini and Michael opted for one of their rum punches -- which turned out to be his first of many on this trip.  I somehow neglected to take any photographs of what we had, partly because I was so tired and partly because my phone was about to die.  We shared the cracked conch salad as a starter, and then I moved on to the sesame snapper while Michael chose the seafood pasta with lobster, snapper, and grouper in a spicy tomato sauce.  The seafood past was good, but the conch and the snapper were both delicious, and our first round of drinks went down with tolerable ease, so we ordered a second round.

Too tired and too full to stay for dessert, we headed back home up the beach, but not before checking in with Andrea to see what her schedule for the week was so that we could plan to run into her again. Mango’s accepts the Anguilla card, and Kim (one of the owners) was gracious enough to accept the digital version of it since our physical card hadn’t been delivered yet. She also kindly gave us two mini torches with the Mango’s insignia to light our way back to the villa without having to deplete my phone battery.

We stayed awake just long enough to put a plan together for the next day -- up for breakfast at Geraud’s, followed by a visit to The Place -- before succumbing to sleep.  The a/c in the master bedroom worked very well, but if the room had a ceiling fan and/or had been better ventilated for breezes, we might have chosen to open the windows to fall asleep to the sounds of the surf instead. As it was, we slept through most of the night until a ginormous thunderstorm rolled through around 4:00 am, knocking the power out but compensating for that loss with a heavy rain that was wonderful to listen to before falling asleep again.

Coming up next: our first day on the island, plus the agony of choosing which pastry to order for breakfast...

Book Review: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

This book is marvelous.  It’s likely to be the best book I’ll read all year, or in years to come. Mostly I just want to sit here and heap it with accolades, but that probably isn’t as helpful to potential readers as an actual book review would be.

The short version: I am truly floored by the talent of this new young writer. Gyasi (pronounced like “Jessie”) follows the parallel lineages of two half-sisters through several generations, beginning in 18th century Ghana at the height of the slave trade. Effia marries a European slave trader while Esi is abducted from her village and sold, and each generation of their descendants carries the family narrative forward in separate chapters, each of which can almost be read as a discrete short story in its own right. The ending brings the novel full circle and is satisfying in the extreme. This book is hauntingly beautiful and it made my heart ache again and again.

The longer version: Homegoing is a book of meticulous, dare I say superlative, craft. The narrative is relentlessly propulsive, and yet Gyasi has pared down a story that is truly epic in scope to a mere 300 pages. It is a book that explores the terrible and ongoing repercussions of enslaving a race, but which does so with an open heart and an eye toward a future where persons, and a people, might yet be made whole. It is the work of a writer at the top of her game, so the fact that Gyasi is a debut novelist not yet turned 30 is all the more astonishing. It is a story of always seeking the missing part, of looking for home in the next place each character ventures, whether it’s of their own volition or not.

If I had dogeared every page where Gyasi’s words resonated with me, I’d have every other page turned down, but here is a passage that were deeply meaningful, and which, I think, give an excellent idea of the urgency behind much of the book and what the writer is capable of:

Originally he [Marcus, six generations removed from Esi] wanted to focus his work on the convict leasing system that had stolen years off of his Great-Grandpa H’s life, but the deeper into the research he got, the bigger the project got. How could he talk about Great Grandpa H’s story without also talking about his Grandma Willie and the millions of other black people who had migrated north, fleeing Jim Crow? And if he mentioned the Great Migration, he’d have to talk about the cities that took that flock in. He’d have to talk about Harlem. And how could he talk about Harlem without mentioning his father’s heroin addiction  -- the stints in prison, the criminal record? And if he was going to talk about heroin in Harlem in the 60s, wouldn’t he also have to talk about crack everywhere in the 80s? And if he wrote about crack, he’d be inevitably be writing, too, about the “war on drugs.” And if he started talking about the war on drugs, he’d be talking about how nearly half of the black men he grew up with were on their way either into or out of what had become the harshest prison system in the world. And if he talked about friends from his hood were doing five-year bids for possession of marijuana when nearly all the white people he’d gone to college with smoked it openly every day, he’d get so angry that he’d slam the research book on the table of the beautiful but deadly silent Lane Reading Room of Green Library of Stanford University, and then everyone in the room would stare and all they would see would be his skin and his anger, and they’d think they knew something about him, and it would be same something that had justified putting his great-grandpa H in prison, only it would be different too, less obvious than it once was (289-290).

Do you see what she just did there? Do you?

Effia’s descendants, still in Ghana, are as lost as Esi’s are in America, and though never saying it outright, Gyasi implies that the effects of slavery -- the abduction, selling, and general obliteration of personhood of a race over generations -- still vibrate in the mitochondrial level of our DNA. Borne back ceaselessly into the past, indeed.

This book is going to be an important book -- important in the way that Toni Morrison’s Beloved has become important -- and it is certainly the hallmark of an uncommon literary talent. I almost always scoff when I hear that Unknown Author X has been paid bazillions of dollars for Debut Book Y, but in this case, Homegoing is worth every penny that Knopf has paid for it. And possibly then some.

If you’re going to read one work of literary fiction this year, it should be this one. I’m not sure that I can say anything else.

NB: I read an advance reading copy of this book provided at my request from the publisher. Its US publication date is tomorrow, June 7, and I’m tickled that I’ll get a chance to meet the author next week when she signs at my store on June 15. 

Last Month in Review: May 2016

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My reading concentration is slowly improving, so I’m a-gonna talk about the books I read last month as a  prelude to writing an actual book review.  Some of these books were amazing.  In chronological order, here’s what I read:

Mischling by Affinity Konar. Holy shit, y’all.  This is some serious stuff. Here’s the succinct blurb that I gave the publisher, else I’d just be rambling up in here tonight: It’s difficult to imagine a more horrific subject for a novel than the sadistic experiments Dr.Mengele performed on twins in Auschwitz, but debut author Konar manages to craft something magnificent from such dark origins. Pearl and Stasha tell their stories in alternating chapters, each twin doing her utmost to protect her sister in the camp, their shared history almost enough to create their belief in a shared future on the other side. Konar’s language is so fresh and inventive, even occasionally playful, that it creates a powerful and shocking juxtaposition against the narrative. This author is going places, and after reading this book, I will want to be along for the ride. Every. Single. Time. 

The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson.  This was charming.  Did you read and love her previous book, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand? If so, you would probably like this.  Did you love the first two seasons of Downton Abbey, right before and then during The Great War? Then you’d probably like.  It’s a small English village, a woman who has been scandalously hired to teach Latin to school boys, and all of the insulated gender and class restrictions of that age. This is not one of those life-changing-but-exhausting-to-read books. This is a book you’ll want to read when you want to escape a little without putting your mind entirely on vacation.

Redemption Road by John Hart.  This was an audio book I listened to, narrated by Scott Shepherd.  Pretty good.  I don’t read thrillers, by and large, but the publisher sent an advance listening copy to the store, so I nabbed it. Maybe it’s because I’m required to listen at a slower pace than I would read if I had a physical book in front of me, but there were several plot "twists" in this book that I saw coming from pretty early on. There were a few moments where listening to this book creeped me out, but I doubt anybody who regularly reads thrillers would feel that way.  I felt the ending was a bit too pat, and to me the serial killer identity was pretty obvious from the early chapters, but the writing is really solid and Hart brilliantly evokes certain parts of North Carolina with his prose.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.  This was an audio book that I purchased for the specific purpose of driving home from Portland, ME one weekend.  It was the perfect length.  I figured that I would like this book and find it both moving and anger-inducing, and I was spot-on about that.  But what I wasn’t expecting about this book was the sheer lyricism of the prose.  Really beautifully written. The author reads it himself. I highly recommend this one.

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett.  This is a quiet novel, especially compared to Bel Canto or State of Wonder.  It opens on a fateful day in LA -- a community comes together for a christening, but their lives are forever changed when the husband of one family falls in love with the wife of another. We see the parents and the children across the years and the consequences and emotional fallout wrought by that first infidelity.  Very good.  Patchett often sneaks up on the reader with her writing and insights.


The Best Revenge and The Best Revenge: Time of the Basilisk by Arsinoe de Blassenville.  This is a pairing of Harry Potter fan fictions, the first of which is novel length and the second of which is a novella. They begin with the “What if Snape was the first wizard Harry interacted with?” trope and they end with events from the canon book two, but in reality, all of the action takes place within Harry’s first year.  Because of his relationship with Lily Evans Potter, Snape becomes Harry’s wizarding proxy and things turn out very, very differently. I love these stories -- they’re well written and well paced, and they show sides of both Hufflepuff and Slytherin that Rowling herself was unable to show due to the Harry filter.

Not a terrible showing. I don’t know how many pages the fanfics would be, but Goodreads tells me that my page count for all of the other items comes to 1,753 pages. Except where noted, all of the books I read were advance reading copies provided by the publisher, often at my request.

How ‘bout y’all?  What books were you most excited about reading in May?  

Stay-Cation + Bacon = Bacation

Wow, I’m off to a blazing start for the year, aren’t I?  Two blog posts in four months?  Only the most dedicated of bloggers would be able to top that.  As my friend Alley says, it’s so much easier not to write a blog post than to write one, and I’ve apparently been exploring the exciting world of not writing blog posts for quite some time.  I’ll give this travel post a shot to see if I can overcome the inertia of not writing.

Last week, I had three and a half days off from work, plus my regular weekend, and my beau and I had planned to visit Washington, DC, for our first vacation together. Funds were a little tight, so we selected DC as a great place because most of the fun activities available there are free. Sadly, we both had unexpected expenses in March that made canceling the trip the wiser thing to do. Yay for adulting and all of that.

So we canceled DC and decided to stay home.  My roommate was going to be away for the entire week traveling for work, so we’d still have lots of privacy, and on the plus side, we ended up eating bacon every day for the win. For a little splurge, we decided to head up to Brattleboro, VT, for one night.  We originally selected a private apartment via AirBnB, but it wasn’t available the night we wanted to go, so we rented a room in somebody’s apartment instead, with a shared bathroom.  Here’s the pretty, light-filled room we selected:

The apartment was within walking distance of downtown, which was our primary criterion, and after dropping off our bags, we headed out to explore.  A little online research had revealed a few things we wanted to do whilst in the area, all of which pertained to eating and drinking. I’d worked out a little time table to make sure we could take it all in.

Our first stop was Saxtons River Distillery, maker and purveyor of fine maple-infused spirits. They offer free tastings of all of their beverages, plus tastings of the maple bitters that they sell, but do not make. There was maple bourbon, maple rye, maple liqueur made with neutral spirits, a coffee liqueur, and then their super-special aged maple one. I’m not a big maple fan, so I was quite taken by surprise with how much I enjoyed them all. I’m also not a big rye fan, so I was even more surprised that I liked the rye better than the bourbon. We bought a few bottles, took some photos, and thanked the young man for his time. 

Next up was a stop at the Grafton Village Cheese Company.  They offer lots of complimentary cheese tastings -- perhaps twenty? -- and also have various jams, sauces, and spreads available for tasting, too.

We poked around, we sampled everything. Well, I sampled everything except the Bernie Sanders “Feel the Bern” Habañero Mango Jam, because I’m a wimp when it comes to spicy things. The nice cheesemonger behind the counter struck up a conversation with us for a few minutes and then she offered to let us sample one of the super-duper-fancy gourmet cheeses that sell for roughly $50/pound -- the one she opened up for us was a medium cheddar marbled with black truffles.  Very yummy!

This is where the magic happens!

We made our selections, paused at the observation window to see the cheese making in the back room, snapped a few photos, including some of the burros grazing in a paddock outside, and headed back to our room. Where I promptly fell on the bed for a nap.  I’d hurt my back the day before at work, and the extra-firm mattress was just the thing.  Apparently what with all of the cheese and booze sampling, I had missed my mid-afternoon ibuprofen replenishment for staying ahead of the pain.

After my refreshing nap, we walked downtown to the Hermit Thrush Brewery, home to many sour beers.  I didn’t know from sour beer a year ago, but my beau has introduced me to its joys. I mostly don’t mind beer, and I like darker beers like stouts, but I may just start a love affair with the sour ones.

This place was made for us. Well, except for the awful, uncomfortable seating, this place was made for us.  Really, folks, just buy some actual bar stools -- don’t make your patrons perch aloft on those spinning atrocities with no feet on them. We ordered two different tasting flights, plus samples of their two beers not available as part of their flights.

We bought a mini growler of the Green St sour IPA to go and headed out into the world to see what we could find for dinner.  We basically just stopped in everywhere to check out the menus, and we had just agreed that we would do a full lap of the restaurants downtown before committing to a location, when a sandwich board on the sidewalk stopped me in my tracks -- the Fireworks restaurant was hawking a cocktail special featuring passionfruit purée.  In we went. Obviously.

They had me at passionfruit purée

It was the right choice.  I was in the mood for cocktails, and good ones, too, dammit. We planned ahead by walking, and it was vacation, dammit. So you’ll pardon me for forgetting the names of some of the drinks I had.  We had five cocktails between us, and they were all amazing. Carefully-crafted, well-balanced, and all featuring a house-made infusion or flavored syrup, this might be my favorite cocktail menu I’ve ever encountered in New England.

Bacon Old-Fashioned. For the win.

Wishful Thinking, featuring muddled cucumber, house made limoncello,  and mint syrup

We also tried the Pineapple-Thai Basil Margaritaand The Payback,
featuring jalapeño infused tequila and muddled kiwi. Kiwi, I say!

Oh, yes.  There was also food.  We shared the Pizza Bella, which had garlic shrimp, arugula, and shaved cheese on it.  It was amazing.  And the perfect size for sharing when one has no recourse for leftovers.  So what if our food bill was $17 and our bar bill was $47? It was all worth it.  Every bit of it.

We went someplace else for dessert, but it wasn’t memorable, and then we walked back to our room for the night.  Brattleboro, I like you and your walkability. The next morning we poked around in various shops for a couple of hours before hitting the road for home.  Although I had two coworkers check in on the kitties, I was still a little worried about leaving Murray for so long -- Murray of the high vet bills who had almost died a few weeks before.

There’s a small town called Shelburne Falls on the way home from Brattleboro that is picturesque and quaint, and best known for its Bridge of Flowers, so we made the slight detour to check it out.  The day was beautiful and sunny, but unseasonably chilly, and alas, very few flowers were actually in bloom on the eponymous bridge.

Here’s what it looks like in other seasons:

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There weren’t many things open that we wanted to explore, so we walked down to the glacier potholes instead.  You can’t get as close to them as you once could, but it was still interesting.

Who knew that grinding and gyrating could create such wonders?

We stayed for awhile, listening to the thunder of the water and meditating on the perfect roundness of the potholes and the forces that created them. But then it was time to head homeward and bid adieu to our one-night [vacation] stand. After all, there was bacon in our near future and we didn’t want to miss a bite of it.