Mini-Moon Day 1 - Alex

Boy did I come down from the wedding hard. About 20 minutes after getting home from dinner at Artisanal Sunday night (review to be situated in our soon to be constructed restaurant section - although our meals in the bahamas will be dual-situated(just as soon as I have the time to figure out how to do it(oh, and get used to a whole lot of asides like this, it’s what I do, and it’s going to lead to some very unfortunate punctuation like the following.))) I came down with the chills, and spent the night with a nice little fever. Thankfully, sometime around 3:30 I actually fell into a restful sleep, so that I could wake up again at 5:30 for our 8am flight. But oh, what a difference two hours make...I’d already broken a sweat and was on the road to recovery.

As usual, the JetBlue terminal was a breeze to get through security, and had at the Clibo Express what may be one of the greatest culinary inventions ever - the Cap’n Crunch Krispie Treat. It’s like a Rice Krispie treat turned up to 11. It probably doesn’t hurt that I one time ate an entire Cap’n Crunch box of cereal in one sitting. Tasted great, but boy was the roof of my mouth in shreds for a week afterwards.

Our Flight remarkably left on time (it is JetBlue we’re talking about here, right?), and gave me the opportunity for another two hours of sleep/recovery. Thankfully I woke up in time to see us coming in over the Bahamas. Unfortunately, I was far to groggy, and new to this blogging thing to think to take out my camera and snap some nice landing photos. Sorry Folks, but probably get used to it - I’m not really much of a shutterbug, but I’ll try and get better.

After landing, we made it through customs with a breeze (apparently right after the kids go back to school and during the heart of the hurricane season is not the peak travel time for the Bahamas.) we caught a taxi for the long (5 minute) ride to our hotel, the beautiful and secluded Compass Point.

As we checked in, we discovered to our surprise and delight that the hotel had opened up a spa since we’d booked in, and promptly scheduled back to back massages that we enjoyed (exactly what our tired bodies called for!) right after being escorted to our cute little 2nd floor hut on stilts overlooking the ocean.

Lunch was at the hotel restaurant, where we got our first taste of bahamian Conch (the local specialty) - in two styles, the more enjoyable fritter - which is basically a ball of fried dough with little bits of conch in it (somewhat the consistency of clam), and the less successful cracked conch, which is large pieces of it hammered out battered and fried like chicken fingers or fish sticks. A bit too tough and chewy for my taste. Eleanor also had a grouper burger (grouper being the local fresh fish) that she was much more fond of than I, but we both agreed that it’s a poor substitute for mahi-mahi in a sandwich. While the fries accompanying her burger were rather inedible, the peas and rice (another local specialty) that came with my cracked conch were a winner. They reminded me a lot of the rice and beans we had in Belize. A definite winner there. Also, first experience with Kilik beer, the beer of the bahamas. In this case Kilik light. Not bad, fairly indistinguishable from any other light beer. I’ll just let you know now that you’re in for a whole lot more heavy food description. It’s what we love, and what is probably going to be the main purpose of the blog on a day to day basis - so if you don’t like it - tough - you can just skip the food paragraphs and revel in the rest of my overly detailed and vapid writings.

The rest of the day was spent lounging by the pool, reveling in the sun, and napping out the rest of this wedding decompression. I of course forgot to put on sunscreen before falling asleep in the lounge chair, but as of yet no burns.

We were mildly chagrined to discover that along with our remote location, there is a distinct lack of grocery stores and restaurants in the area. In fact, from what we were able to glean, other than taking a $17 cab ride into cable beach, there was exactly one other restaurant (Travelers Rest) and no stores anywhere within walking distance of the hotel. However, the good news - all reviews pointed to Travelers Rest as being a very good local restaurant, good fried fish and the like, so we set out to get some dinner there, as it appeared to be a 5-10 minute walk down the road.

The first thing we discovered was that the road is definitely NOT meant to be walked down. It’s one lane each way, there’s no shoulder whatsoever, and a whole lot of blind curves. We did pass an intriguing looking little stand on our way with a pile of live conch on the ground in front of it and a bunch of locals eating conch salad (more on this later). I questioned the wisdom of our quest numerous times in our 10 minute walk, but as E reminded me - if we were able to do it at 11:30 on new years eve on a pitch black road (a story for another day) we could certainly brave this for some good food.

Well, the second thing we discovered (if you don’t count the conch stand, which I suppose you should, so I guess this is the third thing we discovered, but that’s really neither here nor there) was Travelers Rest. Closed from September 16th until October 9th. Whoops.

With a shrug of our shoulders we braved the trek along the perilous road (which I might add had surprisingly more traffic than I would have thought for an area that has no markets or restaurants whatsoever). Of course now we had to stop at the conch stand and taste or third preparation of conch in one day. I must say, it doesn’t get much more fresh than this, as we watched the guy crack a conch out of it’s shell - salt it, wash it, then chop it up along with some onions, tomatoes, green pepper, chili pepper (REALLY REALLY REALLY hot chili pepper I might add) and lime juice to acid cook the conch. Interesting flavors, but E and I both agreed that the conclusion we were rapidly coming to was that we’re just not huge fans of conch. So after a few bites each, we tossed the rest and re-entered the hotel, mouthes on fire to see what their dinner is like.

Before I get to the meal, I must say there isn’t a much nicer way to eat a meal than outdoors by the ocean. The Four Seasons in New York may be one of the grandest rooms you’ll ever dine in, but in the end I don’t know that we ever top nature.

Dinner itself was mediocre. I will grant that I wasn’t particularly hungry, after our large lunch and conch starter, so maybe I’m not being fair, but we’ll probably be eating here again, so I’ll compare then. No starters tonight (that was already taken care of!) but we did get our first island drinks - long overdue! - a strawberry daiquiri for the lady and a banana one for me. Nothing to write home about (yet here I am doing it, go figure) but cool and refreshing (A quick aside here about island bread - it’s awful. It always seems to be some sort of brioche like substance yet dry and crumbly instead of soft and doughy like it should be. I don’t know whether they like it that way on the islands, or it’s something to do with the humidity. Either way, it’s definitely not a winner.). Eleanor had the sauteed snapper with more of those delicious peas and rice, and I had the half rack of ribs with steak fries. She seemed to like her snapper, but it was a bit too chewy and fishy for my taste. That said, I think that probably says more for my dislike of snapper than their preparation of it. The ribs were okay, not bad, not worth ordering again, a bit overly sweet. Steak fries were okay but I wish I’d asked for some more of the peas and rice instead. Portion size definitely left nothing to complain about. I barely finished half of my half rack. I stand slack-jawed in awe of anyone who dares to try and tackle their full rack.

We didn’t have any wine with dinner, but I should mention that they had a surprisingly full wine list (complete with a 1993 Mouton-Rothschild that is on the menu thanks to Sir Sean Connery, who apparently lives around here and is known to frequent the restaurant - at least according to one of the Bahamas magazines in our room), if overpriced - but hey, you’re in the islands and at the only restaurant within several miles - a bit of a captive audience there.

After dinner we retired to our hut for the evening, when (thankfully after we got inside) the heavens opened up and some truly stupendous rain came crashing down and serenaded us to sleep.

p.s. Sorry for the insanely long entry, but in my defense it is my first, and this is the first day of our honeymoon, so I’ve got a lot to say. Hopefully my future entries will be slightly shorter. Tune in to see!