Well folks, I don’t know where to begin, so bear with me as I muddle through. This was initially going to be what Carol Hill would refer to as a ‘stealth trip’. While at Contessa’s ‘Pahty’ in May a good friend and fellow TTOLer offered the group his timeshare for August. I thought nothing of it as we had just returned on May 3rd from two weeks on island. On the way home Pam suggested that being retired I should go myself even though she had to work. Oh, alright, says I, if I have to I will. So we called Fred as soon as we could and made the arrangements. At the last week she was able to get the time off so she booked her air and was able to get on the same flights down as I. Then we put ourselves on the calendar and started to PM folks who we knew would be there. Okay, that’s the background.


ACCOMODATIONS
We stayed at the Sea Palace on Front St. in Philipsburg. It was a lovely unit with a balcony that overlooked Great Bay. It had everything that one could want for comfortable living. One complaint is I was starting to get a backache every time I bent down to wash my hands in that silly little sink next to the toilet. It even splashed me in the face one time when I turned the faucet on too high. I took to using the regular one after that and left the silly one for shorter folk. The Sea Palace is so centrally located that one would not need a car for anything. At that end of Great Bay the beach is pretty and clean. Restaurants and stores are literally minutes away, in some cases, seconds away.

TTOL
As I mentioned earlier, I PMed some TTOLers as a pre-meeting introduction. I was looking forward to meeting so many new (to me) fellow board members. I was not disappointed. I really am loathe to mention names for fear of leaving someone out. Suffice it to say that all who I met lived up to my expectations of fellow TTOLers. Sometimes you can read the way someone posts things, get a feel for them, look at their photos, etc. I certainly had fun joking, conversing, playing, sharing cocktails with all of them. Because Pam and I had to come from P’burg every day, we couldn’t bring much in the way of refreshment. Not if it was to stay cold, at least. Well, wouldn’t you know, in the true TTOL spirit, no fewer than three gentlemen kept feeding me ice cold beer that was just brought from their units at Club O. They know who they are. To them I say Thank You! Oh, and also thanks to the same bunch for altering our future trip plans to include a visit to the Ma Dou Dou factory as Pam is now hooked too. Every morning upon arriving at the beach, Pam would take a long walk with Sue (loves beaches) to Mt. Vernon and back while I set up the chairs, drank my coffee, ate my croissant and enjoyed the view. I had thought about swimming out to Green Cay but it seems as if they had moved the island out further than when it was the last time I made the swim. (1989) I passed on that silly thought.

FOOD
Because we were staying on a side of the island that we wouldn’t normally frequent we decided to try a few restaurants that we might never have gotten to if not at the Sea Palace. So, in no particular order I present them. My memory has already forgotten what we had everywhere.
• Pasangrahn: Pam and I both had the braised lamb shank dish that was featured that night and it was delicious. Accompanying veggies were fresh and crisp. Would return.
• Holland House: Pam had salmon served rare, as it should be and I had duck breast, rare of course. Small portions, food was good. Fine presentation. Pam ordered the Chocolate Souffle for dessert and it was decadent to say the least. I ordered an Irish coffee and specified Bushmills whiskey just to be sure that I did get a real Irish coffee. It seems this was a smart move as the bartender came to the table to say that they had no Bushmills or Jamiesons or Usher and they usually use Scotch whiskey to make the Irish coffee. I ended up with a plain espresso. Split decision on the return, I would not return due to high price and small servings, but Pam didn’t mind the small servings as she’s trying to watch her portions anyway and loved the elegant presentation and ambiance.
• Taloula Mangoes: Don’t lose these guys. Reasonably priced, ample portions and casual atmosphere. We both had a Creole dish, mine was grouper and Pam had the chicken. We wanted to go back in the same week but didn’t make it. Would try them again.
• The night that we wanted to return to Taloula Mangoes it was pouring rain. We opted to just have a couple of cocktails in the Chinese restaurant adjacent to the hotel. Their fare looked like the typical Chinese stuff that one may find in the states so we knew that would be out. The appetizers looked a bit different so we sat at the bar and had a couple of them. I happened to glance down towards the end of the bar and noticed one of the workers eating something that I considered to be real Chinese food. In my ineffectual Cantonese I asked if they could make me up something similar. They did and it was lovely. It was a rice noodle mixture with meat, fish and veggies. When the owner heard me throwing around what few Cantonese words I had, he just had to tell me about the special Dim Sum on Sundays. We had a good discussion on that. I have been going to Chinatown in Boston a dozen or more times a year for over thirty years on a Sunday morning for breakfast. Hence the few words in Cantonese, and knowledge of some foodstuffs, particularly Dim Sum, otherwise known as Yum Cha.
• Barefoot Terrace: This was breakfast. The Barefoot Special was two eggs, stewed saltfish, and Johnny cake. The saltfish was stewed with peppers and onions. I stuffed it into my Johnny cake. A little Matouks and I was ready to start my day. Pam enjoyed the veggie omelet almost as much as she enjoyed eyeing that tall dark business man that sat at the next table.
• Cornies: A local place right on the boardwalk. Eggs for breakfast and Johnny cake.
• Fusion: Right next door to the Sea Palace. This is fairly new, about a year old. Someone already mentioned it but all they said was that it was good. Well, that is a gross understatement. They serve lunch until 5:30. That works out just fine for us as we like to eat early. We got there about 3:30. This was to be our dinner. I had a red bean soup that was very flavorful with some tomato base and pieces of sausages. In place of what we’d call a bread basket, we had little Johnny cakes with cheese inside. My main dish was shrimp sautéed in garlic combined with conch strips and chunks in curry and dill. Yum, yum. Pam had a very thick piece of salmon, rare of course, and the top was encrusted with cashews and some kind of Dijon honey mustard sauce. Nothing overpowered the salmon, rather all the flavors melded together, as did my dish. The wait staff was excellent. The young girl taking care of us made helpful suggestions for our side dishes to complement our entree’s. Pam and I each had a lovely salad to include mixed greens rather than typical iceburg. She had Basmati rice and I chose plantains. A lovely dressing, served separately, complimented the salads. The owner and manager both came over to check on us and we told them how much we enjoyed the whole experience. We will definitely return in Dec.
• Dinghy Dock: Nothing more can be said about this fun establishment that hasn’t had its praises sung many a time. Pam had a lovely piece of tuna, rare, of course. (why can’t they cook fish properly in the States?) I had to have the world famous Dinghy Dock rib plate.
• Hilma’s Windsor Castle: Ah,yes. The piece de resistance. We hit Hilma’s on the way to the airport Sat. morning. We started off with ‘Dutch Coffee’. I had a salt fish in johnny cake and Pam had a corned beef pattie. After a couple more ‘Dutch Coffees’ I had a tasty bowl of pigtail soup. A tomato base soup with pieces of chunked beef, pigtail meat, corn dumplings, kidney beans, sweet potato and love. When I handed the empty bowl back to Hilma she got a kick out of the fact that I had taken the pigtail bones out of the bowl and sucked the meat from them. Our breakfast companion for the hour that we were there was Nancy Bourdain, the former Mrs. Anthony Bourdain. We had a lovely conversation about food, the island, her new life, how she was at Hilma’s back in 2004 when her husband (now ex) filmed the segment on Hilma. BTW, I asked, and she gave permission to use her name and mention her in this report. Upon leaving, we each took a spicy ground beef pattie to eat on the plane.
• We are sorry that we didn’t get to Big Fish in Oyster Pond as we had planned. Maybe in Dec.


TRAVEL
I must mention my trip home. First of all, because Pam booked her air after I did, we had a mixed bag for traveling. We were able to get the same flights down, albeit non adjacent seats. Going home we had different flights with Pam going through Philly and I going through Charlotte but were both scheduled to land in Boston at 10:00 PM Sat. Well, I circled Charlotte in a holding pattern due to thunderstorms while waiting for them to clear out. After I looked down and saw the same landmarks pass by a fourth time the pilot announced that we would have to head south to Columbia, South Carolina to refuel. I looked at my watch and knew that I wouldn’t make my flight to Boston. I called Pam from sitting in the plane on the ground in Columbia and left her a message as she was still winging her way to Philly. When we landed in Charlotte I felt confident that they would put me on the next flight out. I asked the agent what I was doing and she said that my flight leaves at 7:55. I told her that I know that and I just missed it. She said no, 7:55 tomorrow morning. HELLO? Well, I called Pam and left her another message telling her of my predicament and that I would choose to sleep in the airport rather than go to a motel, get settled in after midnight, have a poor sleep, get up so early to be back at 5:00, pay a high price, etc. Well, to whom do I complain? And why? While Sue (loves beaches) and I were having a conversation about how different things happen to us in life and sometimes just have to be accepted, her profound words were, “It is what it is”. Well, that’s the attitude that I assumed. While so many other passengers were almost screaming at the station agents, I calmly staked out my chair for the night. Pam eventually called me, not as a result of my messages, which she never received, but just wondering where I was. She landed in Boston at 9:30 and gave me some time but finally had to call. Anyway, she went home to New Hampshire and drove back down to Boston Sunday morning at 10:00 to retrieve her wayward husband. She brought me a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. Bless her. So much for easy air travel.

OBSERVATIONS
All the shop owners on Front St. were starving. Even on our last two days when there was a ship in each day nobody was in the stores. Shop clerks were outside their stores trying to drag people in.

Orient Beach: This was our first time ever in the summer. We’ve never seen so few people on the beach. All these years of trying to convince newbies that there are no sharks near the island and we saw our first one. It couldn’t have been more than twenty feet from shore. This huge man eater had to be at least three if not four feet long. He must have been chasing a fish. He only hung around for less than twenty minutes. Someone said it was a reef shark. Because of the hurricane, (hundreds of mile away) we had some seaweed and jelly fish come into shore. No one knew if the jelly fish could sting so we gave them a wide berth.

While overlooking Great Bay on our first day from the balcony we spotted a topless woman. We asked the activities director if Pam could go topless on the beach and she said yes. To clarify, we asked if she could do so right in front of the hotel and again the answer was in the affirmative. When we expressed surprise, as we were on the Dutch side, she said that topless is becoming the norm on Dutch beaches. Only at some hotel resort pools is it being somewhat frowned upon. Well, that worked for Pam and when she took advantage of this newfound opportunity nobody said or did a thing, but acted as if it were quite normal. (which, of course, it is)

So, herein is our trip report. I know, sounds boring. No jewelry. We are looking forward to two weeks at Christmas when we will be at Les Balcons overlooking Oyster Pond.. Until then we will just have to hit the ‘Fake’n’Bake’ to keep our color up. Thanks for reading this lengthy missive. A very special Thank You! to all of the TTOLers who helped to make our vacation superb. See you all online!

Wayne <><
(and Pam)