Today we spent the day docked in St. Thomas. We took an open-air bus up to Coral World, and did a “Sea Trek” tour, wearing pressurized air helmets underwater. Very fun!
There were Green Iguanas everywhere! Unfortunately, Justin could not convince one of them to give Buddy a ride!
Barbados. Something about it has always sounded exotic to me, thrilling, perfect. Idyllic.
Beach. Nothing more to add.
Justin saying hello to a Sea Turtle.
Turtles saying hello to us.
Incredible.
And after spending a day here, swimming with turtles and spending some time on a beach, floating in the sea, I know I will be returning to this paradise.
We’ve boarded the SS Noordam, a Holland America cuise ship, this afternoon, and we’re super excited to be headed out in just a few minutes for the Southern Caribbean. This will be our fifth cruise, but first with Holland America. Hopefully we’ll be able to connect to the internet here and there and give you some updates as the days go by.
Our stateroom, with a balcony! Always had inside cabins in the past.
Immediately enjoying the balcony!
Exploring the ship, looking out over Fort Lauderdale.
It was super windy here in Palm Springs today. The waves were incredible to watch. But the colder temperatures and high surf definitely meant we weren’t going in the water today!
Instead, we drove to a nearby theater and watched “The Artist,” which we both really liked and would highly recommend. We also grabbed dinner at a recommended seafood joint, Captain Charlie’s Reef Grill.
It was a funny little old-fashioned place, but the steady stream of people in and out and the great local seafood combined for a nice find for a meal.
How our day started... a bit of a slow start.
And after a few hours of driving south from Daytona Beach, stopping on the highway for a good amount of time because of an accident, and dealing with stressful work issues, we arrived in Palm Beach.
And all became right with the world.
Stress Release!
The waves were warm and fantastic to play in! And apparently, extremely frightening!
Good-night, Palm Beach.
Thank you for making our day a bajillion times better.
Though it was a bit out of our way, Justin and I decided to come back through Atlanta and stay for a couple days. It worked out especially well, as my sister Maria was able to come up from her home about an hour south and spend the day with us exploring and being tourists.
Look! There's a fish in the window!
We walked from our hotel over to the Georgia Aquarium, only about 5 blocks. We were able to slowly wander through the exhibits, worked at steering clear of the herds of 5 year olds, reaching into tide pools to touch sharks, rays, and sea urchins, watched an extraordinarily awkward dolphin show (less singing, more dolphins please!), and in general enjoy exploring this aquarium.
What a funny perspective! Justin is in the lookout dome, though it looks like he is in a tank with the fish looking at him!
It was rather funny to be behind this group of little kids as the moving sidewalk went through the Whale Shark's tank. All the pointing fingers, gasps of awe, and little shouts of "look at that!". It is a pretty impressive portion of the aquarium.
There is a special frog exhibit going on right now, and it actually was one of my favorite parts! Though this particular frog twitched funny and Maria might have almost tipped over!
After the Aquarium, we walked around and through Centennial Olympic Park and stopped at a little hamburger stand, Googie Burger, for lunch.
Buddy, enjoying the freedom not being a plant offers.
We really weren’t expecting too much, but these burgers and fries were a hit! Buddy, recently emerged from his brown shell as a real pig, enjoyed Googie Burger as well!
CNN Headquarters
From the park we walked over the CNN Headquarters and purchased tickets for the studio tour. It was pretty interesting to listen to the director produce the live shows, watch some of the live feeds, and see the news room floors. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so many monitors in one place in my life!
Interior of CNN. The Studio tours starts by riding up the escalator to the 8th floor, inside the globe.
This escalator was Justin's dream come true. Maria's, not so much.
CNN's newsroom. Where all the news from around the country and world gets filtered down to what actually makes it on the air.
As close to Anderson Cooper as we could get... in the gift shop.
In all, we had a fun day taking in some of the Atlanta sites and visiting with Maria. We’re glad we took the extra time for this stop!
The United States Customs House in Charleston. They're not messing around when it comes to fruits and veggies leaving from or arriving to this city!
One of our favorite fountains in Charleston, and the extensive list of rules beside it to keep people from drowning in it always makes us laugh.
A beautiful, grand old church, like so many others in Charleston. They will always make me pause.
Charleston Harbor, with Fort Sumter in the distance. The swampiness reeked to high heaven this day, but the picture conveys none of the stink! Thankfully!
We started our day, setting off walking toward a place to grab smoothies for breakfast. About a half mile from the hotel we found SmoothieWorld and each enjoyed a heathy strawberry pineapple/strawberry banana smoothie to kick the day off right, heading out again to extend our walk.
And then we found Glazed. And Gaspers have a weakness for doughnuts.
But Oh. My. Word. One bite of the Peanut Butter Pie doughnut and we were goners. Pretty much the best doughnut we’ve ever had. Justin also ordered a Maple and Neuske’s Bacon Doughnut, which was delicious, and a Sugar Twist Doughnut, which was spot on. But that Peanut Butter Pie doughnut… Yes, we will be stopping there again.
As we had been walking around, we found a nice sushi place, and after the heavy meal from last night, we both agreed that sushi would be a much more appealing option for lunch. At O Ku, we both chose a lunch special, which included one roll and several pieces of nigiri (simple slices of fresh fish on top of rice). Justin chose the Rainbow Roll, which was snow crab, avocado, cucumber, and masago, rolled in rice and topped with fresh fish. The nigiri was salmon, shrimp, and big eye tuna. It was bright, light, and very fresh.
But my roll “won” as we like to say, a nod to whoever ordered the best thing. I had the same nigiri, but ordered the Potato Wrapped Roll, which was shrimp tempura and avocado, rolled in sushi rice, then shoestring potatoes, and then fried, drizzled with eel sauce and a sweet and spicy mango sauce. This roll was definitely a home run. Fried potatoes are always a win.
Following our meal, we wanted to get a nice long walk in, and find dessert in the process. We ended up walking towards the waterfront and found our way into Bakehouse. A couple years ago we were in Charleston with our Aunt Maggie, and we stopped at this bakery, when it was called Baked and associated with the Baked in New York City. Apparently that tie is no longer there, though you can still buy the Baked cookbooks here. Well, whatever the name, they can still make some mean sweets! We choose a peanut butter pie bar (I love the South’s obsession with chocolate and peanut butter!) and a Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Brownie. Holy Sweetness, Batman! We were not able to finish both of these bars, though not for lack of trying. And then we continued our walk.
While out earlier, we walked by a place called Pace’s Pizza Balls. Now, a Gasper does not walk past a place that claims to have Pizza Balls and not decide then and there that they need to consume said Pizza Ball. So when we were ready for dinner we walked over and ordered a single Pizza Ball, as we were not going to commit to our entire dinner being Pizza Balls. And delivered to our table was a fist-sized, slightly deflated, pizza ball, filled with sauce, cheese, and pepperoni. Now, I actually enjoyed this funny foodstuff quite a bit. The filling and crust reminded me immediately of Rock Rococo’s pizza in calzone form. Justin didn’t really care for it and was thankful that we had decided to split one. He then decided that we should stop for frozen yogurt, so we stopped into Yogurt Mountain because he wanted to say he “climbed Yogurt Mountain.” Unfortunately, Justin made the awful mistake of choosing the Banana Pudding flavored frozen yogurt, which tasted EXACTLY like Banana Laffy Taffy. I stuck to safe choices like chocolate and cheesecake, so again, Justin was disappointed, but I was happy as a clam.
To make up for his two food strikes, at the last minute Justin decided we could split something at Jim ‘n Nick’s BBQ, primarily because there is a neon pink pig on their sign. We think this is always a positive way to judge a restaurant.
And Jim ‘n Nick’s did not disappoint. We choose to split an order of their Kitchen Sink Nachos with pulled pork, and a couple of their cheddar cheese biscuits. The biscuits arrived, and were nice and small, mini muffin size, but were warm and cheesy and great balance of sweet and savory.
And we thoroughly enjoyed the nachos. We were pleasantly surprised at how bright the flavors were, and as hard as it is to believe, that it wasn’t a plate full of heaviness. The abundance of fresh lettuce and pico de gallo, nice thin and crispy tortilla chips, and a light hand with the sour cream and shredded cheese, really put these nachos closer to the realm of a fresh taco salad. And the pulled pork had a great smoky flavor while retaining a good amount of its moisture. Very tasty indeed, and a a great way to end our very random day of eating. One we know John and Maggie would both have enjoyed along with us (well, minus the sushi)!
We drove into Charleston about 3 pm yesterday afternoon, and quickly remembered that driving in Charleston is not quite, well, easy. Driving lanes mysteriously becoming places to park, turn into right turn only lanes at the drop of a hat, and you better make sure you are facing the correct direction with all the One Lane Only streets!
But it is a beautiful, historic city, and we’re glad we have a couple days here to walk and explore, and take in a few good meals. Our hotel, the Renaissance Charleston Hotel, is smack dab in the center of the Downtown Charleston, and is a great spot to walk to pretty much anywhere in the area. We don’t plan to take the car out of the garage till we’re reading to leave the city.
Our first night out, we walked down a few blocks along King Street to Husk restaurant. We were excited to try this farm-to-table restaurant, especially after reading it was just rated the Best New Restaurant in America by Bon Appetit. We loved the exterior of the beautifully up kept old Southern home, and the brightly lit windows and porch were exceedingly welcoming.
We were seated in a quiet corner of an upstairs room, and began our meal with some delicious, soft, homemade rolls served alongside a truly remarkable honey and pork fat butter. Honey butter with bacon essence. Win. And when our appetizer of Southern Fried Chicken Skin arrived, we were figuring out pretty quickly this was going to be a major calorie investment, as, it seems, most authentically Southern meals are!
For our entrees, Justin ordered a VA Heritage Pork Chop with Roasted Red Pepper “Farrotto”, Benton’s Ham Creamed Kale, Coca Cola Braised Peanut Relish while I was swayed over to the TX Wagyu Sirloin, Ambrose Farms Spinach and Fingerling “Potato Salad”, Pickled Mushrooms, Bone Marrow Jus. Bone Marrow Jus really sealed that decision. And they were both excellant, though the portion sizes were quite substantial, larger than they needed to be by far, especially for such rich and heavy foods. And especially when we like to order appetizers and a dessert. And we were so very glad we ordered that dessert. We were able to agree on a dessert to share, an Oatmeal Cookie Pie with Brown Sugar Ice cream. And this one small dessert blew everything else we had for dinner out of the water. It was a caramel-y, sweet (without being sugar-shock sweet), perfectly balanced dessert, and absolutely wonderful. (Mom, both Justin and I thought this tasted like a Gooshy Bar combined with an oatmeal cookie!) I know the Executive Chef has received his share of accolades, but someone needs to give some well-deserved props to whoever the pastry chef is!
I think, however, that we are coming to the conclusion that this heavy, super rich southern cooking might not be quite to our taste. We certainly appreciate the efforts of the chefs to feature locally sourced products, or the best ingredients they can find in this region (especially in regards to fried chicken skin), but we’d love to see the ingredients themselves sing, rather than being over-dolled up with even more ingredients or sauces. And shave the servings sizes by half, please. There is no way we can walk enough to make a dent into some of these calorie excesses!
