Day 4 – Wednesday August 5, 2015. bean Pie and skid ro.

Our alarm went off at 8:05, and our room service came promptly at 8:10.

The room service man set it up at the edge of our bed.  We got eggs, a basket with blueberry muffins and croissants, fruit, a bowl of strawberries, orange juice and coffee.  It was really great, but it was just as expensive as going to the buffet. We didn’t finish the fruit so I packed it in a baggie to take on our day.

After breakfast we got dressed and were in the lobby by 915, where we met the family, got in a cab and headed off to St. Georges at the other end of the island.  Our cab driver today was very talkative and told us she used to live in Brooklyn.

The ride to St. Georges took about 45 minutes (because they drive 25 mph).   We were dropped off in front of the bike shop, where we met Lou Matthews, the owner of the bike touring company.  It seems Lou is actually Dr. Lou, he’s a superintendent of one of the schools on the island, and is a professor of mathematics and used to teach at a university in Virginia.  Apparently he is going to New York next week to do some consulting for the Dept of Ed. And he started this bike touring company two weeks ago. He was a very nice man, and gave us all bottles of water and bags with mixed nuts (eek).  The bikes were also nice, and only two weeks old!  You don’t get that from any company with a long history of trusted service.  All of the bikes had names – I got Bean Pie and Tzvi got Skid Ro.

Our tour guide’s name was June.  She was very nice, but I think she needs a little more than two weeks of practice as a tour guide.  The tour lasted about two hours, which was a little too long, and had a lot of hills which were actually pretty hard, and June kept having us stop too often. And it was about a hundred degrees. By the end, at what was maybe the last stop, mama and I just kept going as June and the boys stopped.  Tzvi stopped and told June that we didn’t want to go on.  June said you weren’t supposed to go ahead of the guide, so Tzvi said “no, I think they don’t want you to stop.”  So from there on we just pedaled all the way back to the bike shop. It wasn’t far.

After the tour Tzvi and I went up the road to the Bermuda Perfume factory where we had booked a 1 pm afternoon tea.  I’ve done the tea before and it was very nice and inside the perfume factory.  Well, they’ve changed things, because the woman proceeded to seat us outside in back of the factory.  It was very nice, and there was shade, but it was sweltering.  And then she asked if we wanted hot tea or iced tea.  That was funny.

The two women who put on the tea were probably in their fifties and reminded me of the kind of women who go to the philharmonic for the early morning rehearsals.  A bit too uptight.  When we told the woman we didn’t want any meat and could she give us extra tuna, she got all anxious and said she didn’t know if she had enough of the non-meat sandwiches to give us extra.  We told her it was fine and to just leave the chicken out.

The tea was good, tuna, egg salad and apple/cheddar sandwiches, a chocolate cake, a raspberry cake, a banana cake, cream puffs, lemon tarts, and scones. There was jam and honey but they gave like butter, not clotted cream, which was a let down.

We drank a lot of iced tea and ate pretty quick, because it was hot and who needed to sit out there for more than a half hour.  When we left the woman said, “I cant believe you’re leaving me so soon!”

The rest of the family met us in the perfume factory and mama and I shopped for perfume.  After that we went to look for a cab, but they all seemed to be hired for the day.  We found one guy who said our hotel was too far for him, but he could take us to find a cab for no charge.  At first we thought it was a scam, but then there were government workers who were doing road work and they were yelling at us that it was legit and we should go.  The guy ended up driving us to the airport, which is on the way back to our hotel, and didn’t charge us.  Pop pop gave him $15.  At the airport we got into another cab that took us to our hotel. It seems like many of the cab drivers know each other and honk at each other when they spot someone they know.

Once back Tzvi and I quickly changed and went down to the pool.  We swam a bit, ordered a Rum Swizzle (rum and fruit juice) which was actually made strong enough, and then around 430 came back upstairs, got changed for dinner, and then left again around 545.  We took a cab to our sister hotel, the Fairmont Hamilton Princess, which was about 25 minutes away, where we had dinner at the new Marcus Samuelson restaurant “Marcus’.”

Dinner was fantastic.  The décor of the restaurant is very stylish.  First they brought little rolls of bread which was piping hot and delicious.  One of the best restaurant bread baskets I’ve ever had. It felt like a cross between a brioche and a soft pretzel. It was like tushy bread.  It came with harissa butter, which I didn’t eat but Tzvi said was delicious.  To start, I had cornbread madelines, which were delicious and had whole pieces of corn in them.  They came with a tomato jam and honey butter.  Tomato jam was great, Tzvi liked the honey butter.  Tzvi and pop pop both had ceasar salad with anchovies and pumpernickel croutons.  Mama had a grilled watermelon and cheese salad.  For the mains, pop pop had the special of the day, grilled wahoo (surprise surprise) with a market salad.  The rest of us had the grilled salmon, which came with charred Bermuda onion and broccoli, and after bringing it to the table they poured a dashi broth (basically a seaweed brother) over it.  It was really very good.  Also, Tzvi got a side of the Mighty Mac and Cheese, which had rigatoni noodles and a sauce made from parmesan, goat cheese and blue cheese.  Tzvi said it was incredible.  You didn’t taste the other cheeses, just the Parmesan cheese, but the blue and goat cheeses really made the sauce super creamy and rich and sweet.

For dessert, we had cappuccinos, of course.  Tzvi had the rum cake, which literally must have had an entire shot of rum in it.  It was incredibly strong and came with vanilla ice cream, a really thick caramel sauce, and some strawberry slices.  But the real star of the night, was my chocolate cake.  It was like a deconstructed rich chocolate cake with some mousse, pineapple, and ginger ice cream. It was really something.

After dinner the boys came to meet us in the hotel (they had kosher room service again for dinner) and we all walked down to the Harbor Nights festival, which happens every Wednesday night.  They close off the main street and its all pedestrian traffic.  The stores stay open late and there are a bunch of stalls selling stuff on the street.  We walked the entire length of the festival but didn’t buy anything, then got in a cab and came home to the hotel.

Now we’re in bed.  Tomorrow is going to be a relaxing day.  Just beach all day.  Thank God, because today was exhausting!