Recovery & relaxation

Today started with a nice walk on the beach for me and Dave – we walked down to Mo’s and back and only got drizzled on a little. The weather has not been great, but that doesn’t seem to have much effect on the number of people walking on the beach, at least when it’s just a heavy drizzle. While we were walking we were having the usual last-full-day, don’t want to leave feeling when it it us – we’re retired! We might not have to go home! So when we got back to the house Dave e-mailed the rental people and we were able to extend for one more day, hooray! Meanwhile Sam headed to Sleepy Monk for coffee, and Josh and Jen went to Lazy Susan for real breakfast. Jen had gingerbread waffles, which sound delicious.

I decided to start a new, smaller and easier puzzle, which Sam joined in putting together. The weather got steadily worse once we got back from our walk, turning into real rain with a strong wind. It makes it especially nice to sit in the house with the fire turned on and the grass waving on the dunes. But eventually it was time to head to yoga. Yes, yoga – a dream come true for me to have a private yoga class with my long time teacher Christen with my family. She did a lovely slow steady class with lots of hip opening stretches that left us all feeling stretched and calm – it was just wonderful. I thought it was cool when I was the person whose husband came to yoga – class with husband and kids and niece is just fantastic.

Continuing on in the same excellent vein, we walked through the storm over to Bills where we immediately found a table on the minor’s side. We had delicious Bill’s food and beer and watched people’s umbrellas turn inside out. After lunch Dave drove home while the rest of us walked to Bruce’s, where they had restocked the licorice wheels and salted caramels. We all then made our way home through the gale (turns out my warm waterproof boots are only mostly waterproof). A nice feature of this house is a mudroom, which we made full use of – we were 4 drowned rats! We threw all the wet clothes in the dryer and turned on the fire and got back to some serious relaxing.

I had the perfect relaxing garment!

Since we’re a party of 5, reservations were a little tricky – for Stephanie Inn the choice was 5:30 or 8, for Bistro, 5:30 or 7:15. We went with the earlier for Stephanie and the later for Bistro, so we had a nice long afternoon. I had the idea that everyone would puzzle with me but it turned out pretty much nobody did – Sam gave up pretty quickly and Dave ended up helping for a few pieces at the end. So that’s what I did all afternoon. Dave finished the book we’re reading (A Gentleman in Moscow) and everyone else read or played on their switches. Jen did epic napping. Meanwhile it rained and rained. We had a short intermission for some more fortified wine tasting – sherry this time. We had an amontillado (just a glass, not a cask) which was in my opinion absolutely terrible – it was so acid and rotten that my jaws clamped together and I had to work to loosen my cheek muscles. We also had a px, which everyone but me thought was very nice. I’m just not a fan of fortifieds so far,

Eventually we headed out to Bistro – my boots were still soaked through – and had a very nice meal. I would say that Josh’s pork porterhouse was probably my favorite. Sam continues to enjoy ordering a bartender’s choice non-alcoholic beverage and had a very pretty red-orange drink. Bistro (memorable meals of honorable mention) is another of those restaurants that flies a little under the radar – consistently very good, sometimes amazing.

A note about the location of Capt. Kellogg’s house – it is centrally located, almost exactly halfway between midtown and downtown, but it’s not actually close to anything. And because it’s been rainy, we’ve been driving pretty much everywhere. That makes it feel like it’s not really conveniently located at all, although the drives are all very short. So it’s hard to tell how we feel about it.

After dinner we had to sit around and rub our full bellies for a while, and then it was time for the final wine tasting and pie extravaganza. Dave had saved the best for last, so it was port – a young vintage port and a 20 year tawny, representing the two main styles of post. They were both appreciated by most people – once again I was not impressed. After tasting both I got out the madeira which is still my favorite, and we finished off all of the pumpkin and most of the pecan pie. We finished out our evening with that old favorite, Garfield’s Christmas, and headed off to be singing “a little overeatin’ never did you any harm”.