Dear Readers:
When last I left you (back in August), we were in Berlin. At that time you may recall that I indicated that the next installment of The Haber Report would emanate from Los Angeles in October. Alas, Marty’s hearing (the reason for our trip) was postponed and the trip cancelled. Of course, as soon as it was postponed, I already had activities lined up for 3 of the 4 days and the 4th day was quickly filled as well!
We have just completed 5 lovely days on the island of St. Croix. It’s an interesting experience to be on a Caribbean island which is owned by the US and (unlike Puerto Rico) where everyone speaks English. The island is quite small; 28 miles wide and only 7 miles from north to south. We are staying at The Buccaneer, the only major hotel on the Island. We’re in an ocean view accommodation; the room, bathroom and patio are all spacious but lack any real feeling of luxury (with the exception that we have a DVD player; more on that later). The pool is relatively small for a large hotel and to my chagrin goes as deep as 8 feet. Since I’m so insecure in the water, I much prefer a pool that’s 4 feet deep all around. On the plus side, they have wonderful floats available at no charge. Of course, I wound up holding on to the side of the pool whenever I used a float!
Here was a typical day (in fact, 4 of our 5 days were spent this way): upon awakening, go for a walk on the jogging path which basically followed the golf course, eat breakfast, lounge by the pool (either reading or on a float in the pool), eat lunch by the pool or by the ocean, lounge by the pool some more, watch “Hawaii Five-0” on the DVD (to be explained shortly), go out for dinner, watch some more Hawaii Five-0 and then do it all over again the next day. Marty’s day was slightly different in that he added golf into this mix each day; he played golf twice and had 2 lessons.
Here’s the story on “Hawaii Five-0” (in case you care!) One of my Chanukah presents to Marty was the first season of this show; we used to watch it when we were first married (oh so long ago!) When I discovered that the room had a DVD player in it, we took the DVDs with us. Guess we’re pretending we’re still that young couple!
The restaurants on the island have been quite good, especially compared with some of the other Caribbean islands we’ve been to (and by now it’s around 20 of them!) One of them I had actually read about in The Wine Spectator.
So let me tell you and Norma and Ed. As many of you know, Marty has relatives in Tampa. Over the past few years, we’ve been there for 4 bar/bat mitzvahs and a wedding. Each time we went the people we enjoyed chatting with the most were Norma and Ed. They are Sandy’s (Marty’s cousin) “machataynista” (have no idea how to spell this) but what it means is they are Sandy’s daughter-in-law’s parents. They have lived in St Croix since 1971. We’ve since discovered that they both grew up in Queens and met at Queens College! To give you an idea what kind of people they are: several years ago at one of these family functions, I mentioned to Norma that I had a friend who was coming to St. Croix the following week. Her immediate response to me was “oh, that will be Passover, would they like to join us for the Seder?” Anyway, on Friday evening we went out to dinner with them. Funny story: we made these plans on Wednesday. I had already made a dinner reservation for the 2 of us for Wed. evening. Norma called back to say that she couldn’t get a 7:30 reservation on Friday evening at Kendrick’s (a friend of theirs owns it), so we would go to Duggan’s Reef (which other friends of theirs own) instead. Of course, our reservation for Wed. evening was at Duggan’s Reef! I cancelled it and we went to the restaurant I had found in The Wine Spectator (they knew those owners too!) and we went by ourselves to Kendricks the following evening. Needless to say, Ed and Norma know everyone on the Island; he basically ran the Hess development plant down here (until he retired 11 years ago) and she’s a fund raiser for lots of different organizations on the Island.
We had a lovely time with them on Friday evening and then they took us on a personalized tour of the Island on Saturday. This included their synagogue (picture attached), the easternmost point of the US (picture attached), the school their 3 children attended from kindergarten through high school (no picture attached) and an old sugar mill which is now a museum (where Norma is on the Board and yes, photo attached).
I assume you all heard about Olga, the hurricane which badly affected Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. As a result, St. Croix got quite a bit of rain this week. HOWEVER, we were quite fortunate in that it never rained while we were lying in the sun; it rained primarily at night and a few times while we were eating dinner and once even while we were walking in the morning but just as we had reached a restaurant so we were covered.
Bottom line on this island: while we had a lovely time (what could be bad about lying in the sun while most of you are suffering with snow?!), I would say skip it. There are definitely nicer hotels on other Caribbean islands.
And for those of you who worry about me spending so much time in the sun (I know who you are!), I actually used sunscreen this time. Not sure where the new found maturity came from! Guess I’m just enjoying retirement so much, I want it to continue.
So, the next installment of The Haber Report will be more informative in that we will be spending the month of March in Australia and New Zealand. There should be “real” things to talk about there!
So, until next time, hope all of you keep well and for those of you who I won’t be seeing in the next 2 weeks: have a happy and a healthy new year.
Stacey: see you on Wednesday at 6:15 PM at Saju; it’s a Vietnamese restaurant on 44th Street between 6th Avenue and Broadway.
Ellen: see you on Thursday at 6:30 PM at Suenos; it’s a Mexican restaurant on 17th Street (I believe between 7th and 8th Avenues).
Liz: I look forward to our “art day” on Friday; let’s talk during the upcoming week to decide where to go. Why not meet me at my apartment?
Bev: I look forward to seeing you and Ira on Friday also; the Haber Hotel welcomes back its most frequent guests!
ISN’T RETIREMENT THE ABSOLUTE BEST!!!
Much love to all of you,
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