Dear Readers:
I have had a complaint from one of my subscribers (who shall go nameless but he knows who he is) that I haven’t sent out a Haber Report yet. Since this is a relaxing trip rather than a sightseeing one, I was waiting till the end of the trip (or close to it) to compose this report.
Turks and Caicos consists of quite a number of islands. The largest is Providenciales (or Provo as they say here). That’s where we are. We are staying at the Gansevoort Hotel. It’s one of the newest hotels on this island. I read about it in one of the travel magazines I get. After we booked it, I discovered that it has the same ownership as the Gansevoort Hotel in the Meatpacking District of NY which is a very hip trendy hotel full of beautiful young things in their 20’s and 30’s. I was really having second thoughts about coming here. As it turned out, my fears were unfounded. The hotel is great and while we may, in fact, be among the oldest guests here, there are lots of families with young children (not what I was looking for either!) as well. I haven’t felt uncomfortable which is what I was concerned about.
Since it’s a brand new hotel, everything is up to the minute. The room is huge with a separate sitting area and even a little kitchenette. There’s a DVD player along with the TV so we can see the DVDs I always bring along to a beach resort. This time around we’re watching Magnum, PI (in fact, we finished the first season) and just started watching Banacek (starring George Peppard from “The A Team”).
The pool is quite nice; see photo above. The water isn’t cold and there are floats to lie on. Some of the chaise lounges are almost in the water. Best of all, the chaise lounges are nicely spaced. You don’t feel like you’re sitting on top of other people. Here’s Marty relaxing.
The food at the hotel is excellent. We’ve had breakfast (every morning), lunch (most days) and dinner (once) here. Breakfast comes with the room; a nice buffet spread with the usual suspects including pure maple syrup for the pancakes and French toast!
Speaking of food (the main activity of this trip other than reading and sleeping), this small island has an amazing number of restaurants; over 50. The majority of them offer a combination of French inspired and Carribbean infused modern cuisine, although we did also eat at a Japanese restaurant (which was medicore) and an Italian one (which was good). The quality of most of the restaurants has been astonishingly good for a Carribbean island.
Funny story: We all know how “into wine” Marty is. Well, in one of the restaurants we went to Marty ordered a bottle of 2000 Haut Medoc. He thought it was just fine. I couldn’t bear smelling it, let alone drink much of it. When the sommelier came around asking what we thought of the wine, Marty said he thought it was fine but that I was having a problem with it. The sommelier took a whiff and a sip and announced that the wine had oxidized! He brought us another bottle (which was perfectly good). Marty’s decided I should do all the tasting from now on!! He will, however, continue to do the selecting!
The biggest disappointment has been the weather. The first 2 days were glorious–clear blue skies and temperature in the 80’s; my kind of weather. Since then, however, it’s been grey and damp; not exactly a downpour but not sitting by the pool weather either. Of course, compared to what’s going on in NY, I’ll take this.
I’ve been doing a fair amount of reading. So far I’ve read “By Nightfall” by Michael Cunningham (was disappointing) and “The Rembrandt Affair” by Daniel Silva (his books are always great beach reads). Currently reading “Georgia’s Kitchen” by Jenny Nelson (a fun read about a chef but not an especially good book).
As implied above, there’s not much to do on the Island. We did spend a day driving around but there’s not one site worth reporting on. We did find a nice jewelry store though and I now have another lovely bauble–a new ring.
So, all in all, I’d have to say that I would recommend Turks and Caicos as a quiet restful island with good food and that I would also recommend the Gansevoort as a hotel to stay in.
Hope all of you are managing to stay warm and out of the snow.
Till the next Haber Report, I remain
Your Roving Reporter
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