Friday, November 28, 2008
Posted at 8:13:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Home again! Only 3 hours 15 minutes (!!) from Louisburg to Hartford, & we saw 3 or 4 deer running in the grass between the hangar & tower. Tango didn't want to go back in the hangar. :)
The whole trip was great. I thought all that travelling would be exhausting, but it wasn't at all. The travel part of the adventure was just as fun and interesting as the actual vacation in Grand part, and everything was so smooth and non-hassely. I want to do it again!
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Neck! Liver! Heart! Gizzard! The best parts.
Posted at 12:00:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Jan & Joe came for Thanksgiving at the Gingers', and it was nice. We had a campfire (with s'mores!) with Diane and Tim at their cool bonfire spot.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Posted at 3:56:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
[Edit: Cute pic: Dean giving Tango a pre-flight check right before we left Key West. :-].
Florida is so darned flat!
This part of FL is really densely populated... Naples, Ft. Meyers, and Venice (yikes!). Venice is all brown! It looks yucky!
KIZER intersection!
Lunch at the Fly-By Cafe in St. Augustine was good. I had another turkey sandwich, just like in Georgetown on the way.
We might be flying over Jan's right now. The St. Mary's River that divides Florida from Georgia is pretty and snaky. There are really nice swoopy clouds out today, big & dramatic in the blue sky. Great non-glary, non-reflectiony lighting today, too, with the sun to our backs.
This whole part of the country is so flat.
We played Under the Sea Mad Libs!! It was fun!
[At the Gingers' that evening:] Tongue sandwich!!! With buffalo tongue & deer tongues. Buffalo tongue is better because it has more tongue texture (rough!) but they taste pretty similar. Tongue = YUM. With horse radish, natch.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Goodbye, Grand! [Edit: Here's the east end as we flew away, with Rum Point in the foreground.]
Posted at 12:30:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Clearing Customs & Immigration was real easy man! Everything has been smooth smoothliness. The handling service is great.
12:30: Havana approach time again!!!
Buenos tardes! <--Dean said to Havana approach!
1:45: Cuba is so pretty. The waters around the whole southern part are just unbelievable shades of blue.
1:50: Bay of Pigs! We're eating Hawaiian animal crackers while flying over Cuba.
[Edit: Here's Key West in the distance, as we approached the USA.]
[Later:] Customs in Key West pretended to be mean/stern at first but were secretly nice. It was just two customs officers who came out to the plane, while Tango (and us) had to stay quarantined inside a special customs box painted on the tarmac. It was really easy, though--they just asked us some questions and looked at our list of items that we bought in Grand, then we went inside with them and they handled everything in just a few minutes. Totally the opposite of the horrible endless lines at the commercial part of the airport! And no one ever touched our luggage (except the nice lineman in Grand who wheeled it around on a cart for us!)
I had grouper for dinner! And another Havana Banana Split. :-)
[Edit: Here's one more video, which I made tonight (1-28-09) after I realized I forgot to include any landing/takeoff videos that actually show Grand Cayman, even though this whole thing is about a trip to Grand Cayman! Heh. It's not the coolest video of the trip, but I kind of think it needs to be here. The first part is arriving, on November 18, and the second is departing on this entry's morning.]
2008 Grand Food Ratings:
Posted at 12:00:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
* = pleah! pondable
** = didn't like it; wouldn't have it again
*** = neutral; spaghetti w/marinara sauce
**** = good; would like to have it again
***** = best ever!! Ubley.
- Waitrose Fig & Orange Blossom Honey Yogurt dessert = ***** Great, slightly tart flavor; amazing light fluffy texture; tastes decadent but not too rich or filling; no yucky lumps.
- Rhubarb Ubley = ***** Ubley! The ultimate.
- Müller Corner Dessert rhubarb crumble = ***** But I thought the crumble part detracted from the rhubarb custard and liked it better without; Dean liked the crumble.
- Tortuga rum cake = ***** Wow! Light & fluffy & moist! Good flavor, too.
- Strawberry Ubley = ***** Tastes like cheese cake!
- Blackberry & Apple Ubley = **** I didn't like the apple lumps.
- Every Bloomin' Thing Scone = *****
- Ackee & Cod = *****
Monday, November 24, 2008
Triple & Crown! Triple & Crown! I'm on my way to Kidney & Crown!
Posted at 2:10:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
At long last, SUCCESS on the kidney front! I ATE a steak & kidney pie today at the Triple Crown Pub! It wasn't like a pot pie--it was more like a big pile of beef stew-style chunks mixed with kidney chunks and a few mushrooms, piled between two puff pastry-ish layers. I LOVED the kidney!! (Better than the steak part by far!) After my first bite, I chewed on it contemplatively, then said, "It's good." And, "It reminds me of a chicken liver, but not as strong." The texture was bite-y, like a chicken/turkey heart or gizzard.
Dean's order: 1) Hearty Vegetable Soup (has cabbage; blended up; kind of tangy; it's good, and unusual), B) Chips & Cheese (minus gravy) (he even put on malt vinegar as a condiment; I was proud!), 3) Coke & Lime.
Mine: 1) Steak & Kidney Pie!!!!!!! B) 'alf pint of Guinness. (Sign on wall about Guinness: "It's good for you.")
Both the bartender and the waitress had huge Irish accents, but the waitress said "it's not for me" about kidney and shuddered when describing eating some by mistake! Hahahaha. What the heck!
The bartender came over to check on me while my S&K was being prepared in the kitchen. Me: "Can't wait to try kidney!" Him: "Ah, yes. Got plenty 'o that here." The bartender reminds me of Mercutio/Kevin Riley/Nash's roommate Charles.
The whole Triple Crown was great great great. I kept talking about the taste of kidney in the car after we left. Kidney is delicious! I wonder what animal the kidney was from?
After Kidney & Crown, we went to the Brew House for coffee. It looked and sounded really great in the dining guides, but was actually extremely wimpy! (The barista asked me what "dry" meant.) It had nice outdoor seating, though, and it was a beautiful temperature to hang out. We wrote postcards and read magazines (me = postcards; Dean = magazines) for about an hour. A nice way to end the Cayman vac!
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Posted at 11:25:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
[Actually written on January 3rd from notes.]
We went shore diving at Devil's Grotto, and it was great! It was my favorite dive of the whole trip--better than the boat ones! At first we didn't think we'd be able to get in, because the first two sites we stopped at (Sunset Reef and I think Turtle Reef) were too rough and the dive operations there were closed, their ladders pulled up and notices posted at the desks about coming back another day. Devil's Grotto/Eden Rock is right near the other two, but it was open, and there were other divers going in! We talked to the two guys who were gearing up, and they gave us some great tips. They'd dived there many times and said it was their favorite shore dive on the island! So we were totally lucky the first two spots were closed.
Right away when we got in, before we even descended, we saw a Hawksbill turtle (our only turtle of the trip, not incl. the ones I ate!). I wrote on the first panel in my slate, "I like this spot already! It's better than the boat sites!" There were brittle stars hiding in sponges, caves and swim-throughs, BIG anemones (more wonderful petting of a beautiful purple-tipped one!) and huge silver fish almost as big as me. I swam among them, trying to join the school (it was so cool!!!), and I tried to draw a picture on my slate so I'd remember what they looked like. I didn't know what they were called at the time, but I asked the Eden Rock guy when we got out, and he said, "About your size? Tarpon." They weren't quite my size, but they were big. I love tarpon! The lighting wasn't very good in the tarpon's area, though, so Dean didn't get any good pictures of me swimming with them. :-(
I also made friends with a biggish (about a foot and a half long) fish (a grunt?) and swam along beside him with the camera, filming a closeup video. I had to swim as fast as I could to keep up with him, although in the video it looks like we're barely moving at all, since we're going the same speed. Dean had no idea I made this movie until I showed him later!
Oh, and we found a big sandy flat of garden eels, at only 44 feet! When we see garden eels in Hawaii, it's always down deep at 100 feet or more, so it's pretty dark and you can't stay down very long waiting for them to get brave and come back out from their holes. The Caymanian garden eels aren't as shy as Hawaii's! We got much closer and Dean took some good pictures with a fair number of eels sticking out.
We went through two cool swim-throughs (swim-throughs are much better when you find them yourself and aren't following a group!) (I took a video of Dean swimming ahead of me, in the second one), and Dean even found the Devil's Grotto, right at the end. It was a cave with a huge formation that looked like the devil's head with his tongue sticking out!!! We didn't know there really was a "devil" in the grotto! It was really obvious when we saw it.
Breakfast this morning in town at ICOA was first class. We got the Baker's Basket (Dean: "It's the best muffin ever") which had 1) corn muffins w/juicy blueberries & cream cheese lumps, B) moist, not overly sweet cheese danish, and 3) a croissant w/paste in the center & sweet almond top. Plus we had two heavenly main dishes. Mine had locally cured Atlantic salmon, sunny egg, potato blinis, sour cream, and ultra-tasty tender spinach leaves. Dean's was the eggs benedict minus the bacon, the same thing he got two years ago. Exceptional.
After our dive, we stopped at Al La Kebab for supper, and each went back for a second one! 
I'm a tired tarpon tonight.
