The Alex & The Eleanor + 1

Boy I hate mornings, but regardless up we were at 7:30 to take a walk down to the ocean for a morning swim. I was rather annoyed an unnerved by the unnecessary and unasked for *2nd* wake-up call from the hotel two minutes after the first. A little surprising given how well everything else was executed. Ah well.

The sun was out as we went for a dip, but the water was still quite cold (as was the air) and after a quick swim we headed over to Mosaic to check out the breakfast buffet (with me STILL full from dinner). I was far less impressed with breakfast than lunch - but then again I’m not really much of a breakfast person so maybe I’m not being fair - it was large and extensive.

The flight home was uneventful, except for discovering that there was no duty free past security (WTF?!) so no alcohol brought back for you folks sadly.

After we got back we decided it was high time to see The Bourne Ultimatum (we’d just watched the 2nd one the week before the wedding) - which was quite good. A very modern day James Bond film with an excellent sense of timing (much better than all of the modern bonds except Casino Royale which was fantastic) I promise I’ll start a film/tv review section of the blog soon too - I’m just getting this thing started folks!

While the film was interesting, afterwards we realized that a) we were hungry and b) we were in the neighborhood of Mesa Grill. Needless to say (and again said!), we could hardly resist the thought of comparing the Mesa Grill in the Bahamas with the Mesa Grill in New York on subsequent nights.

We were able to find seats at the bar thankfully, and our first study was the drink menu, which did not have patron silver as their well tequila (I’ll admit I don’t know much about tequila so perhaps their well brand was better) but Eleanor’s white peach margarita was definitely very different tasting and not as good. Being still largely stuffed from our trip we decided to just order appetizers. I repeated the blue corn pancake for a direct comparison and Eleanor got the raw tuna nachos. After she discovered it came covered in cilantro which she hates (and I conveniently love) we swapped dishes. But not before I discovered how remarkably different different the blue corn pancake was from last nights. Despite having the same description on the menu (well ok scotch bonnet was replaced by habenero here) and the design of the dish was similar, the taste was remarkably different. This was a much less sauce focused dish, and the flavor of the duck came through much stronger, along with a more balanced overall flavor between the sweet and the spicy. And while I think it’s probably a better prepared dish, as I’ve said I tend to lean to the sweet and liked the one in the Bahamas better. The raw tuna nachos were quite delicious - who’d have thought that after a week in the islands I’d be starved for good fish, but there you have it, and this certainly fit the bill. Big chunks of raw, high quality tuna with several sweet/spicy (it seems like Mr. Flay has a theme here) sauces and some small chips to place it on. The portion was quite large, and we were quite glad of our choice to only order appetizers.

Well there you have it. The Mini-Moon (although I suppose with all the extending of it we did it really was more of a full honeymoon (but we’ve got three weeks in New Zealand coming up for christmas so I’m gonna keep calling this one the mini-moon). It was a great time for us, and a whole lot of words for you. I will try and constrain my writing for now to the less than daily journaling of my life and to a more appropriate blogging of my emphatically opinionated and completely unimportant opinions about the world in general and restaurants and entertainment more specifically and in greater detail.

Until my next posting, I bid you adieu.