Vacation! Part I

So I’ve been kicking around different ideas for the last hour trying to figure out how to integrate my love of travel with this here blog without creating Borefest 2008, like my friend Bill Simmons did with his recent dissection of the ‘86 Celtics and the ‘07 Pats.  Does that article appeal to what, 2% of the nation?  I can’t wait until Boston teams return to inadequate so good writers, a la Bill Simmons, can talk about something more interesting.  Anyways, I decided to skip my tax clinic tonight to share with you some of the highlights of my recent travels.  The places I went to, by the way, were New York City and Gulf Shores, Alabama (across the bay from Bayou La Batre).

We drove 17 hours to get to Gulf Shores and we crossed a state I had never been through, Mississippi.  Now I’m a pro-Mississippi guy, read a bunch of Faulkner, and I’d pull for Ole Miss if I lived their because lets be honest as much as people want to dog Mississippi for being behind modern society, they were the first to create a name for their university, nice try Miami (The U) and Ohio State (The Ohio State University) that ship has sailed.  I also am a big catfish fan.  The natural landscape of the state reminded me of Wisconsin in a microwave.  The big, tall pines, the lakes, and the Deliverancesque places on the side of the road.  There were also a glaring number of mobile homes and abandoned cars on the side of the road.  Both observations I have yet to wrap my head around.

The scenery in both places was amazing.  There are not many places as awe-inspiring as Manhattan.  You walk down these streets with tall building after tall building.  It was like no city I had ever been in before.  As I took the Ellis Island ferry away from the Battery what little construction worker there is in me came out.  I began to wonder how long it would take to create this city and still cannot comprehend the logistics of it.  I also have a great entrepreneurial idea for the Ellis Island scene: allow people to purchase a package where they relive the immigrant experience.  They get processed in the Registry Hall, take the mental tests, go through the doctor exams, stay in the dormitories, etc.  The vast majority of people going out to the island are foreigners, I feel like some tourists would enjoy that kind of activity.  There is plenty of space on the island and New York appears to be renovating the entire complex (currently only the main hall is open).

Alabama obviously has a different vibe to it.  The white sand beaches and shoreline bungelows give the place the feeling of being undiscovered, until you drive farther down the beach where the high rise condos are.  The place we resided at was an amazing condimium at the Peninsula Links.  I usually despise these types of pre-fabricated communities for the elderly for multiple reasons, (1) they feel cheap, corporate, and lack character, (2) you usually never have to leave to do anything, making the place feel like a newly renovated asylum, and (3) they are usually expensive.  Fortunately for us number three was false making the accomidations all the better.  I was lucky enough to enjoy two rounds of golf on a nice course, although the greens seemed a little ludicrous and my driver apparently decided not to make the trip(figuratively).  The carts did have a nifty GPS system, the beverage cart girl made great Bloody Marys, and they had a barrel full of apples at the turn.

Not to sound blasphemous, but you may as well refer to the food in both places as Jesus because it was the truth.  I had the best seafood of my life in Alabama.  I think I took care of half of Bubba’s speech on shrimp myself, along with catfish, crab, crawfish, etc.  We had a nice culminating meal at Lambert’s.  If you guys ever have a chance to eat there I fully request that you do.  There are only three in the country, Sikeston, MI, Foley, AL, and somewhere else so you must jump at the opportunity.  They have these things called pass-arounds, or dishes they feel everyone should have with dinner.  Now believe me when I tell you, you could eat an entire meal off of this stuff: fried potatoes, macaroni, rolls which they throw at you, fried ohkra, and other other assorted foods that go along with your actual meal.  The moment of the night was a toss-up between the fried tator guy giving Jenna a birthday kiss and Carl (my dad’s friend) having to eat what amounted to a human-thigh-size slab of meat loaf in order to get room on his plate for the fried potato pass-around.New York was a more elegant dining experience where I concentrated on Italian food: baked ziti, some pasta, pizza, a Thai dish, and street vendors.  The meal of the trip for me was at a place in Little Italy on Mulberry Street, basically all that is left of the historic district due to the growth of Chinatown.  It was a pasta with clams and a white wine sauce that was off the hook.  I usually don’t like to qualify food with slang terms but it is warranted in this situation.  Also the owner of the place was very nice and taught me a trick to do with a wine cork.A final note for all of you: Stay away from the Museum of Natural History.  It is a bunch of displays with animals in them, I seriously feel it would be more interesting to sit down with a set of World Book than walk through that maze again.  If you are a small child or someone without cable than I advise going and seeing the fake animals, if you do not fall under one of those categories and want to see animals, take your $13 (suggested) and rent the Planet Earth series.  That is all for now, be back tomorrow hopefully with another installment on running in Alabama.