caribbean taste...

.. is the name of a nice, authentic Antiguan restaurant located on a dirt road behind the yacht club. a must if you want to enjoy fresh local west indian food in Antigua.

invasion

Not the most common view here on Antigua. 

We're far more used to see people riding around on donkeys on these islands.

Last night

Last night we went to one of our favorite places in Antigua, Café Club in Falmouth Harbor. The very talented pianist and percussionist James Lascelles was guesting and together with his friend John Nobbs on the clarinet they let us enjoy divine jazz. Additionally, our very dear friend Jeff Hadeed, owner of many excellent places and properties here in Antigua, among them The Larder restaurant, had brought his chefs over serving us the best sushi to find on the island. Never thought sushi and jazz made for such splendid combination. Make sure to visit Patricia's Café Club and Jeff's The Larder next time you're in Antigua. Both of which are very delightful experiences.

Click here for another amazing jazz experience we had on this sailing journey around the world, that time in Casablanca, Morocco.

Friends

Two other island friends of ours, Jaco and his donkey Selassie. You'll find Jaco riding around on this 18 months old donkey here in Falmouth Harbor almost daily. Selassie, the donkey, is very fond of mashed potatoes, something we found out the other day.

Homies

When we leave Antigua, whenever that will be (April?) Noopy and Byron are two of the ones we will remember the most. Our daily conversations will definitely be missed. Noopy (left, born in Curacao, raised in Antigua) is by the way a very artistic man, I'll show you some of his art with a video one day.. and Byron you've met before, here.

An Italian dessert

We had an amazing tiramisu the other night at Southern Cross, a new Italian restaurant in the marina. It's a dessert not too hard to find around here in Italian Harbor, sorry, Falmouth Harbor. Did you know that tourist brochures and books made here are written in English AND Italian, that much Italian influenced is this island (local population speaks English as it is an old British colony). I'd say every second person you meet of the foreigners here, are Italian, and every second restaurant you bump into are Italian. Good or bad, up to you to decide. Glad for the abundance of tastful tiramisu's are we, at least.

Kaleidoscope

Hello fishes, what y'all doing down there? 

I'd love to show you the 1,5 meter long tarpons that usually swim around here but they were busy doing something else today.

Rainy days

When you're out cruising in your dinghy and it begins to rain, the best place to escape is underneath these giants for protection.. Yes I say underneath, cause some of them are so large that the curve of their hull goes around and above your head when coming from under.

In between work

Sorry guys... not as much boat talk as I promised. Alex is repairing things step by step and tells me I can't publish anything up here before all steps in each category are finished so we can give a full detailed description (with photos) which explains the whole process from disaster to perfection. Currently he's busy repairing some rotten coamings and when the epoxy and fiberglass have dried (sorry if I use the wrong terms here), I'm allowed to show you the whole process. Until then, here's a few more beach shots from this past weekend.

Alex shorts are from Orlebar Brown and my bikini top from Babajaan, two of our favorite summer brands.

Fâshion

Tried to take a beach outfit shot in the most serious fashion blogger style for you but my bag which I had meticulously placed next to me on the quay for a nice little detail kept on falling over and over so this is all I have for you today, sorry.

Next stop: The Beach. Have a lovely Friday everyone, what are you up to around the world? Still snow and cold where you are? I'll send you my warmest thoughts from the beach today, marinated in the beautiful flavor of rum and coke of course.

Lunch stop

I've written about this place before but now when they've started with their amazing lunch buffet, I must mention them again. RumBaba is not only great for dinner, but also the perfect lunch stop when you wish to alternate your local Caribbean diet to something more Mediterranean. For 5 XCD (€1.50 / $2 USD) you will get one scoop of meat, rice, grilled vegetables, daily fish or whatever you prefer and what's on the menu for the day. Three scoops would make it for a full sized lunch for me, four for someone like Alex. Great food, good value and like always: a really nice, homey ambiance. Just don't forget to say hi to the charming owners Ilaria and Serge from us next time you get there.

Office

I've found a new place which I've made into my new office. Wifi doesn't work all the way out to the boat and the satellite connection is so expensive to use so that's only for emergencies and ocean crossings which leaves me quite dependent on bars, cafés and restaurants and their wifi connections to be able to maintain my daily work online. Antigua is great for many reasons but not the most reliable when it comes to steady Internet, but this particular place that I've recently found out about has so far proved to be the best one around here. A big plus because of the intimacy, quietness and the good location. Let's now hope not everyone finds out about the fact that they got a superb wifi-connection so it doesn't become one of those noisy, jam-packed places where it's almost impossible to get any work done. That's why I'll only show you the toilet from this local gem for this time..

Falmouth Harbor By Night

These are our neighbors.

Today's

As there are and will be much boat talk here in the blog for a while I figured it could be nice to mix it all up with some fashion for the female readers who might be interested in that. Not so fashionable today perhaps but you get the point. I'm working in the service industry after all and need to be pleasing all of you simultaneously, yes I know hard work but someone's gotta do it. Anyways, this is more or less how I look most of the days here in my Carib life: jeans shorts, a comfy top, my organic bag (what are those called now again?) which fits my laptop when I'm working or towels and swimwear for beach time and maybe a couple of bangles around my arm. And the Ray Ban's of course, always my Ray Ban's. I hold these particular ones very dearly as they've survived almost six months without me loosing them to the greedy old ocean like so many times before. That neck strap was definitely a lifesaver.

What else? I was today invited to have a look at the new amazing condominium that is taking shape here in Falmouth Harbor. South Point Falmouth Harbor is Antiguas most interesting property to invest in for a vacation residence in paradise. The complex will also operate as an exclusive boutique hotel for short term visitors and owners are able to rent out their apartments with lucrative benefits. The condos are gorgeous with high end Italian interior decor, generous colonial style balconies overlooking the harbor and the mega yachts below and the restaurant and lounge bar by the water with a dinghy dock will be the place to be when this condominium opens up in November this year. Have you ever dreamed of a luxurious home in paradise, this might be your best choice. Will show you photos one day later on when the apartments are ready to be photographed.

I started the day by whining about no time to blog and ended up publishing three posts in less than 10 hours, more ambitious and efficient today than I thought. Filled with much energy and inspiration after our fantastic holiday in St Barts.

Current situation Falmouth Harbor

Parties are continuing here on the docks and music is screaming to the early mornings from yachts and the few restaurants around, that much that I wake up around four in the morning and need to plug in earplugs to be able to get a few more hours of sleep. Damn I'm old and boring, can't deal with alcohol and party more than one-two nights a week and also got way too much job to finish before we're sailing up North (St Martin and St Barts) in a few days so I better continue to focus on what really is important. While I'm busy editing photos, writing and dealing with things online, Alex is currently working his magic in carbon fiber composite for a few of the yachts. It is not easy to find specialists in that area around here in the Caribbean so good that Alex has the knowledge (as well as in fiberglass and kevlar composite of course), and I can tell you he's been very very busy. I'll show you boat building interested guys some of the things he's been designing/creating/producing later this week. Impressive it is.

And a P.S for the girls: I just received these beautiful silky garments from my beloved Babajaan among some other glamorous fashion pieces. The red dress might be what I'll wear for Christmas and the other one's a fantastic loungewear dress for sexy tropical evenings this upcoming holiday season.. check out the latest collection from Babajaan here.

Snapshots from last night

Spent the evening in the company of my two new, fantastic Antiguan girlfriends last night. Did I tell you I've been dying for some female interaction? That is definitely what I miss the most on our sailing travels, and suddenly I got it in two beautiful, warm and intelligent human beings here on the island we've spent most of our time. One of the girls has lived here for six years, the other one's born in Antigua as a West Indian Arab. Can't even begin to tell you how glad I am to have met them two. And all thanks to the good old Internet. I have the World Wide Web to thank for a lot of nice things in my life.