Snorkeling in Grand Cayman

We both love snorkeling, so for our winter trip this year, we chose Grand Cayman for three reasons: non-stop flights from Philly, snorkeling from the beach, and not much damage from this year's terrible hurricanes.

We had a bit of rain, but the few sunny days we had were spectacular, and even the rainy days were a whole lot better than the freezing temps at home.

Our home for the week was the Coco Beach Villas in Bodden Town, on the south side of the island and about half way between Seven Mile Beach and the East End. For us, it was pretty perfect. We had our own private beach, a kitchen, and washer/dryer. Lovely spot for relaxing with a good book:

We ended up eating in many of our meals "at home" -- of course, breakfast and lunch but after a couple of expensive and disappointing restaurant meals, we made a few dinners at our villa as well, making do with a minimum of pots and pans. Then we discovered Big Tree BBQ at the East End and realized that the best food in Grand Cayman is at the simplest places. For fish, Kurt's Korner was also very good and cheap.

The snorkeling was fantastic. Just a few miles down the road was Spotts public beach, which was very nice, with lots of shade for relaxing and reading. A few days later we went to Colliers Beach at the East End, which was fabulous. Clear water, lots of beautiful fish and corals, uncrowded, great facilities. We also went in for some of the touristy things that were great. Really enjoyed the bioluminescence kayak tour, where dipping our paddles in the water produced a beautiful light show. A visit to Stingray City was lots of fun and so interesting to get right in the water with these beautiful fish. Two more snorkeling stops after the stingrays were also quite beautiful. 

Here I am, "piloting" the boat out to Stingray City:

On the way to Colliers we stopped at Blow Hole, where a nice man who called himself Barack Obama (he did bear some resemblance, although much older) gave us a tour of the fossils and told us all about the blow holes, underground, vertical formations in the volcanic rock that fill with water and then shoot water skyward like a geyser when hit by crashing waves.

We loved Grand Cayman. Bodden Town was a good choice but next time we might stay at East End, which is quieter and less touristy.

A Gentleman in Moscow

Count Rostov is one of those wonderful, memorable characters that make reading so enjoyable. Placed under house arrest in 1922 in Moscow's luxurious Metropol Hotel as someone who has "succumbed irrevocably to the corruptions of his class," he spends the next 30 years or so building a life that, while physically restricted, is full of friendship, love, poetry, intrigue, and beauty during a pretty miserable time period in Russian history. Great characters and beautiful writing abound, as would be expected from Amor Towles. 

A connoisseur of art, literature, food, and wine, the Count could be written off as a snob, but he is not: He's a renaissance man who appreciates the finer things in life and is completely open to new ideas. For example, here he listens to a jazz combo playing in the bar:

Admittedly, when the Count had first encountered jazz, he hadn't much of an affinity for it. He had been raised to appreciate music of sentiment and nuance, music that rewarded patience and attention with crescendos and diminuendos, allegros and adagios artfully arranged over four whole movements -- not a fistful of notes crammed higgledy-piggledy into thirty measures.
And yet...
And yet, the art form had grown on him. Like the American correspondents, jazz seemed a naturally gregarious force -- one that was a little unruly and prone to say the first thing that popped into its head, but generally of good humor and friendly intent. In addition, it seemed decidely unconcerned with where it had been or where it was going -- exhibiting somehow simultaneously the confidence of the master and the inexperience of the apprentice. Was there any wonder that such an art had failed to originate in Europe? 

He becomes the foster father of a young girl and, with the help of the hotel's chef, concierge, seamstress, and others, shepherds her through childhood, adolescence, and young womanhood. Of course, there is a villain: the Bishop, who rises from an incompetent waiter to hotel manager, and nemesis to the Count. At one point, in the best Bolshevikian tradition, the Bishop removes the labels from the 100,000 wine bottles in the hotel's excellent cellar, presumably because the hotel's wine list...

...runs counter to the ideals of the Revolution. That it is a monument to the privilege of the nobility, the effeteness of the intelligentsia, and the predatory pricing of speculators. 

The Count, of course, is not to be deterred. Running his thumb over an insignia embossed on the glass, he selects the bottle he wants.

The novel is full of moments like this that make political statements with humor and without being overtly political. It is a perfect antidote to the daily news we have to choke down every day.

The Round House by Louise Erdrich

I'm going to try to use this blog to get back to something I haven't kept up with in the past couple of years -- keeping a record of the books I've read and trips we've taken, and maybe a few other things I want to remember. Focus on the good is my new mantra in this time of trouble.

Just finished Louise Erdrich's beautiful novel, The Round House. Here's a passage that epitomizes this book for me:

"There was a moment of intense quiet. Then a low moan of air passed through the cracks in the silvery logs of the round house. I started with emotion. The grieving cry seemed emitted by the structure itself. The sound filled me and flooded me. Finally, it ceased. I decided to go forward. As I climbed the hill, a breeze raised hairs on the back of my neck. But when I reached the round house, the sun fell like a warm hand on my shoulders. The place seemed peaceful."

Fully formed and believable characters, strong sense of place and historical context, compelling story, mysticism, beautiful writing... this book touched me in a way that few others have this past year. The central event around which the novel is built is the rape of a Native American woman by a non-native man (which it turns out is shockingly and disturbingly common) as told by her son, Joe. Erdrich weaves her intricate story around how Geraldine (the victim), Joe, his father and extended family, and community respond to this terrible event within the confines of tribal law and US law. There's tension, love, violence, and even redemption.   

Update:
Shortly after finishing The Round House, I read another fantastic book about American Indians --  David Grann's Killers of the Flower Moon and the Birth of the FBI. This extraordinary journalistic work tells a gripping and shocking story about the murders of Osage Indians by white men intent on stealing what hadn't yet been stolen by the US Government. These murderers perpetrated their evil acts without compunction, believing that the superiority of their race justified what they did. Talk about white privilege! If this had been a novel, I would have thought it was too ridiculous to be true. Sadly, it is not.