How wonderful to be back on the island this week!
We arrived on Monday on the 7pm ferry. This time of year, that means we reached the house still in time to see the sunset. Oh, these long days of summer!
Despite weather forecasts predicting clouds, showers, thunderstorms, rain heavy at times, humma humma yadda yadda, we had a perfectly glorious sunset, one of those sunsets made even better by an unsettled skyful of clouds.
Happy summer solstice! The sun has reached the northernmost point in its arc and will now slowly begin rising and setting farther and farther to the south. Summer is here, and on the island that means sweet flowers and mown grass; beach weather; and long, languid afternoons and evenings on the deck as the sun sets.
We worked hard all spring to get the house in peak shape for the season. Next week we get to relax as we hope our guests do and just enjoy the season. Well, at least I hope Dan will relax a little…
Here’s a photo from our visit earlier this month.
Just five days from now, at 7:28am, the sun will reach its northernmost point along the ecliptic. Summer will officially begin, and oddly enough this year we have a few scattered unrented weeks during the season. The savvy reader will surmise that we are willing to negotiate a price (*) and will consider what a special vacation is a week on the island. Particularly this time of the year, when the sun is high in the sky and the island is full of the fragrance of flowers.
Meanwhile, we the owners are no fools. If the house is sitting idle, we will find a way to get there.
(*) Our managers, Ballard Hall Real Estate, can be reached at (401) 466-8883. No more self-serving advertisements, I promise!
This Sunday Dan and I finally got around to our celebratory thirtieth-anniversary dinner. We were about three weeks late, but we have a long tradition of being late in celebrating our anniversary. This is because we have a long tradition of not being in the same city on our anniversary. Heck, there were times we weren’t even on the same continent. So we’ve gotten used to a certain degree of freedom when it comes to important celebrations, preferring to fix them in space rather than in time.
In this case, we decided to return to The Atlantic Inn on Block Island. This decision was a blend of nostalgia and a really tempting new menu. The nostalgia part dates to the early years of our marriage: The Atlantic Inn was where we stayed on the island before our house was built. The inn’s porch is still one of our favorite places for a drink because of its stunning views over the rooftops of the town and over the harbor to the long sweeping curve of the northern neck of the island and out to sea.
But the restaurant is a different story. At some point the menu switched from a la carte to a multiple-course prix-fixe-only menu with disappointingly few choices for pescatarians like us. On the few occasions when we ate out on the island, we always ended up going somewhere else. But now the menu had changed. A-la-carte options had returned, and lots of them. The menu sounded wonderful.
I wish The Atlantic Inn would get around to posting a current menu on its Web site. But they haven’t yet. I actually considered scanning the entire menu and posting it here because it ought to be posted *somewhere*. But this is not the right place. Are you listening, Atlantic Inn Webmaster?
I will, however, post the menu items and descriptions of what we had.
First, I do have to say that I told them it was our anniversary dinner. I did this so that we could get our favorite table, the one in the corner at the far end of the room overlooking the sunset, the harbor, and the sea. And they were happy to oblige us in this. But we weren’t expecting the complimentary celebratory glass of champagne. This is a class act!
We also weren’t expecting the amuse-bouche of a tiny glass of powerfully delicious gaspacho with a lime froth.
Here’s what we were expecting, and ate with pleasure:
Appetizers
Frisee aux Lardon (sans Lardon)
Baby frisee, slow-poached Blazing Star Farm egg, housemade pancetta lardons (omitted for us), grapefruit and truffle vinaigrette
White Tuna Sashimi Tasting
“Sea essence”, citrus-galangal pearls, ikura, dashi-hijiki, served with prawn crackers
Entrees
Spring Bounty
Polenta cake, wild mushrooms, spring peas, fiddlehead ferns, Fontina Val d’Aosta, garlic essence and baby greens
Halibut Cheeks
Lightly seared, garlic bagna cauda, escargots, English peas, fiddleheads and wild mushrooms
(Note: These two items sound similar but in fact were quite different, and both delicious.)
Dessert
Lemon-Chamomile Pound Cake
Fresh blueberries, lemon curd sauce and honeyed creme fraiche
When you’re celebrating your thirtieth anniversary at a restaurant that has been a recipient of the Wine Spectator‘s Award of Excellence for the last nine years running, how can you not splurge on the wine? We selected a Far Niente 2005 Chardonnay. The wine was as wonderful as the meal.
Our heartfelt and full-bellied congratulations to newly promoted Executive Chef Aaron Wisniewski and to pastry chef Linda Rondinone for an evening we’ll remember for a long, long time.
I wish I could post to this blog just how sweet the air smells on the island. The wild roses and the rosa rugosa are blooming. This is the air that God meant for us to breathe. What a blessing!
The weather was unsettled last weekend; the sunset was spectacular early but faded out as a cloud bank moved in from the west. There were thunderstorms that night.
As seen from our deck, the sun now sets to the north of the lighthouse as it approaches the summer solstice. This series of photos, taken between 7:30 and 8:00pm on May 15th, suggest that we will enjoy late northern sunsets for the next ten weeks. We or our tenants, that is. You lucky people who get to summer on the island.
I am so far behind in posting my sunset pictures that I think I will never catch up. So many wonderful pictures! So little time!
Here’s a picture from May 6, 2010 that’s pure visual cotton candy. Enjoy!
Wow. I’m finally nearing the end of the weekend of April 2, 2010. The photographs in this post were taken just an hour or two later than those in last week’s post.
More than a month has passed since I captured this sunset.
I wonder how far north the sun will have moved in this time. If the weather permits, we’ll see this weekend.
I do like sunglades.
With sunlight dancing on the water, I strolled around near the house, camera in hand. There was a wonderful sunset on April 2nd, but those photos will have to wait as instead I bring you an afternoon’s sun magic.
It’s a gift, that’s what it is.
I realize this almost every time I look at the sky. The sky is filled with unutterable, incomprehensible, exquisite beauty. I don’t know whether this beauty is inherent in the sky itself or in how we humans are wired to perceive it, but that doesn’t really matter, does it? Because either way … it is given to us.
So here is another ordinary everyday breathtaking sunset on Block Island. April 1, 2010. We are blessed.
I especially like how the sun image reflects in Sachem Pond.
Later, the breeze picked up a little, ruffling the pond. But the sky show went on.
