RAVE - Monsieur Benjamin

If I was in a grumpy mood, I'd summarize this place by saying "Great, but ...."

But as for today at least, I'm in a great mood, I'll just focus on the good points.

Monsieur Benjamin has only been open a few weeks, but it's already working well. The great service helps a lot with that, along with the size and decor of the place.

It has a large menu, with plenty of unusual choices, like Seafood Sausage, Beef Tongue Dijonnaise, Sweetbreads, and Marrow Bones.

We were much more conservative, and started with the Potato and Leak Croquettes, Duck Terrine, and Pate de Campagne, then had the Blanquette de Veau, and Duck Confit and Sausage. All were very good (remember, I'm in a great mood, so no "but ...")

The clientele was curiously old-ish. The oldsters weren't necessarily curious, but it was definitely an older crowd than we expected. Not that it distracted us, just sayin' ....

REVIEW - Some Firsts in New York City

Although I've visited New York many times - for business and pleasure - last week I experienced a few surprising firsts. At least they were for me.

For the first time I experienced the New York subway, traveling just a few stops from somewhere near my hotel in Chelsea, to Wall Street. It was a predictably uncomfortable experience, with the air oppressively hot and the trains crowded. I was reminded of a London friend who used to avoid the underground, saying "The Tube is only for poor people".

As we left the subway it started raining, so we sheltered in a Dunkin' Donuts. This marked my second first of the day. I've so far managed to avoid these darkest spots of the dark side, but I compounded my new error by having one of their coffees and wondered why on earth DD is taking market share from Starbucks. On second thought, as I also loathe Starbucks they deserve to have their market share dinged a bit.

Once in the Wall Street offices of our customer, I followed the chopper-spotters to the 9th floor where we were able to see President Obama's helicopters land him and his retinue at the East River heliport. They were whisked away in a fleet of black SUVs, allowing the dozens of ferries and rather more heavily armored boats to continue on their way.

My third New York first was definitely the high spot of the trip.

RAVE - Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

This follows directly - thankfully, so we can at least have some idea where the heck we are time-wise in this series of films that started after the ape-versus-human wars had decimated the earth to a point where even Charlton Heston looked good - from the last movie where the apes escaped back over the Golden Gate Bridge to the redwood forests North of San Francisco. Phew.

The troupe of genetically enhanced and evolved apes that escaped the lab in Rise of the etc etc are living and developing their culture in Northern California - which is more than can be said for many of the area's human residents today. But the world's deterioration - largely unexplained in the film - means that some of SF's remaining residents venture into the ape's region looking to get a power-producing dam working again.

This causes the effluent to hit the fan, with the two groups quickly escalating from grunts and bananas to clumsy speech (well, they are apes) and assault rifles. As with the latest Godzilla flick, downtown San Francisco - or at least computer generated images thereof - features heavily in the mayhem.

It wasn't as ground-breaking as the last Planet movie, although the gradual humanization of the apes is spectacular. What this one lacks is some context to the situation - there's little explanation of what's going on in other parts of the State, or the country, let alone the World.

RAVE - Eleuthera

I'd visited the Bahamas many years ago, and remember among other things meeting an elderly
American who congratulated me on my accent, saying "Oh, we just love your fake English accent". I was nonplussed, but surprisingly polite when I told him "It's not fake. That's how we normally speak!"

Anyhow, I was excited about visiting again, for many reasons aside from my accent. I was with my favorite companions - my brother and sister-in-law Lawrence and Beverley, and my wife.

We spent the first night in Nassau - the late arrival of our flights meant we missed our island-hopper to Eleuthera. When we arrived the next day on Eleuthera - minus Lol and Bev's luggage that was delayed at Heathrow by British Airways and only arrived 4 days' later - we stayed for 2 weeks at Sky Beach Club, a beautiful property with a few houses with their own pools, and a main bar, pool, and restaurant on an almost totally deserted beach.

Needless to say - but I'll say it anyway - the sun was hot, the water was warm, the company was fabulous, the food was pretty good, and the Rum Punches were even better.

As I've said, "the food was pretty good", but perhaps not unexpectedly a bit Caribbean island-ish - patchy in certain beach-centric places with Lawrence's barbecue offerings a high point as always.

Those "beach-centric places": Sunset Inn (3/10), The Rainbow (5/10), Skippy's (7/10), and The Beach House (8/10), were all within 10 minutes' drive of our house. We also tried the immensely forgettable Fish Fry night in Governers Harbor that, among other things taught me all about Country Rap - where traditional country line dancing is attempted while middle-aged white women-friendly Rap is played and yours truly stood by with beer in hand shaking his head in dismay.

We visited a number of beaches and they were each sparsely-populated, spotless, with pink or white sand. Eleuther is definitely a place for sand and sea lovers. Away from the beaches it's a surprisingly ordinary island, with few trees, and fewer roads.

It was one of those vacations - aren't they all? - where we were just not ready to leave when the two weeks were up.