English: map of St. Kitts and Nevis, Caribbean (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So you can see, St. Kitts is sort of shaped like a chicken drumstick or a fish.  Here’s a photo of the view of the isthmus, as seen from the crest of a hill.  The Atlantic is on the left and the Caribbean is on the right.

So that’s cool, right?

On the Sunday of our trip we took a long, bumpy (roads in St. Kitts, not so great) drive out to the southern point of the island to visit Cockleshell Beach, a lovely beach on the Caribbean side with great views of Nevis.  Most of the beaches have beach shack restaurants on them, and many of these restaurants supply chairs and umbrellas for a small rental fee (or not, depending on whether or not it is a cruise ship day).  The drive down to Cockleshell includes going through numerous hills, past the construction sites of several large, multi-million dollar vacation homes, and around St. Kitts’ inland salt lake.  Very scenic but, again, very bumpy, so I was happy to arrive at Cockleshell Beach.  We grabbed chaises in the shade and spread out for a lovely day by the sea.

That land mass hidden in clouds off in the distance is Nevis.

Reggae Beach Bar, the restaurant by which we were situated, has a few animals on their premises, including rescued orphaned green monkeys, a goat, and Wilbur, the giant and famous St. Kitts pig.

Giant pig, see?

Since it was Mother’s Day, a number of Kittitian families also came out to the beach.  One particularly large group seemed composed of a few different families (and a few weed smokers), and they had this adorable toddler who would periodically run around our chairs and steal our empty water bottles for playing.  He also briefly borrowed my mom’s visor, and nearly ran off with my dad’s cell phone.  Oh and one point he slapped me on the boob, which was sort of funny and sort of weird but, whatever, kids.

We spent most of the day at the beach, reading and relaxing and occasionally swimming.  We had lunch at the Reggae Beach Bar, but I’ll tell you about that in a future post.

Monday we had a relaxed pool day at the hotel, but we set out to another beach on Tuesday.  The isthmus I showed you in the first picture has some lovely beaches, and the beach on the Caribbean side is South Friar’s Beach.  Carambola, a brand new swanky beach club and restaurant opened on South Friar’s in December,  and we decided to check it out.  Carambola, by the way,  is the fancy, official name for a starfruit.  You learn something new every day!

So that’s Carambola, doesn’t it look lovely?  There are tons of sturdy wooden chaises on which you can throw cushions, and also beach beds, and also these big beach chairs, but I mostly stuck to my chaise under the umbrella.   The beach is a long stretch, and if you walk toward the other end you start seeing black sand (St. Kitts is a volcanic island).  Unfortunately when I took my walk down the beach I did not bring my camera, so no photos of the black sand, but trust me, it is there, and quite pretty and glittery!  We went to Carambola on Thursday as well.

Ah, the Caribbean, how I miss you.

Here’s a sneak peek picture from my future post on the island tour we took–it is of the Atlantic and the Caribbean meeting, that white line in the distance is where the two bodies of water meet.  How crazy is it that there is a literal barrier!

I went to St. Kitts, an island in the Caribbean West Indies, with Jon and my family.  We were there for an entire week.  It was lovely.  I’ll tell you about it sometime.  Right now, I need to go to work.

Um, so, what to say about Sleep No More?  It is by Emursive Punchdrunk, a British company that creates immersion theatrical experiences.  In April of 2011, the company took three warehouses in west Chelsea and transformed them into the McKittrick Hotel, a five-story, 100+ room 1930s style, film-noiresque hotel.  And when you purchase a ticket to Sleep No More, you are essentially making a reservation to spend three amazing hours in that hotel, and with the many creepy, murderous, disturbed people who inhabit it.  You are not sitting in a seat in a theater, watching things onstage, you are given permission to get deeply involved with the space and the actors within it.

No, this is not a haunted house.  This is Macbeth. Well, nominally Macbeth.  There is also some Hitchcock and some Rebecca and some detective story as well.  What there isn’t a lot of is dialogue.  Or linear story-telling.  But, as long as you know your basic Macbeth, you’ll be fine.

So here’s what happened with Jon and me, during our stay at the McKittrick.  We had a 7:00 reservation, and we lined up outside of the space around 6:50.  While waiting outside in line Tyra Banks (yes, the model Tyra) drove by in an SUV and started talking to some dude on the sidewalk.  She also cursed at a cab driver behind her, but that is neither here nor there.  We actually forgot we saw Tyra until Sunday, we were so blown away by the show.

At 7:00 precisely we were let inside.  We checked our bags and jackets (no purses, no coats allowed) and were each given a playing card.  We were then funneled through a pitch black, twisty hallway which emerged into an awesome, old-school speakeasy complete with a jazz singer and absinthe and a full bar.  But, there was no time to enjoy the bar, because an emcee immediately started calling numbers that corresponded to the playing cards.  My card was a 2, and they called 2s and Aces first, so off I went!  Jon had a 3 so he was called in the next group, and we were immediately split up–but don’t worry, this is a great thing!  Let yourself get split up, it makes the experience better.

The 2s and the Aces went into a little ante chamber where we were given white Venetian plague masks that covered our whole face.  We were told by two creepy bellhop types that we could not talk and we could not touch the inhabitants of the hotel, but that everything else was fair game.  We were then led into an elevator.  The elevator stopped at each floor and 5-6 people were let off.  I was one of the last ones out, and I found myself in a darkened hallway.  To my left was a somewhat shabby looking domestic interior.  To my right a darkened room with gravestones and fog.  I decided to go right.

I immediately found myself in a graveyard, with gravestones and fog and creepy moonlight and a random baby stroller and oh man guys, my heart was pounding and it was amazing.  The next room I wandered into was full of foggy, moonlit ruins and old statuary.  And beyond the ruins, in the distance, I saw a room all in glass and two people, a man and a woman, performing a heated dance.  I hurried to the glass room and quickly found myself in the middle of awesomeness.

The two people, you see, were Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, and they were having a crazy dance-fight.  There were handwritten notes strewn all over the room.  I picked some up, I read them.  You can do that in Sleep No More, you see–touch things.  You can rifle through drawers.  You can eat candy in a candy shop.  You can climb into someone’s bed.  You can’t touch the actors, but they can and will touch you.  The actors are really more dancers, there is minimal dialogue–and such dancing!  I’ve never seen such acrobatic dancing, these people are climbing the walls quite literally!  I have no idea how they are not full of broken bones and broken backs and bruises etc.–maybe they are, they just hide it well?  So anyways, no dialogue, but like I said, if you know your basic Macbeth you’re all set.

Anyways, I watched Macbeth and Lady Macbeth fight for a bit, and then Macbeth tore out of the room.  A few audience members and I ran after him.  Wear comfortable shoes, for real, you’ll be doing a lot of running and standing and climbing of stairs.  He fled down two flights of stairs and a few darkened rooms (this is not a well lit place, also, so just, be warned) and stopped in a room where there was a man sleeping.  And then I got giddy because, guys, that was King Duncan, and Macbeth was totally going to kill King Duncan!  And he totally did and it was AMAZING because it was so intimate because it was only me and one other dude in a white mask watching this. And then King Duncan died, and Macbeth fled back upstairs to his bedroom and Lady Macbeth, and I followed, and a bath scene happened, and it was at that point that I decided to detach myself from Macbeth’s immediate story to see what else I could find.

Because that’s the awesomeness of this show guys–you can follow a character around, you can wander and see what you find, you can explore the rooms.  You can do a little bit of each–that’s what I did.  I followed Macbeth a lot, and some witches, and Banquo (I think?) and Lady MacDuff.  But I also wandered through empty rooms and ate candy and played with samples of bugs and hair and herbs.  Each room is more incredible, more detailed, more fully realized than the next.  The set designers and propmasters clearly had the time of their lives designing this place, and they encourage you to turn it into your playground.  When the emcees stick you in that white mask they liberate you to do anything you want.  I got very close to the actors at multiple times and I didn’t care, and they didn’t care, because I was a ghost to them.  The white mask sets you free. 

Sleep No More has so many amazing scenes, and there is no way you will see them all.  Each actor goes through his or her routine three times, so you can catch multiple things multiple times from multiple angles while still missing other things entirely (evidently there was a ton of stuff happening in a hotel lobby on the first floor that I never saw).  Jon saw things I didn’t see, I saw things he didn’t see.  I saw several fights in a town square, I saw a nurse counting nails, I saw Lady Macbeth get thrown fully clothed into a bathtub.  I also saw her climb fully naked out of a bathtub–there is a lot of nudity in this show, just be prepared.  I saw Macbeth murder Banquo with a brick in this gross, dirty bar and I was the only person who witnessed it, guys.  I saw, three times, this amazing prophecy/orgy/rave scene where Macbeth receives foreknowledge from three crazy, creepy, sexy witches.  The rave scene involves a lot of blood and a bull head and lots of nakedness and techno music and strobe lights and dancing and a bloody baby doll and don’t miss it guys, really, it is an unbelievable scene.  But the quieter scenes are just as lovely, especially if you are lucky enough to stumble upon a room that has a solo actor, and it is just you witnessing this actor performing this scene, and you feel so privileged and also so creepy because you are a voyeur and this is what you have been given permission to do.  And don’t worry, there is an official end, and odds are you will be there to witness it.

I mean what else can I say about Sleep No More, guys?  Go see it, for realsies, I’m trying to figure out how to go again because it was that amazing.  So here are some tips for Sleep No More:  get the earliest ticket time available, as the place gets more crowded as they let people in, and it is really excellent to be able to spend some time in the place when it is mostly empty.  Wear comfortable shoes.  Don’t be afraid to go off on your own and separate from your friends, or to go into a creepy dark room, or to open closed doors or to open closed cabinets or to open anything at all that is currently shut.  Don’t get too hung up on following a single actor–there is plenty else to see, and it is very easy to loose them.  Don’t worry about seeing everything, or trying to follow the story, just immerse yourself in the experience and enjoy the amazing, creepy, crazy atmosphere.  Don’t worry about an actor kicking you in the face–there are a number of stagehand people around in black masks to make sure that the actors don’t trample you.  Sleep No More is one of the best shows, and perhaps the best and most unusual theatrical experience, I have ever seen.  I’m trying to figure out how to go again, because it has stuck with me.  Jon and I still talk about it on the regular.  Seriously, it was that good.

I mean, it made us forget all about seeing Tyra Banks!!!  That is quite a feat, don’t you think?

GUYSSS  go see Sleep No More, go see it now!

We ordered a chopped liver appetizer, a pizza bianca appetizer with ricotta, and a margherita pizza.  And it was all extremely yummy, especially the chopped liver, but the pizza wasn’t as good as the Neapolitan pies I’ve had at, say, Keste or Motorino.  I mean, it was good, and it worked out well since we were so close to the theatre, but it isn’t my favorite Manhattan Neapolitan pie.  In terms of Jim Lahey’s pizza, I prefer Sullivan Street’s little rectangular slices.

So after a quick dinner, Phil and Jaclyn walked us to the theatre.  And then we bid our farewells and Jon and I got ready for Sleep No More…but you’ll have to wait until later to hear about that!

I’m still recovering from Art Walk (which was great!), but I promise I’ll get back to telling you about my trip to NYC soon!

I’ll post more about my NYC trip next week, I promise!  In the meantime, I hope y’all have a great weekend!

Check out this crazy sculpture that was in the sculpture garden!

Okay so that happened.  Also, this candy installation by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, you could take the candy, it is always replenished, he was such a nut job y’all (hurrrrrr).

Also this hilarious plaque, which I think was by Barbara Krueger?  I might be wrong. I don’t remember.  SOMEONE CORRECT ME IF THEY KNOW, thanks.

Buuutttt the main reason we went to MoMA was for the Cindy Sherman exhibit.  I’m a fan of Cindy Sherman.  I like how she does everything herself: makeup, sets, costumes, taking the photos, etc.  I like how she demonstrates the transformative power of makeup and wigs and fashion, which I am totally into because MAKEUP AND COSTUMES ARE AMAZING.   I like her sense of humor.  The exhibit is pretty great, I recommend checking it out.  Here are a few images from the show, all taken from MoMA’s website.

I know, I’m not really saying many insightful things about the MoMA, sorry y’all.  Honestly it EXHAUSTS me guys.  The MoMA is always FULL OF PEOPLE who don’t let me look at the art and it is so busy and crowded and stufffffff, but luckily my friend got me free tickets so I could just sort of run in, see what I wanted to see, and flee.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love the MoMA, but dude.  Crowds.

Anyways, after braving the crowds at MoMA Jon and I went to a German beerhouse in Midtown and met up with Lizzy and David, some of Jon’s college friends.   We last saw them at their wedding in Charlotte in September (I wrote about it really briefly here, there were fishies in the centerpieces!!!!).  Anyways, I know David but I didn’t really know Lizzy, and it was awesome to talk to her because she is artsy and knows all about what is happening in the city and she is like me and that was fun.  We were all “Heyyyyy if we lived in the same place we’d be friends, but we don’t live in the same place, so that’s sad!”  Oh, the friendships that could have been…

Anyways, here we are, look how happy we look!  Yay friends!

So at this point Jon and I were falling over because it was 3:30 and Jon and I had been up since 3:00am on minimal sleep, so we headed back to the hotel for a quick disco nap before dinner and SLEEP NO MORE which, man guys, I can’t wait to tell you about Sleep No More.

But you’ll have to wait for a future post.  ANTICIPATION!!!

After breakfast at the Breslin, as detailed in my last post, we decided to walk over to Times Square to see if there were any good matinees available at TKTS, and also to visit my sister who was rehearsing for a show at the Broadway Dance Center.

We were strolling along 6th Avenue when we passed the HBO store, which is right by Bryant Park and across the street from the Museum of the  International Center of Photography.  There was a big Game of Thrones display in the front window, so we decided to poke our heads into the store just because.  And this is what we saw:

GUYSSSS.  That is the very costume that Melisandre wears in her first appearance on Game of Thrones.  THE VERY ONE.  And since I am remaking my Melisandre costume from last year I totally went nuts and took a bazillion photographs because OH MY LORD guys, the costume was right there. (Don’t worry, I won’t show you them all).

Anyways, check out that necklace:

I took pictures of the other costumes as well: they had Jon Snow’s Night’s Watch uniform, Dany’s Dothraki garb, and one of Cersei’s court gowns.  They also had some fantastic props from the show.

Robert Baratheon‘s Crown

Renly’s Armor

Hand of the King Pin

Dany’s dragon eggs

NED STARK‘S HEAD.

So that was pretty amazing.  After geeking out we headed over to TKTS–None of the show options pleased us, so we moved along.  We watched my sister’s dance rehearsal for a bit, and then we decided to walk uptown to the MoMA.  I have a friend who works at the museum and she’d left me some free tickets (whee!)  On our way we passed Rockefeller Plaza, which still had its adorable and floral Easter display up.

And then, because I was in a touristy mood, I decided to take Jon into the Lego Store, which has some truly amazing displays including Lego recreations of the murals in the buildings around Rockefeller Plaza.  We also had a brief discussion regarding purchasing this Super Star Destroyer set, but we decided against it.  Oh well.

I’ll tell you about what we saw at the MoMA tomorrow.  If you want to see more pictures from the Game of Thrones exhibits at the HBO store, check out this link!

Since I’m not yet allowed to take vacation days at work, we planned a very quick weekend trip.  We took a 6:00am flight to NYC on Saturday morning and so landed around 7:30.  We didn’t check any bags so we were at our hotel (the Hilton Midtown East, on 42nd Street near Grand Central.  We Pricelined it and so didn’t have a ton of choice, but it was a very nice hotel and it worked for the one night we were there) by 8:30.  I had decided to go someplace trendy and typically crowded to breakfast/brunch, since we were in the city early enough to beat the crowds.  After a bit of decision making, I finally settled on April Bloomfield’s The Breslin in The Ace Hotel down near Herald Square.  April Bloomfield is a British chef who has been having a moment for awhile–she also owns The Spotted Pig and The John Dory–but she’s having a bigger moment now because she just published a book, so she’s getting a lot of extra press.  She’s known for her decadent, pork-and-butter infused dishes, and also for her very crowded restaurants, so I decided that this was my best chance at getting to eat at one of her establishments without waiting in line forever (no reservations, of course).

We caught a Subway and were at The Breslin by 9:00.  The place was mostly empty, only a few hotel guests were there eating breakfast.  The restaurant is all dark wood and plastic animal heads mounted on the wall.  I didn’t want to take too many pictures, so I didn’t get any of the interior, but I could tell that at night it gets very loud and sceney.  In the morning it was relaxed, with Fleet Foxes playing over the speakers.

I talked Jon into order the lamb burger, which many food writers have called transcendent.  I didn’t think I could do a whole lamb burger at 9:00 in the morning, so I decided to break my Passover with a breakfast sandwich of house-cured ham, lots of cheese, and an egg.  I know, so Kosher.  Anyways, here is our food (sorry about the quality of the pictures, I told you it was dark in there, and I didn’t want to use flash).

So that’s my sandwich on top.  It was basically fried in butter.  I’m not a huge fan of ham, but this was so salty and flavorful that I was totally pleased.  The egg was still soft, and oozed lots of yolk when I cut into the sandwich.  I definitely could not finish it–it was rich and fortifying and fatty and delicious and great.  Jon’s lamb burger was also great (he allowed me only one bite, alas).  It tasted strongly of lamb and that was pretty much it, with just a thin slice of feta and some red onion to give some salt and crunch.  The burger was served with thrice-cooked french fries which were amazing.  I don’t usually like thick-cut french fries, as I prefer my fries with a lot of crunch.  However, the triple-frying method gave a really crisp, salty, crunchy exterior while preserving a soft, potatoey interior.  Amazing french fries, guys, I couldn’t stop eating them.

So, the trick to eating in a trendy establishment without waiting is to GO EARLY.  You might not see the scene, but you’ll eat the food, and in reality that’s what is really worth it am I right?

I’m not going to bother explaining the terms Passover and Seder.  Other people have done it better than I can.  Just Google it.  I’m hoping that most of you know what these things are anyways, but I’m always surprised by how many people have never met a Jewish person, or how many people know nothing about Jewish culture.  What can I say, I grew up in Florida.

Anyways, doing Passover Seder is sort of like doing any other dinner party (which I have done), except not really.  Because you have to time the multiple courses of food to the end of the saying of various prayers and the reciting of various stories and the hopefully having of various discussions.  So you never exactly know when that food that is warming in the oven and hopefully not drying out at all will be served, because a Seder doesn’t really have a set end time.  Also, did I mention the multiple courses?

Anyways, I was doing just fine in my cooking of the food, and then my sink garbage disposal broke, and my sink started clogging, and that’s when my family arrived.  So that was fun!  Regardless all the food turned out just fine, and everyone seemed happy.  From what I could tell.

So here are some pictures of my family (maternal side only) assembled at my small-ish apartment for the first night of Seder.

An here are some pictures of my mother and uncles misbehaving themselves during the Seder.

That green thing my uncle is holding is one of our 10 Plagues, we’re all about fun representations of serious happenings.

And here is my dad, being exasperated by our relative’s antics.  That white thing he is wearing is a kittel, you probably remember me talking about it back in my post about Raffi and Rachel’s wedding.

Anyways, onto the food.

I used this brisket recipe from Shiksa in the Kitchen.  I’ve never made a brisket before, but I think I was pretty successful!  The brisket was tender and flavorful.  Here’s a money shot.

I also made this kugel recipe from Epicurious, and this meatball recipe from Shiksa in the kitchen.  And for dessert, this chocolate chip cookie recipe from Shiksa in the Kitchen that was great and this chocolate truffle pie recipe from Epicurious that was way way way too rich.  We also had, of course, matzo ball soup, gefilte fish, hard boiled eggs, and two kinds of haroset (an Ashkenazic and a Sephardic, I made the Sephardic using this recipe from Epicurious).

My uncles had second night of Seder, and one of their guests was a Holocaust survivor.  Well, escapee–his family was able to flee Germany in the late 1930s after his father spent a thankfully brief two weeks at a concentration camp, and then the family was able to get onto the last boat out of Holland to America.  Quite a moving story to hear during Passover; we were very lucky to have him at the table!

And that was my Passover!  I hope you had an enjoyable too.  I’ll post tomorrow on how I broke it–a few hours early–with a very not Kosher sandwich in New York City!