Saturday 28th Travel to Martha’s vineyard

I am now in Martha’s Vineyard, on holiday, so the blogs for the next few days may be brief.

All went smoothly getting here. Walk to subway, subway to Penn Stn, train ( Acela – thank you to the people who suggested, it was worth the extra money – at least 3 people) to Boston. The Acela is an upmarket train with business and first class, I gather aimed at business travel in the Washington – new York_ boston Corridor. The free wifi worked. At Boston I managed to make the connection with the bus relatively easily despite twice being directed to the wrong counter to buy a ticket. It was a 1 ¾ hour ride to Woods Hole and then a ¾ hour wait for the first ferry. Everyone else sat inside except for me and a pleasant young man who sat outside. He graduated a year ago with a civil engineering degree and counts himself one of the lucky ones to have a job – dealing with waste water. He is working on a scheme to increase the capacity of the underground tanks, under Boston, that hold the combined stormwater and sewerage. If it rains too much, they almost overflow and their contents get pumped out to sea after first being hit with chlorine to ‘sanatise’ them and then being dechlorinised . He has never been to New York. Said Boston was big enough for him.

Then I caught the bus from Vineyard Haven, one of the settlements on Martha’s Vineyard to Oaks’s Bluff, where I am staying. I have a nice view of the water – Nantucket Sound, but not when I am sitting at the little table, like I requested. Never mind, tomorrow I will do some furniture rearranging.

I went for a walk around the town and had a very nice dinner at a place recommended by the Ukranian lady at the desk here. I walked in, the main bar was almost full and she asked if I wanted to sit at the Rah Bar and pointed at another bar . Fine, said I, not understanding what a Rah Bar was. While I was having my cocktail ( to celebrate my holiday) and then my MV clam chowder ( because it is what you eat here) , I got chatting to the guy who was setting up what he described as the oyster bar. He was from Dublin. He asked if I had been there – I said only for a night, but it had a nice feel ( well, it did) – he replied ‘You Aussies- you go everywhere. I watched him as I was having my scallops ( to test whether they were as good as the 2 lots I had in NY) . His job was to open the oysters and prepare the plates of oysters for the customers. Most of the time he was flat out. I also looked through a touristy booklet on MV that I had picked up and worked out that the Rah Bar was the Raw Bar. Several restaurants have them. Then , while I was having my apple crumble ( to soak up the rest of the alcohol in the cocktail) I got chatting to the 2 locals who had come to sit next to me at the Raw bar. They were having their oysters and telling me how they were farmed in salty water nearby – he did say but I have forgotten the name- the guy from Dubin passed me one across the bar. Everyone I have seen in NY and here slurps them straight from the shell, so so did I. It was a bit hard to comment on the taste because I was in the middle of my apple crumble! I waddled ( not reeled) back here.

Tomorrow I am doing as little as possible. I wonder how successful I will be.