It being a destination resort –- full of waterslides and aquariums and
fancy shops and restaurants and game rooms and a casino and even an Indiana
Jones-like “dig” of “the lost city of Atlantis” –- our group is content not to
leave the destination. Despite my occasional cajoling, no one wants to
trek with me across the bridge to explore Nassau for a bit. And so I go
alone.
I hoof over the bridge and onto the main drag that leads, in maybe a
mile, to the center of Nassau. It’s a strange walk, from the overgrown,
rattle-trap, run-down outskirts of town past the occasional modern bank
building and suddenly into a thriving, downtown scene of government buildings
and luxury stores staffed with impeccably uniformed and coifed and utterly
lovely Bahamian women. I wonder what the little houses look like where
they do their hair and makeup in the morning and where they go at the end of
the day, after selling $5,000 watches to tourists from the cruise ships in the
harbor.
Once I’ve seen the center of town, I wander up the hill and around a few
streets behind it to see the big pink building at the top of the hill, which
must be the governor’s residence, snapping pictures –- since lost –- of the big
house and some other bits of Nassau that catch my fancy and my untrained eye.
I’m not hungry, but the smells –- and my desire to live just a bit of the
life of Bourdain -- draw me into a local café, where I have a fine cup of conch
chowder, a half-dozen superb and piping hot conch fritters and a cold,
delicious bottle of Kalik, the ubiquitous Bahamian beer. I eat and drink
and read the USA Today sports section that I had tossed into Rachel’s backpack
along with my light fleece and camera and sunglasses and Blackberry, all of
which makes me a bit less like my hero Bourdain and a bit more like the
tourists around the corner shopping for jewelry and such.
Ah well. Tony would have enjoyed the
fritters, and the beer, and the local scenes on the walk between Nassau and
Paradise.
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