Things I learned about St. Thomas. Dictated by my pie whole, atrociously
applied to theirs.
1) Happy hours are awesome, but sometimes it’s worth paying a little more for a drink you want. We got pretty caught up in three-dollar margaritas and two-dollar rum punch, but a good beer is always worth a splurge. You’d buy a beer for a Belgian blond at the bar but why bother when you can buy a Belgian blond? Try the Urthel Saisonniere. It has all the sweetness of a Weiss with all the attitude of an IPA.
2)
When your
life is sweet, you become just a little sweeter to match. Paradise
is punctuated by pleasant people, and is seems that the islanders are often willing
to do just a little more for you. That’s about the only thing sweeter than Samuel Smith’s Chocolate Stout.
3)
Most of
the food on St. Thomas is imported so it’s priced accordingly. Try not
to let that Flemish sour your culinary experience. Get creative with cooking,
find cheap fun-food in places like Taco Hell, or just accept that paradise has
a price. When life gives you expensive lemons, make more expensive lemonade
less often. And when your barrel gives you bacteria, brew a sour beer like Monk’s Café. It may even taste a little
like lemonade.
4)
After
you’ve had enough Belgian beers here or happy hour drinks elsewhere, your
google searches becoming a little more interesting. One
rather memorable happy hour taught me that daggering is a form of dance. A form
of dance that the Jamaican government strives to ban due to the increasing
numbers of injury to important male parts. Youtube at your own risk and not in
the presence of children, parents, and priests.
5)
We tend to
take the simple things in life for granted. St. Thomas may lack some of our
fancier mainland desires, but sometimes all you want is a simple slice of
crusty Garlic Bread with baked-in
garlic and butter. And sometimes all you need is to see that a beautiful beach
is a barely ten-minute walk from your front door.
6)
The food
isn’t all that great. As you’ve often heard me complain, the local
cuisine doesn’t really exist, and finding produce for a price that doesn’t
purge your bank account is often just not possible. If you’re missing a
freshness and variety, you’ll find that Veg-Head
pizza, with its various fresh veggies atop a crispy, just-tossed crust, is a
Pie Whole new world.
7)
This move
SLOWLY in St. Thomas. To calculate island time take either the time
they tell you it takes or what you believe to be a reasonable amount of time to
complete the task at hand and multiply by five. Multiply by ten if you’re from
New York. For example, the task of making a simple 4-cheese Cheese Lover Pizza should take 30 minutes max in my opinion so
when it only took an hour, I praised the chef for his efficiency.
8)
Always
wear sunscreen. Even under the supposedly subdued 4 PM sunshine, you run the risk
of resembling your Holy Trinity Pizza.
Reapply sunscreen frequently during the day or you’ll bear an uncanny
resemblance to the exposed fresh tomato sauce, and if you wear sunglasses for
too long, you’ll have white circles around your eyes like the fresh mozzarella
that dots this pizza. If you wear a bikini in the same pretty green as the
flavor-boosting basil leaves, you can spend your Halloween dressed like a Pie
Whole pizza.
I think the most important lesson I’ve learned about St. Thomas is
that despite listening to complaints that the island is just too small, you’ll
soon see that this supportive community encircles you even better than this
flaky, deep-dish crust of the Baked Spinach
and Artichoke Dip. And the only thing that warms you from the inside-out
faster than a piping hot pizza is how quickly and easily someone will take you
in. Sometimes a hidden jalapeno will give you an unexpected burn, but overall this
island has a heritage richer than the pound of cream in this dip.
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