10 September - Rain and Donkeys

Woke up to an overcast sky. What I didn't mention before was that every night we have been serenaded to sleep by the sound of the waves. So lovely. Another great thing about the location is that if you wake up in the middle of the night, you can sneak out the door and look up at the night sky, stars and all. I remember when I was a kid, the night sky was filled with stars. Living in an urban area, you don't see the sky because of all the light pollution, so this was really special.

After breakfast, we hiked up the stairs to the #3 bus. After a short ride we arrived at the Donkey Sanctuary. It seems to be on everyone's list so why not? It was a lovely place. The donkeys are either rescues from people who can no longer care from them or retired working donkeys. There are also Shetland ponies and one mule. He's the result of a Shetland poly and a donkey mating. He doesn't like donkeys and will only hang with the Shetland ponies. Such a snob. Anyway, there are 119 donkeys at the sanctuary, divided into herds based on who gets along with who. As we arrived and walked down the very long drive, it started to rain, just a light sprinkle, so no biggie. We went from barn to barn looking for donkeys. Most of them were focused on eating and didn't want to be bothered. We found two who had slightly better "people skills".

As luck would have it, in the middle of our visit, the heavens opened, so we headed for the cafe. Bruce had a sausage roll (is there anything more typically British?) I was going to have a Victoria sponge, but since I'd never had a Jaffa cake, and Bruce loves chocolate and orange, I ordered that instead, along with a cappuccino. Finished and headed for the door only to find that it was raining even harder! Dashed over to the gift shop to look at more donkey themed items than I knew existed. Happily, we struck up a conversation with one of the women at the till. She was a wealth of information. We found out that she works as a tour guide as well, so she answered all our questions, ie, why is it called the Isle of Wight? originally the Romans called it Vectis but after they left and warlords took over, one of them named Wihtwara gave it his name, which, over time, morphed into Wight.

Finally the rain broke and we visited more donkeys and as we walked to the bus, the Shetland ponies.

Made it the bus with about 1 minute to spare. Home to Ventnor. I had scored us a lunch reservation at the smoking Lobster's sister, the Drunken Lobster. Wue settled in for cocktails, as you do. So many things on the menu sounded so good, it was hard to decide, so I left it the bartender, Chloe, to choose. I ended up with a Black Cherry Charcoal Sour. Bruce chose a Raspberry Chili Margarita. Both were great. The Black Cherry Charcoal Sour had a very thick head, decorated with a thin line of chili spice. The charcoal caused the liquid on the bottom to be a beautiful dark red-black color. Gorgeous.

For lunch we chose Szechuan king prawn & pineapple katsu maki. I'm always a bit apprehensive about pineapple in a dish as it can be overwhelming, but this dish featured tiny pieces of pickled pineapple which accented the flavor of the dish beautifully.

Next came Lo Bak Go, a bit like a hash brown cake, but made with daikon and topped with bonito flakes. It was crispy and yummy.

The next dish to arrive was the Tempura Soft Shell Crab with chili yuzu slaw on a gorgeous black bao. The bao was soft and light as a feather and made a lovely pillow for the delicate crab. Our last dish was a Korean style barbecued lamb served on lettuce cups. Its rich and intense flavor really packed a punch. I often find that lamb can be so delicately flavored as to be almost indistinguishable from beef, but this was not the case here. It seemed almost like hogget, it was so flavorful. We had a side dish of seaweed salad, which served as a light refreshing bite between the various dishes.

From start to finish, it was an amazing meal, and the prices were very reasonable. Great lunch!

Bruce made his way to the Blenheim pub.

I went to the seaside to get another of those amazing crystallized ginger ice creams. He was successful, I was not. They had sold so much ice cream during the heat spell, they were out of most of the ice cream flavors. Boo.

We met back at the villa and had G&Ts and a light bite of cheeses that Bruce picked up in town.

I started writing in my journal, but realized that my handwriting has deteriorated, since I don't write very often. Instead, I did a little poking around online and started this blog. Wrote a couple of entries and called it a night.