Wishing you all a Happy Easter and Happy Passover

Happy Easter and Happy Passover – whichever you may be celebrating. We are looking forward to a lovely long weekend here in Eleuthera – the Bahamas has both Good Friday and Easter Monday as public holidays so we are going to be enjoying that.

Traditionally Bahamians have a beach party on Easter Monday and this is their first venture into the ocean for the year. Well after 20 years here I have become a bit of a wimp with swimming in the sea so maybe I will also take my first dip of the year on French Leave Beach !

I have actually had a few swims in our pool – it is fine in the afternoon when the sun has warmed it up – but my Sunday morning dip was accompanied by a few shrieks when I first went in. Just getting a little bit of practice in before Jane gets here on the 25th ! Jane is a much better swimmer than I am so she shames me into swimming and not floundering too much.

We have had some lovely meals with friends over the last week….. On Sunday we had lunch at La Bougainvillea with Zach and his lovely wife Mackinsey. It was Mackinsey’s first time on the island – although Zach has been here quite a few times already. I wrote about him a couple of weeks ago as he is building a house here on the Old Banks Road in North Palmetto Point.

We went along to look at the house under construction and it was very interesting. They are using the ICF system which Bob had seen before but I hadn’t. One of the major advantages is the insulation properties – it will keep it cool inside – as opposed to where Zach uses the system in North Dakota which is about keeping the heat in during the long cold winters.

I think it looks like a great system – another advantage is that it is accurate – getting the building true to square is sometimes a problem here but this system with the right angle corner forms makes sure all is good and square.

Zach brought us a box of ‘Chippers’ – these are chocolate covered potato chips – from a store called Carol Widman’s Candy Co in Fargo ND. The chocolate is divine and the saltiness of the potato chips is a great contrast. You can only eat one or two at a time as they are so rich – but it was a totally new experience !

On Monday evening we went to Potlatch with our good friend Michael Reardon and his extended family. We haven’t actually seen Michael since 2017 but we picked up just where we left off. Michael was involved in the construction of 1648 and the four original villas for French Leave Resort. He and his wife Pilar are great company and we all had a thoroughly enjoyable evening. It was so good to reconnect and we loved that they were staying in Buena Vista which of course was our home for 18 years ……

The years pass so quickly and it is very easy to lose touch but these occasions of catching up are to be treasured.

This week I have met several of you dear readers around and about and although they are often brief meetings it gives me so much joy when you speak to me. So do please keep on – I welcome meeting up with you ….

We all know it is pretty rare to really like pictures of ourselves and when it is two or more of you it is even rarer to see a good one of both of you – so I was absolutely delighted when Lindy – who got married here the other week – sent me this picture of Bob and I going in to the wedding dinner at The Fig Tree restaurant. I particularly love the way Bob looks in this one. Very grateful to the lovely team who took the pictures……. they are Emily Figurelli Photography

And so dear readers – enjoy whatever you are celebrating this weekend – and if you are not celebrating either Passover or Easter then just have a lovely weekend.

And finally a Sunday morning picture of last week’s Pink Moon …..