More Fun with New Friends
We got an e-mail quite a few weeks ago from someone in southern California who is interested in moving to an island. He found us through our blog. This continues to amaze me. The internet is very, very scary to me. People all over the world can read my thoughts and ramblings…Strange. The strangest thing to me is that we still get responses on old posts….Hmmmm. More on this disturbing subject in a later post (what does “time” mean in cyberspace, anyway?)
Anyway, this reader works in a business that he can do anywhere. He and his partner of around 30 years have explored different islands including the Hawaiian islands and the Turks and Caicos. So they wanted to hook up with us in an effort to get to know this place better. It also helped that “A Taste of St. Croix” is happening this week where they’re staying at the Divi ( 
). (Where are you, Wreg?)
So he’s into good food, and he contacted us to see if they could meet us and go to dinner at an interesting restaurant. He researched a few places and asked us about them and we decided on Duggan’s, where there’s always fresh, local seafood.
It was agreed that we’d meet them at their hotel ( ) and drive them, since they were not that comfortable driving on the left yet, to Duggan’s. I called and made reservations for 4 on the agreed upon night.
We entered the lobby of their hotel ( ) and we’d (surprisingly!) gotten there on time. When I spoke to Robert on the phone, he said he’d recognize Michael from pictures on our blog (again, this scares me, but I guess guys look the same more consistently than women do). We saw a few people in the lobby busily chatting or checking their e-mails on the computers there. But no one looked like they were waiting for us. Odd, because, we think of statesiders as being very punctual. Okay, these folks were from southern CA, so I could understand the “fashionably late” thing, maybe.
We walked around, and after a few minutes, we sat, looking, I don’t know, expectantly I guess, at every person who walked by. Finally a man came in looking at us and rounded the chair grouping we were seated at, to introduce himself to Michael. He was out of breath because he’d run to the lobby where we’d agreed to meet. The reason for this was that they couldn’t start their rental car.
We introduced me to Robert and were suddenly off to the parking lot where Teri was at the car trying to figure things out. Fortunately, this car was the same one that MaryAnn has and she’d previously described to Michael the idiosyncrasies of getting it started. After a few tries (like… let’s close all the doors, the trunk and our purses, then I’ll stand on my head next to that car over there, and we’ll all visualize ignition…), Robert got it started. But Michael had to drive. Thank goodness it didn’t stall!
We arrived at Duggan’s on time and Laurie (we love you, Auntie Laurie) was the hostess. And after a few tries, she was able to read the name “Dance” on the reservations list (it looked like “Dano”). She let us choose a nice table with a view of the sea for our friends to enjoy while the sun was still up.
A guy named Michael (what an interesting name!) was our waiter, and we hadn’t met him before. None of us had appetizers (sooo unusual for us because we like to try EVERYTHING) but the bread was so good and soft and warm, that it sufficed. I’d ordered the baked stuffed Mahi, Robert got the Creole Mahi and Shrimp special and Teri and Michael each got the Cruzan lobster. We all enjoyed our meals and even had key lime pie for dessert. Yummm!
Filled to the brim, we headed back to their hotel ( ) to drop them off. Then they invited us to join them at the casino. We thought, “…well, we haven’t been since the week we got married…so what the heck..we’ll go to watch”. And we did. And it was fun. We noticed that it was after 10:30 and we had to work in the morning, so we shoved off while they stayed to (hopefully) make a killing. Robert had been doing well before we left…
Anyway, we brought the camera, but never got to use it to photograph the lovely food and ambiance at Duggan’s. And I didn’t adequately describe it either, I’m sure. So next time you’re in the area, you’ll just have to try it for yourself…
April 17th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
ha, ha, what a great story. Google has a service that allows you not only to be notified of new web postings on a given subject, but also to pick up blog posts from anywhere in the world that relate to your chosen area of interest….it is easy to do just by going to http://www.google.com and become a subscriber. You put in your search words “st. Croix” “virgin Islands” or whatever you want - the more search words the more refined the search….people know how to do this, of course, for doing Google searches, and also how to group with quotation marks when you have two or more words that need to appear in sequence. But the same applies for subscribing to any new blog or web posts…the Google “crawler” will find them for you as quickly as you prefer ( as they happen, weekly, or daily) I love this service, but I do notice that sometimes Google picks up postings that have been out there for some time ….but usually you just get the new stuff.
Duggans is great!! And we love Frank!!
April 18th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Terri: This is a notice I received via email. Thought you might be interested in reading it.
WYNDHAM HOTELS AND RESORTS has announced the development of a luxury 400-room Wyndham St. Croix Golf Resort and Casino. The $250 million complex is scheduled to break ground this summer and open in 2010. Location is the 294 acres owned by Paul Golden at Estate Great Pond. The resort is expected to create 1000 construction jobs and 1200 permanent jobs. The resort will feature a 25,000 sf casino, 18-hole Jack Nicklaus signature golf course, 17,000 sf spa and fitness center, four restaurants, lounges, retail stores, and a kid’s club. The V.I. Public Finance Authority will invest $32.5 mil for the construction of a 43,000 sf conference center within the Resort.
April 18th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Duggan’s….booooooooooo. They are dead to me. If you’ll set out some Yankee Hotel Traps and spay the place heavily with Bitch Be Gone I might revisit one day.
The view is nice, the island is nice, the food is nice, all spoiled by bitchy Bostonians.
May they all super glue their butt cheeks together.
Not your friends…the people at Duggan’s.
April 19th, 2008 at 8:44 am
Sandy, we searched the Wyndham site and it took a while for us to find that weeks ago when he had the press release/ conference at the Palms. Wyndham doesn’t seem overly excited about it. They didn’t even send a flunkie down here to “announce” this “partnership” with Golden. Big deal, just more hype with no substance.
Oh, right, Wreg. You’ve not had a good experience with them. Strange. Our friend, Laurie is the hostess a few nights a week now, and everything was cool. (Did you have Cooter with you when you were there?)
April 19th, 2008 at 9:03 am
No, Cooter was not there the second time.
We went there four years ago and the food was fantastic, the service was adequate, but the attitude was disgusting. The hostess treated us rudely and as if we weren’t welcomed. She came back several times to hover as if we should hurry and open up the table. I had a reservation too so she should have left us alone.
Cooter arrived by the end of dinner.
I thought no one can be this bitchy full time. That takes too much effort to be 100% bitchy 100% of the time.
So we went back with a reservation. A reservation that specified a table and it was agreed to. I went there in person earlier in the day and agreed to the table. It was a lovely view. I had new friends visiting the island and I wanted to showcase a fine dining experience.
Well, we arrived and bitchzilla huffed and puffed, hovered, stared, and was snippy the entire evening. Normally I brush off this behavior but she insisted she be noticed that she was queen bitch. I noticed.
She did not honor my requested table and refused to seat us there even though the table remained empty.
The service was not as good that night therefore Cooter never even entered the picture. You have to serve drinks for Cooter to be invoked.
As always, the food was good.
Dinning is more than good food.
Maybe she is a bigot about southerners? I’m serious. I hold the greatest disdain for that woman and that place. She had two chances to act like a normal person and she couldn’t pull it off.
I am sure your friend is a lovely person. Maybe I can try again when she is working. I so want to like the place, seriously.
April 19th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Wreg, Wreg, Wreg…..You’re not just a wee bit sensitive about your southern roots?
When y’all are here in June. We’ll give the damned yanks another shot. I’ll make the reservations (under “Kennedy” of course
).