2.30am. Right. 4 hours sleep. I don't think it's jet lag, I truly think it's excitement, anticipation. I mean, I'm off to East Hampton on the train in 7 hours time. One can never be too early in rising!
So how do I put yesterday into 25 words or less? Yesterday was a dream come true for me. Riding the streets and lanes of Southampton? Every. Single. House...... I was doing the 'bike chuck' every 10 metres to take a photo. It got ridiculous! I was turning down photo opportunities galore after a while as you get a bit blasé seeing mansion after mansion. "Nope, that one is too similar to the last one, nope, don't like the letterbox, nope, too tudor-ish". I was making excuses so I didn't have to wheel my bike and just walk! .....as the on the bike - off the bike photo opportunities were so plentiful I worked myself into a bit of a state and just ended up crying like a baby. I blew kisses at the ones that. took. my. breath. away.....and you know what? I had to do this alone. It was almost spiritual for me. It was precious. I was sharing my dream with my best friend. Me. We've come a long way in the past 5 years..me and her. I needed to do this so much. I took some video footage of just cruising down the streets so I could remember the hedges and the soft breeze and the letter boxes and the grand gates and driveways....and the pussy cats that came out to greet me. Lonely perhaps? The video ends when I crash and say the word 's@$t. Those brakes on that bike were too good, too sensitive to touch.
So the day started so early for me! I woke at midnight after only 3 hours sleep. I tried and tried to sleep but I couldn't ...so I blogged, just as I am doing now....'The Midnight Blogger'. I was so hungry, as my appetite is all over the place and I hadn't eaten dinner before I went to bed. My last meal had been that lobster salad for one, at lunch, on the pavement outside that dear little restaurant in the village. I had a whine on twitter about me needing a 3 course meal right then and there, with 9 hours still to go until breakfast. Arghhh! Killer. I got lots of midnight twitter sympathy (as it was daytime over your way) so that helped me through the night...with Faux Fuchsia even offering to cook me a roast, if she could have. Bless.
I made it to morning and rattled around this beautiful old house while the owners were pottering around setting up for the day. I savoured their cosy Great Room and all their mementos and trinkets. Kim, one of the owners let me shuffle through some of her old photos of the old place during its restoration. I spent ages in the beautiful garden, drinking in the birdsong and the flowers. We had breakfast in the garden which I tweeted the hell out of. Yeah I lost a few followers. "will you stop with the English garden tweets already? Enough!"
Spent way too long enjoying the company of fellow travellers over breakfast.....one from New York who gave me his card, said,"here, if you want to see a real New York office, look me up when you're back in town" ....something about the Rockefeller centre? Doing. It.
So I hightailed it into town, after the owners found some sunscreen for me (don't start me on the hospitality of this place in this post, it's a whole separate blog post in itself), hired a bike and took off for the Hampton Designer Showhouse. Almost got mowed down by a building contractor's truck. That would have been a fitting end. Can't get used to riding on the wrong side of the road. Couldn't have done the car thing. Look left A-M, look left!
Do you know the best thing about the Hampton Designer Showhouse? The volunteers! Elegant women in their mature years who were up for a good old chat. I stayed 3 hours. I also got in for free as the coordinator, Mary, reckoned I deserved a reward coming all that way to see the joint.
Mary phoned Mr Bakes, the kitchen designer and told him I was in town, so he turned up and I picked his brain re the entire kitchen. Oh the workmanship. I don't want to come home to Australian workmanship. Nothing will ever be good enough now that I have been to the other side!
Look!
It's perfectly acceptable to have a pool house made out of four posts and call it a pool house in The Hamptons. So there.
Even the designer called it a pool house.
Vindicated!!!!
The Showhouse deserves a whole post of its own, well actually each room does!..... so I will share a few snippets here and then bring out the big guns when I have more time. More time. It's 7 hours until my train and it's the middle of the night. More time! Actually this post is making me sleepy again.
After the Showhouse, I headed down Flying Point Road towards the coast, knowing that there were mansions to be found. The roads were flat and there was a beautiful breeze. I drank it all in.
Even the weeds were pretty.
So, yes, the bike was chucked by the side of the road on and off for the rest of the day .... as I stopped and rode and stopped and rode. I kept my iPhone shoved in my bra as I needed quick access to it. It was not pretty, the bike chucking and the phone fetching. I got to Gin Lane beach and just abandoned that poor bike for my beach mansion pilgrimage. No-one was going to steal it for goodness sake. It was right next to the private bathing club where membership is only CONSIDERED, not allowed, but considered, if you are in 'The Blue Book' . Google it! You don't steal bikes when you have maids and butlers and play tennis in your whites at the 'Meadows' club or on your own court in your $30 million beach shack on Meadows Lane (ave price on the lane).
Anyway, I climbed those dunes like nobody's business. The sand was so hot but I had to get up close to those jewels on the dunes. One place looked abandoned for the summer so I undid the unlocked lock and snuck in for a closer photo, after a commando roll or too! I have scratches on my arms from climbing into hedges to get grainy long distant shots of fortresses. Southampton battle scars. It's funny, they are under lock and key and gates and high hedges and security cameras from the road, yet from the beach, you can jump the fence...that's if the dogs, or the security guards, or the alarm system or the moat!!! doesn't get you first.
I am going to post this post here, before I load up any more pictures as Blogsy keeps crashing and I am scared I am going to lose this post so come back, I am loading more pictures into my text.
The beaches are beautiful. We've been conned. Australia is not the only country with the best beaches in the world people. Take it from me. Gin Lane Beach! Coopers Beach! (where it costs $45 to park your car in the car park even if you are only staying 10 minutes). They even have walkways on the sand to the water, if you don't want to get sandy feet there and back!
And the beach in the public areas is groomed to perfection. Not a footprint! I laughed out loud.
I dipped my toes in the Atlantic all the way on my walk back to fetch my bike. The water temperature was perfect. There was no one on the beach. They were all in the private bathing club sections...so this little hillbilly Aussie had the run of the beach....and the mansions!
The bike rental time ended way too soon and I found myself back in the village starving to death. I headed to the famous deli and chuckled that they all thought I was English!! Giddaaaay, hey mate, we are so far from English, it's not funny. I bought the best lobster roll I have ever had in my life...actually it was the first lobster roll I have had in my life. Full. Of. Lobster. I found a little table in a not so busy restaurant around the corner (in a spot where they didn't notice me!) and sat and savoured that lobster roll. It was spiritual.
Strawberry ice cream in a cone? Don't mind if I do. Who am I? I never have icecream in a cone.
I wandered back down main street to my lodgings and wept while I told Kim about my wonderful day. She knew I'd been crying all day because of my mascara streaks. I'd spent the whole day looking like a panda and didn't realise it until I took a peek in the mirror. Mascara and sunscreen and sweat...it had been a doozy of a day. I took the best shower ever and fell asleep with more tears. So grateful.
A-M xx
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