Visiting My Island Friends to the South: Day One

Last week, I mentioned that I visited two relatively new-to-me islands recently.

Months ago, my mom offered to take my sister and me on a girls’ getaway weekend. Managing the schedules of three women from three different states, however, proved to be a time-consuming challenge. Plus, we had to contend with the fact that I don’t have teaching vacation days and my sister has Sunday obligations, so our trip eventually morphed into about a 28-hour, pack-it-all-in getaway. Ultimately, we decided to meet on St.Simons Island and Jekyll Island in Georgia.

If you haven’t been to either of them, you really should go. I’d driven briefly through St. Simons years ago, and had never seen Jekyll before, so I was looking forward to exploring both.

The three of us met up on Friday just before dinner. We spent some time shopping in Pier Village, a waterfront shopping area by the St. Simons Lighthouse, where I found some beach-themed Christmas ornaments that I’ll be featuring in this year’s upcoming beach-themed Christmas ornaments post. If beach-themed ornaments are your thing, they have plenty to choose from in the many inviting gift shops there,

not to mention a plethora of other things, coastal-themed and otherwise, to suit your shopping fancy.

Then, we dined outdoors at Barbara Jean’s Restaurant, located in the middle of Pier Village. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time, so I had the crab cakes. I won’t really confirm whether or not I had the cheese grits that were so deliciously rich I couldn’t finish them.

After dinner, my cohorts practically dragged me to see the play Collected Stories by Don Margulies that was playing at The Historic Ritz Theatre in nearby Brunswick. Now, I love the theater, and I’ve seen some of the best of it over the years, but I’ve also walked into productions without any prior knowledge of the theater, the play, or the actors, and let’s just say I’ve lived to rue the day. For instance, in college I spent a summer studying in Ireland and England, and saw several excellent Shakespearean productions along the way. However, one particular production of Hamlet, one of my favorite plays, was so terrible that not only the audience but also the better part of the cast was laughing to the point of tears by the play’s end. Lest you’ve forgotten your Shakespeare, Hamlet is not a comedy. So my bad-attitude little self was not sure I wanted to sacrifice 2 of our 28 hours to a production I didn’t know the first thing about.

In summary, my mom was all like, “Hey, if nothing else, it will be an experience,” and was generally perky-like about the whole thing, and I was all like, “I think you’re crazy and tangentially, the lobby feels rather frigid (Hello Rayaud’s attack!),” in a respectful but morose way that may have also involved subtle facial…expressions.

The verdict?

I was wrong. (It’s weird when that happens. Like, really super weird.)

The entire production was incredible. In particular, Heather Heath, who played Ruth Steiner, delivered a stellar performance, one so good I have half a mind to drive down again next month to see her in a one-woman show scheduled during the 2012 Georgia Literary Festival. If Collected Stories is indicative of a typical Historic Ritz Theater production, I’d highly recommend checking it out if you visit the islands. Oh, and the theater itself was notably warmer than the lobby. 

I’m sure my mother would appreciate it if I publicly noted that she did not consume any chocolate nor any ice cream during the entire vacation day (and for the entire week before our trip, she was quick to inform us over and again). I’m not really sure of the significance of this other than the fact that it must indicate some sort of Herculean strength on her part, as both chocolate and ice cream figured largely in all of the family days of our lives vacations that I can recall.

At least that’s what I would imagine the significance of a day or a week without chocolate and/or ice cream would be, having never attempted it myself.

Stay tuned for a post on Day Two, which I imagine will appear soon, as I’m doing my very best to avoid grading the stack of final draft essays sitting on my desk.