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Serene Beauty of Cape Cod
The Cape Cod always was one of my favorite places to visit – I make no secret out of it. This year, it became literally the only place for us to visit to escape the maniacal joy of virtual confinement – and I have no complaints about it.
Mere three and a half hours ride and you are in the world which offers a chance to relax, unwind, and clear up your mind. Clearing up of the mind requires one to disconnect from the moment, to forget that reality exists. I can only envy people who can do this through meditation – I had a friend who would not even hear the doorbell ring once he was in his deep meditation. This is not me, unfortunately – I tried many times, but never was really able to disconnect from all the daily chatter. Thus I need the help of Mother Nature when looking for tranquility.
The three options which would work for me in that quest for tranquility would be the trees, the mountains, or the ocean.
Talking about the trees, I need a clean and open forest, full of 150 feet Eastern white pine trees – beautiful Redwoods would do the trick either. Have you had the pleasure of laying down on the thick layers of long pine needles, looking at the tall, impeccably vertical arrows touching the clouds far, far away? That is the feeling I’m talking about, but there is no place to experience it where I live.
Have you ever experienced the deafening quietness of the mountains? When the time stops, leaving you one on one with the universe, offering you an opportunity to get lost in your dearest thoughts and dreams? I have, on Mount Evans in Colorado – but this is 2,000 miles away.
That leaves us with the ocean. The closest beach is only 7 miles away from where we live, but to call that setting tranquil in any shape and form would be a huge exaggeration. The Cape, especially in the off-season, is offering unlimited amounts of tranquil bliss – just come and get it.
The Cape Cod is a narrow swath of land, extended into the Atlantic ocean – in no time you can move from one side of The Cape to another one, as the distance between the “coasts” ranges between 1 and 20 miles. We have family living in the town of Dennis, so this is where we stayed, the same as in the previous trips this year. In 3 days, we visited 5 or 6 different beaches – it appears that the town of Dennis (population under 14,000) offers a total of 20 (!) beaches on both sides of the Cape. While the beach is the beach at the end of the day, they all still have different charm – and some would even allow you to bring your car directly on the beach.
Combination of off-season (tourists are practically gone after the Labor Day weekend), warm weather, and low tide allowed us to enjoy hourlong walks with only sand and water in sight. A perfect place and time for self-reflection and pondering at life.
The only way I can share this experience with you is through the pictures, so here you have it, my friends.
A little flower intermezzo:
More of the water and sand:
This is not the beach, obviously, but beautiful morning on the backyard:
And a few words about wines, as the wine was an unquestionable part of the daily routine. The 2014 Turley White Coat was an absolute delight, offering Chardonnesque complexity and layers of acidity and fresh fruit. 2010 Diadema Rosso Toscana, a blend of Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Syrah, was offering a lot more than just a pretty bottle – plums, cherries, tobacco, mouthwatering acidity – delicious, nicely mature Italian wine treat. We also enjoyed the line of Terra Noble delicious renditions of Chilean Carmenere, which I just tasted before leaving for the Cape Cod over the virtual tasting (this will be a subject of the separate post).
And here is more of the Cape Cod beauty for you:
Leaving Cape Cod
All the good things come to an end. So was our stay on Cape Cod. I don’t know exactly what makes me feel differently when I’m visiting Cape Cod. I love vacations (who doesn’t!), but I typically want to avoid going to the same places over and over again. However, not when it comes to Cape Cod.
There is a genuine tranquility in that Cape Cod lifestyle. Little shops which are made out of the old houses. Little bakeries, which make cookies to die for. Little motels and inns, none of them more then two stories high. Lighthouses and water towers being the tallest structures around. The low tide on the beach, which allows you to walk and walk for hours. The beach which is never crowded. The waves in the sand which water leaves behind when it descends. The abundant flowers and greens of all kind. The special smell which is constantly in the air. There is something magical in the Cape Cod air, which lures you back…
We are back home now, so here are a few (okay, a lot) of the pictures I want to share with you. There will be more posts coming – we visited local Cape Cod winery, called Truro Vineyards, so I will talk about this experience, but for now, I just want to leave you with these little impressions of Cape Cod. Enjoy and cheers!
Cape Cod Chips and Cape Cod Beer
What goes better together than potato chips and beer? This is definitely a winning combination, especially if it is a rainy day on Cape Cod, or you had too much sun and you just need to do something else.
Both Cape Cod Chips factory and Cape Cod Beer are located in a very close proximity from each other, in the area of Hyannis. We decided to start with the Cape Cod Chips factory tour, just to keep the kids happy (besides, they are open earlier in the morning than the Cape Cod Beer).
Cape Cod Chips factory tour is self-guided, where you walk along the glass wall and can see the whole process of potato chip making, starting from inspection of the potatoes, slicing, frying in the huge kettles and then packaging and sorting the packages. There is a lot of fun facts which you can read during the tour, but – photography is prohibited, and my son became super upset when I said that I will ignore it and still take pictures, so here is the only informational picture I was able to get:
It is a pity that the Cape Cod Chips web site doesn’t list any of the fun facts (for instance, they can only use the potatoes which have the least water content for making of the chips), and they only provide minimal general information (sigh). Anyway, if you are on Cape Cod, especially with the kids, this is a highly recommended attraction. At the end of the tour you visit the shop where you get two small bags of chips for free (few different flavors are available), but you can also buy a few different kinds of chips in the big bags.
Once you done with the potato chips, a short 5 minutes car ride will take you to Cape Cod Beer brewery:
There is a once a day tour of the brewery, which takes place at 11 AM. But even if you will miss the tour, you can still do the best part – taste the beer! This is what was on the tasting list ( sorry for the picture quality : ( ):
Cape Cod Beach Blond was very good – light, citrusy and refreshing – this is the beer you can (or you think you can) consume by the gallon – perfect beer for the hot summer day. Cape Cod Red didn’t leave any lasting impressions, and Cape Cod Porter was… well, just another Porter. Porter is one of my favorite styles of beer in general, but again this particular Porter was not worse, but also not better than any others. Cape Cod IPA was good, with nice sweet undertones and not as bitter as many IPAs can get. My favorite beer was Cape Cod Summer – while it was retaining all the lightness and freshness of the Cape Cod Beach Blond, it also had substance and and very unique taste – you could clearly taste a fresh barley in this beer, almost like you are standing in the middle of barley field. Definitely a great beer.
I also enjoyed an opportunity to experience (read: smell) different types of hops and malts. I wish one day we will have an ability to record and then share tastes and smells – using words and images is clearly deficient for this purpose. Why am I saying that? Here is the Chocolate malt, which one actually have to smell to believe it (the smell of chocolate was unbelievable to me!):
And here is the chart which shows you how different kids of malts and hops are used in the different beers:
Here are few pictures just to complete the experience:
Oh yes, and I fully endorse the message underneath (note that we can use “beer” interchangeably with “wine”, “scotch”, and other tasty concoctions):
Enjoy the rest of your weekend and stay cool! Cheers!
Happy 4th of July!
Happy 4th to all! Enjoy the great American BBQ day and raise a glass of Madeira for our Founding Fathers and your friends and families, of course. And if you don’t have Madeira handy, any beer and wine will work perfectly well too. Here are few pictures from Cape Cod, just for your viewing pleasure. Cheers!
Had to look up “impudent” on internet… Appears to be highly ranked search word on Google
Visiting Flavor Paradise
The weather is still so so in Cape Cod ( read – raining on and off, overall gray outside and by all means not beach-worhy), so we were spending time wandering around little towns and busy Main street(s) which to me are quintessential New England, and more over, quintessential Cape Cod. The wandering lead us to Chattam, and to the Main street, to be more precise. Almost at the end of that main street we walked into the store called Gustare Oils and Vinegars and … OMG.
I’m sure that for anyone who is into the cooking or simply for anyone who likes food, it would be difficult to get surprised with the flavor infused olive oil or balsamic vinegar – lots of flavors are available at many gourmet stores around the country. But how about being completely blown away by the richness, cleanliness and precision of flavor? This is exactly what is happening at Gustare Oils and Vinegar store. Every flavor is so pronounced – when it says “Strawberry Balsamic”, you will find beautiful, perfectly ripe summer strawberries in the dark savory liquid. Sage and Wild Mushrooms in that olive oil – yep, you bet – with the perfect precision. The flavor comes through exactly as you would want it – clear and exact, nothing missing and nothing extra present. It is hard to do the justice to this wonderful oils and balsamics with the words, you really have to taste it to believe it. If your plans include Cape Cod, I would highly recommend not to miss this experience. Otherwise – here is the web site for Gustare Oils and Vinegars.
And before we part, here are few pictures for you (just use your imagination to get the flavor)…

not as spicy as you might think – rather very earthy and pleasant (but don’t trust me with the spicy/not spicy stuff)
That all I have for you, folks for my short Cape Cod update for today. Cheers!
Hello From Cape Cod
Yep, I’m actually on vacation. Cape Cod is one of my favorite destinations, as first of all it is reasonable driving distance from Stamford, Connecticut where I live (under 5 hours typically). And when you enter this small stretch of land, extending into the Atlantic ocean, something magical happens. There is something in the air, there is something there which switches whatever the mood you had into the “it is vacation, and it is good” kind of feeling.
No, I don’t plan to take a break from blogging. I will still post over the next two weeks – as you can imagine, the wine will continue to be a part of the routine. As you might expect, I will be also sharing my impressions – and as I had done it a number of times in the past, I will start with simple pictures. It is somewhat cloudy and grayish out here – but it is a vacation nevertheless. Hope you enjoy the pictures. Cheers!