Beach Vacation

Beach vacation Vish was a mood. Is a mood.

After many many moons, I took a few well deserved days off. My friends and I rented a beach house in Long Island, in a town called Shirley, for the 4th of July. It was the first time I had taken more than 2 days or a long weekend off from work in a year. Naturally, something unavoidable came up and I had to work just a little bit but it still felt like a glorious vacation which is all I needed. I read 4 books, watched at least 5 movies (that I can remember), ran by the beach and was tipsy 87% of the time.

Outside of the countless trips I take to DC to see my best friend, this may have been the first big friend trip I’ve been on. So, I went all out. There was an itinerary. Following the itinerary was not optional but there was definitely some wiggle room for unfortunate weather (which we somehow had 4/5 days that we were there).

After the insane traffic and the 4 hours it took to get to Shirley, the 8 of us split into two teams – food and alcohol. One of the coolest things we did when we were there was divy up who cooked dinner each night between the couples. Please note that my one friend and I were the only single ones on this vacation so naturally we were paired together. We made pasta – v basic. So grocery trip #1 was crucial to this plan.

With a multi cultural group of friends, every meal ended up with a different cuisine. I sometimes pride myself too much on my food knowledge but I learnt about a new food this week. Pancit – this Filipino noodle dish and boy oh boy was it tasty.

There were also some fun meal recycling. One of the meals was fajitas which I’m a huge fan of. Fun backstory – Every Mexican restaurant in India was an American chain. Our family favorite was Chili’s and my favorite thing to order were fajitas. My dad hated fajitas because “I’m not going to pay someone so that I can cook and assemble my own food”. Honestly, a rational reaction. He was a big chimichanga guy. If I’m remembering correctly, another family favorite was TGI Fridays until the building it was in burned down. I always ordered the fajitas there too. This was even before avocados were a thing! Anyway, back to the more recent past, leftover Mexican food makes the best breakfast.

Another creation was the pasta sandwich. My aunt’s cafe in Bangalore, Atta Galatta, serves grilled cheese sandwiches exclusively with french fries in them so that inspired me to make a rigatoni grilled cheese. In no world was that going to disappoint.

I also had a vision for my beverages for the trip. My friend’s boyfriend is a big hard seltzer fan and I’ve grown to love them as well. However, not enough to drink them all day and drink enough to be actually drunk at any point. So, we took it to the next level and every time he tried a new seltzer, I would too but also put vodka in it. It was “lit”. I think the coolest beverage of the trip was actually the 4th of July themed drink we had on BBQ day that I can’t take credit for. I think it was ginger beer (love), vodka (love), blue curacao (love) and raspberries (love).

Believe it or not, I had some non food fun moments as well. We played Monopoly and the only reason I recount that as a favorite moment is because I won. I hate losing and I’m also not a gracious loser. I need to work on that..But here are some quotes from that game night. And I’ll have you know that anything negative was directed towards me.

“I have entered the splash zone”

“Can I go to jail?”

“Make the pain stop”

“I am good and fucked.”

I love game night.

I managed to steal away some quiet moments at the beach by myself too. Sometimes to run and sometimes to read. I’m thinking about it now and it’s making me smile. I felt so peaceful in that moment. Some of the books I was reading were really trashy (read “The Wedding Party” and you will have no regrets). The sound of the waves crashing against the beach and the absence of any other sound can’t be beaten. I really don’t like a hot beach day or even spending all day on the sand – really not my vibe. But these stolen moments away from everybody else when most people would say it was too cold to be at the beach, that was when I thrived.

I couldn’t help wait for the next year when we could all do this again. I also couldn’t help thinking about being there as one of the couples. No scratch that. Ew. But coming here as older folk with kids in tow seemed pretty fun.

I hope you are now inspired to spend a couple of days on the beach and the focus should rightly be on food and drink. I’m yearning for my next vacation now. Still unsure where to go but thinking of maybe pulling off a solo trip. Florence is where I would like to spend that solo time but feels unrealistic. Maybe San Francisco? Or a mountain cabin somewhere? We’ll see. But there will be good food, that I’m sure of.