Month: December 2022

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Advent Scenes, 2022 Edition

Friday – we made it! Happy holidays to all – Happy Hanukkah to those who are lighting candles this week, Merry Christmas to those looking ahead to Sunday’s celebrations, and Yule blessings and happy long weekend to everyone! I’m checking off the last few items on my work to-do list before the weekend, and I’ve taken off Tuesday so it’ll be an extra-long one; I can’t wait for some quiet time to rest and recharge in the light of my Christmas tree. This Christmas has, like they all seem to do, snuck up on me. I’m nowhere near ready – not a single gift wrapped yet, although I’m at least mostly done shopping (and hopefully completely done after this afternoon). This year, I pared down Advent activities to the absolute essentials – our family favorites, and nothing more. There are some years when I really want to lean into the run-up to Christmas, but this year it felt good to take a step back, focus on things like fresh air and connection, and just let myself recharge as much as possible. But we do have some activities that are must-dos, like getting our Christmas tree and decorating it in a small family party. Other than that, I held the outside the house activities to those that bring us (or at least me) real joy.

Starting with a visit to Aladdin the camel at Mount Vernon. This is an absolute necessity. George Washington used to obtain a camel as a Christmas treat to entertain his stepchildren and grandchildren at Christmas, and the estate still brings Aladdin over (from a local reserve) every year. We’ve been visiting him since he was just a baby camel and only missed the years when we lived in western New York. Christmas just isn’t Christmas without Aladdin.

Of course, I also love walking around the gardens at Mount Vernon any time of the year. But last year, after reading Nigel Slater’s Christmas Chronicles, I was struck anew by the pared-down beauty of the gardens in winter.

The kitchen garden – my favorite.

We don’t go inside the house every year, but we did this year. Every time we take the mansion tour, I find something new to appreciate. This time, it was the beautiful wallpaper designs. Not the style I would choose for my own house, but beautiful to examine (and photograph).

As always, a lovely afternoon of wandering around Mount Vernon! No matter how many times I visit, it never gets old.

The following weekend, Steve and I revived an old favorite holiday tradition: we saw Handel’s Messiah performed by the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center. We used to go every year, but hadn’t been since Peanut was born. This year, we sprung for a babysitter and made a date night of it – we really went all out. Steve even scored reservations at the Terrace Restaurant in the Kennedy Center and we had a delicious dinner before the show. (Worth noting: this was before the performance got going, as you can tell by the people milling about in the aisles. Naturally I didn’t photograph during the show!)

All decked out in our holiday finery! I even dug my vintage partridge in a pear tree pin out of the jewelry box for the occasion.

We weren’t the only ones decked out, either. The Kennedy Center was festooned in rainbows! What a night – it was such a special treat to see Messiah again. It’s one of my favorite pieces. And I was surprised by how many of the arias and recitatives I remembered. The choral numbers are generally the most memorable, but the whole performance was familiar and it felt like such a revival of a joyful tradition.

Finally – the other essential! Every year starting in about 2010, I think, Steve and I had a tradition of walking around Old Town Alexandria and looking at the holiday decorations. Old Town is a very historic area – pre-Revolution, actually – and the residents stay true to the look and feel of the neighborhood by choosing very traditional holiday decor. Lots of greenery and fruit. The wreaths are especially beautiful.

We started our walk this year at the Basilica of St. Mary. This is the very first Roman Catholic parish in Virginia and the historic church building is just gorgeous. And every Christmas they put out a beautiful Nativity scene. (Steve asked where the baby was. I said: it’s not Christmas yet. He hasn’t been born, silly.)

After visiting the Nativity, we started our walk around Old Town. As usual – lots of beautiful wreaths, lots of greenery, and fruit accents. I considered drying out some orange slices or maybe doing orange and clove balls at home, then decided against it. Any added work sounds like too much this year. Walking around and looking at other people’s efforts was the sweet spot.

This one was my favorite this year. So exuberant!

I just can’t get enough of this holiday beauty!

The other part of our Old Town decorations walk tradition is a festive beverage, of course! Before kids, Steve and I used to stop for a glass of wine. Then it became dinner at our favorite pizza joint. With COVID, the tradition has changed again; now it’s takeaway cocoa from Misha’s Coffee. But that’s the thing about favorite traditions – they can evolve over time. Maybe in a few years we’ll come full circle and be back to toasting the holiday with Pinot Noir.

Merry everything, friends! I hope you have exactly the holiday weekend you’re dreaming of – whether that’s an all-out festive extravaganza, a quiet weekend of watching snow come down, or something in between.

Happy holidays!

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A Very Murdery Advent

Years ago, back when Peanut was a wee baby, I started a tradition of buying a few Christmas-themed books at the beginning of Advent, with an eye to building a holiday library for her (and later, her brother too). When I was growing up, my mom had a huge stack of children’s Christmas books and it didn’t feel like the holiday season until she pulled them out of storage. (My favorite was The Littlest Angel, although it always made me well up.) Eventually, the kids’ library got pretty extensive, but I’m still buying Christmas books at the beginning of the season and reading them in the lead-up to the holiday. It’s just that – these days – they’re for me.

The Advent 2022 additions to my Christmas library, as it turns out, are rather murdery. I ended up adding four mystery novels to the Christmas shelf. Is it better or worse that this was completely unintentional? Recently I discovered that I could get my hands on the Harper Collins special edition Agatha Christies, and I snagged all three holiday-themed volumes – The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, Midwinter Murder (a collection of short stories – always fun at Christmas) and Hercule Poirot’s Christmas. I also added The White Priory Murders to the stack; it was the October entry into my British Library Crime Classics subscription, but it’s a classic country house Christmas mystery involving footprints (or a lack thereof) in snow, etc. There’s just something about a Christmas murder mystery.

Actually, it appears this is something of a theme – see last year’s stack (at least, the ones I didn’t get to – hopefully this year). Which one is not like the others? Well, The Faber Book of Christmas is actually not a murder mystery, thank goodness there’s at least one nonviolent entry in my Christmas reading. But I did pick up Thou Shell of Death and The Case of the Abominable Snowman, both from The Hatchards Library (they’re just gorgeous), as well as Ngaio Marsh’s Tied Up in Tinsel – unpictured here because I managed to read it last year. And I always add at least one BL Crime Classics per Christmas; last year it was The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories. These are all on the TBR for this year – we’ll see how many I manage to knock out this month.

In short, I don’t know what it is about Christmas reading that makes me feel extra mysterious, but clearly I’m leaning into it. I’m well prepared for the season; knowing every possible festive way to bump someone off, I’m on high alert and confident I’ll survive this holiday.

Season’s readings! Do you like a murder mystery at Christmas?

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The Week in Pages: December 18, 2022

Happy Monday! Christmas reading has started full swing around here – and I will show you my Advent additions to my holiday library on Wednesday (I posted them by accident last week and then pulled the post, but it will stay up this time). I spent most of the workweek over non-Christmas books – The Swallow: A Biography, by Stephen Moss (third of four books in his bird biography series, so I do hope he’s planning to keep it up because I’m running out!) and then Dear Mrs. Bird, by A.J. Pearce, which started in December but was definitely not a holiday book.

Once I finished with Dear Mrs. Bird, I switched over fully into Christmas reading and started with Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year, which I had out from the library. Nothing new or especially earth-shattering in there, but it was nice to spend a day’s reading getting some gentle validation for scaling back the winter holidays and celebrating in a way that feels meaningful to me – and not necessarily the way the media tells me I should celebrate. I think I’m generally pretty good at that, but a reminder is always nice. And I really liked the concept of a “Christmas constellation,” which gave me some stuff to think about for this holiday season and beyond.

With finishing up both Dear Mrs. Bird and Calm Christmas, I am out of unread library books and back to reading from my own shelves, and I knew right away that I wanted some festive mystery stories to kick off holiday reading – so I picked up Midwinter Murder, a collection of mysteries featuring all of Agatha Christie’s different detectives. Out of the twelve stories in here, five are Poirot stories and two are Marple stories, so this should be a very good volume indeed – I am about 40% of the way through it as of press time and really enjoying every entry. Nothing like a little crime for Christmas, right?

Finally – Christmas listening continues apace, too. I’ve actually slowed down a bit on the audiobook front, thanks to Steve setting up my Spotify account (yes, I am the last person on the planet to Spotify) which opened up a whole world of music options. I know, I know. But I’m gradually making my way through the stories and recipes in Jeanette Winterson’s Christmas Days and finding it a wonderful listen. I have about five hours to go in the audiobook, so a few long walks this week should finish it off. Now to see if that actually happens, since the kids have started their two-plus week Christmas vacation, oof.

I was hoping to have a skiing picture to share with you, but opening day at our local slope has been postponed due to not enough snow – sob. We’re waiting more or less patiently (okay, less patiently) for the mountain to open up, but in the meantime we did get in our (well, my) favorite Christmas tradition over the weekend: a walk around Old Town Alexandria to look at the decorations, especially the beautiful wreaths on just about every door, followed by cocoa from our favorite indie coffee shop. I’m pretty sure everyone else is just humoring me, but I do just love this tradition, which we’ve kept going for many years now.

What are your favorite traditions for the lead-up to Christmas? And what are you reading this week?

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Honduras Highlights: Turtles All The Way Down

It’s no secret that my favorite animals on the planet are cetaceans – whales especially, but I love dolphins and porpoises too. But my second favorite marine species – which I love almost as much – has to be sea turtles. And so far I’ve been on two dive trips and lucky enough to see sea turtles on both. In fact, in Roatan, we saw them multiple times.

The first time we saw a sea turtle, he was a massive beastie – about the size of a Volkswagen. Even the divemaster was gobsmacked. Sadly, my camera battery was dead and my camera was chilling in my bag on the boat, waiting for a charge back at the hotel. But the sea turtles obliged by showing up three more times after that – none as big as that first guy, but still plenty exciting for all that.

This one was very busy exploring the reef. Looking for snacks, probably.

Eventually he drifted off into the blue.

One of the highlights of our final dive (this time, because we’ll definitely be back to Roatan) was a visit from three sea turtles who circled around us for our entire safety stop. Our dive buddy Alex had a moment with one of them – almost swam off into the great ocean together.

Oh, sea turtles! Words cannot express how much I love you. Please join me on every single dive.

That concludes this short series of highlights from my digital nomad week on Roatan Island, Honduras! For the next couple of weeks, I will be taking off Friday travel posts and replacing them with holiday fun. Starting in the new year, Friday travel posting continues with something COMPLETELY different. Check in with me then to find out!

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The Week in Pages: December 12, 2022

I cannot believe that Christmas is only two weeks away – seriously, how? It sneaks up on me every year and this year is no exception, apparently. I need to get my act together – lots of presents still to buy, magic to make, all that good stuff. Every year I say I have no idea how it will all get done, and every year it somehow does get done. Elves?

Anyway, it was hard to find reading time last week because I was on a business trip – the last one of 2022. But I squeezed it in where I could and look! Not too shabby. On Monday I finished up The Franchise Affair – read in two days because it was a fast read and I was motivated. I had an episode of Shedunnit to listen to on the plane (en route to the aforementioned business trip) that was going to spoil the ending, and I wanted to finish the book before traveling for that reason. I did, and then listened to the podcast episode, and it was all very satisfying. After that, I turned back to God Rest Ye, Royal Gentlemen, which I had going on Audible. It was a fun and engaging listen, and perfect for this time of year. After finishing that, I started Christmas Days, also via Audible. I’m not far into that one yet, but it’s good.

As for print, since I no longer carry paperbacks – let alone hardcovers – when I travel, I was combing the kindle library for something fun, and hit upon Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her, an interesting nonfiction read about the history of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, Nancy Drew, and “juvenile” publishing. I blazed through it on my few spare moments over the week, finishing it up on the weekend, and really enjoyed it. Finally, on Sunday evening, I pulled The Swallow: A Biography off my shelf; I was looking for something fast to read, because I have two books to pick up at the library this afternoon and don’t want them idling on my entryway table for too long.

As for what’s next – those two library books are on deck. One is definitely a Christmas book, and one might be? (I’m not sure. I’ll read the doubtful one first.) It’s getting to that time of year and I think I’ve put off the Christmas reading long enough – I’m already deep into it on Audible, as you can see, and I have a stack of print books on holiday themes to get me through the next two weeks. The idea of decorating, shopping, wrapping, sending cards, etc., is exhausting – but festive reading, I can manage.

The Christmas tree is in a new spot this year! With the Peloton occupying its usual space in the living room, we are trying out this corner of the family room for the tree. Don’t mind the weird ornament clusters; at some point I’ll find the time and energy to QC the kids’ work.

Have you decorated for the winter holidays yet?

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Honduras Highlights: Surface Intervals

In diver lingo, a surface interval is basically exactly what it sounds like: an interval of time that you spend at the surface between dives. On multi-dive days, you need a certain amount of time between dives in order to let the nitrogen bubbles dissipate from your blood. Between dive trips, it’s all surface interval – ha.

Our surface intervals on Roatan were mostly spent typing away on our laptops – it was another digital nomad week for us. Mornings were for scuba, afternoons were for lawyering. Not a bad life.

Especially when your afternoon lawyering is done at this beautiful place! We stayed at Barefoot Cay Resort, on the East side of Roatan. It was a beautiful, peaceful spot.

Most of the Barefoot Cay buildings are on a private island. It’s a tiny little island, and in the evenings before dinner Steve and I circled it over and over, getting our steps in (no days off for the Garmin watches!).

We stayed in a little bungalow right on the beach. There was a family of bats that stayed with us – cuddled up together in the eaves of our porch by day. Too cute! Speaking of cute, but in a totally different sense, I was obsessed with the woven pendant lights hanging from the trees near the resort’s restaurant, Silversides.

In the mornings, due to the high winds on the East side of the island, we were loaded into a hotel van and driven to the West side to do our dives. One of the hotel’s dive boats was docked by this gorgeous sandy beach, where our captain, Justin, and our divemasters, Danny and Ron, waited for us every morning.

The street was lined with dive shops. It’s easy to see what Roatan’s favorite activity is!

In between dives, we hung out on our boat – the Marea – chatting with Justin, Danny and Ron, and the other divers (and on one day, snorkelers) while we drove between dive sites or bobbed around waiting for the green light to hop back in the water.

During one surface interval, Justin drove us past the dolphins at Anthony’s Key, one of the biggest resorts on the island. Worth noting: this is not a holding pen. The dolphins are free to come and go as they please; those that were swimming around between the docks were there by choice, much to my relief. (Also, please excuse whatever is happening with the color in this picture. I don’t know why it’s all purple.)

Most days, we wrapped up our dives shortly before lunchtime and headed back to eat at Silversides before diving into work for the afternoon. But on our last day, our dive buddies Alex and Emily suggested that the four of us get dropped off at the Roatan Island Brewing Company for lunch – just to do something a little different.

We shared flights of beer, mango slices with dipping spices, crispy breadfruit – a Roatan favorite – and chicken quesadillas. Yum.

Definitely a fun way to celebrate adding twelve dives to our resumes!

Next week: back in the water for the biggest (literally) highlight of the week. Check in with me then!

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Reading Round-Up: November 2022

Reading is my oldest and favorite hobby. I literally can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t love to curl up with a good book. Here are my reads for November, 2022.

Sylvia’s Lovers, by Elizabeth Gaskell – Sylvia Robson is a blooming farmer’s daughter caught between two men, both of whom want to marry her. When one of these lovers – a harpooner on a whaling vessel – is carried off by the press gang to fight in the Napoleonic Wars, Sylvia’s other lover conceals vital knowledge from her and changes all of their lives. This was fine, but it was no Cranford or Wives and Daughters, and the dialect made it hard to follow much of the time. Full review to come for the Classics Club.

Notes from an Island, by Tove Jansson – The writer Tove Jansson and her partner, Tuulikki Pietila, spent much of their lives on an isolated island, which gave Jansson the material for her famous novel The Summer Book. This is her diary of their island days, gorgeously illustrated by Pietila’s paintings. I loved following the gentle rhythms of the two women’s year (and their illegal building projects).

The Starless Sea, by Erin Morgenstern – After The Night Circus it would be hard for any sophomore effort to follow, but I found The Starless Sea a bit disappointing – as my BFF said I would. The concept is great – a hidden subterranean world devoted to stories, and a war between people that would preserve it and people that would bury it forever. But it went on too long, largely due to the extensive detail and random side quests; I almost felt like the author had taken it a personal challenge to jam as much creative detail in as humanly possible.

Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe – Okonkwo is a prosperous farmer and a powerful member of his tribe, proudly committed to the traditional ways of the Igbo people. Achebe’s classic novel follows his despair and downfall when white colonizers arrive and disrupt the generational rhythms of Igbo lives. This was a powerful and stunning read. Full review to come for the Classics Club.

A Chill in the Air: An Italian War Diary, 1939-1940, by Iris Origo – Origo was an Anglo-America writer who maried an Italian nobleman in the years preceding World War II. When war broke out, the Origos sheltered and protected refugees, escaped Allied POWs, Jews, and anti-Fascist partisans – all at great personal risk to themselves. Origo recorded the lead-up to war in the first volume of her diaries, A Chill in the Air, which she never intended for publication. In this slim volume, she repeatedly wrestles with the question of how one man – Mussolini – was able to compel a nation to war against its interests, its inclinations, and even its culture. It’s a fascinating primary source document with lessons for today.

Lovely War, by Julie Berry – A World War I love story narrated by Greek gods – do you need more to convince you to pick this up? Caught in Hephaestus’s golden net, Aphrodite pleads her case to her husband by telling him the stories of two of her favorite couples – James and Hazel, and Aubrey and Collette. To spin her narrative, she gets help from Ares, Apollo, and Hades. I really loved the four main characters, and rooted hard for them all to survive the war and end up happy (I won’t tell you the ending). Berry’s meticulous research and sensitive hand really showed in her description of the Black American regiments – to which Aubrey belonged – and the shameful treatment they received at the hands of their countrymen during the war. And the author’s note at the end is absolutely brilliant. And the whole experience was capped off by the audiobook production, which was wonderful. I highly recommend listening to this one, if you can – although at over 12 hours it is a time commitment.

War in Val d’Orcia: An Italian War Diary, 1943-1944, by Iris Origo – The second volume of Iris Origo’s war diaries picks up in 1943. Italy is now well into the war, and Origo and her family expect to see fighting in their peaceful valley any day, as the Allies advance across the countryside. They continue to shelter POWs and children even when the farmhouse is taken over by Nazis (and Origo continues to record it all, hiding the pages of her diary in boxes buried around the garden). Finally, the Nazis expel them from their home and Origo leads a group of sixty elderly tenants and little refugee children as young as babies, on foot under heavy fire, to safety in Montepulciano. It’s as exciting as a thriller, and much more inspirational.

Lilibet: The Girl who Would be Queen, by A.N. Wilson – I loved A.N. Wilson’s The King and the Christmas Tree last year, so when I saw this new book published in a coordinating edition to that, I had to have it. Wilson imagines Queen Elizabeth II as a young girl, leading up to the moment when she learned she was Queen of England. A quick and delightful read.

A Poem for Every Autumn Day, ed. Allie Esiri – I always have grand plans of daily poetry reading, and it never works out. (Maybe if I kept my nightstand neater I’d notice the books on it…) As is typical, for me, I blasted through this entire daily poetry selection for fall in one day. But I really enjoyed it – I like the mix of seasonal verses with poetry reflecting on significant dates in history.

The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova – A young girl, set loose in her father’s library, finds a curious book. It’s almost completely blank, with an image of a dragon in the centerfold – and just one word: DRAKULYA. The girl asks her diplomat father about the book and he’s curiously reluctant to tell her anything. This sets off a literary detective chase around Europe. I loved every word of this – I did note some criticism on Goodreads about the detail, but I was here for every last description of a stained glass window or cup of coffee. It took me almost the entire month to get through it (I read it on my kindle, starting it on a flight home from Seattle on business and then setting it aside for several weeks before coming back to it with a goal of finishing it before December). But worth every minute of reading time.

Whew! November was a busy month in books, indeed. It started off a bit on the disappointing side – I didn’t really love anything I read in the first week or so – but I hit my stride around mid-month and ended with almost too many highlights to count. The highest of the highlights were Iris Origo’s diaries – the only downside there was the sadness in closing War in Val d’Orcia for the last time and having to say goodbye to Iris. (I do have her history of medieval Italian merchant life still on my shelf, and her memoir, Images and Shadows, on my Christmas list – so we’ll be reunited.) Aside from Iris, Chinua Achebe’s masterpiece tops the highlights list, and The Historian was absolutely riveting. Looking ahead, I’ve already had some good reading time in December and I have a stack of festive books for the coming weeks, so watch this space.

What were your reading highlights in November?

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The Week in Pages: December 5, 2022

Oh my gosh, you guys – how is it December already?! I feel like the year just got underway and somehow it’s almost over. I am shook. Time to start Christmas shopping – well, I have already started, but in a haphazard way, so time to get organized, I guess. I’m in and out of Christmas spirit, as is usually the case at the beginning of December. When I’m hitting a Peloton holiday ride, I’m basically Mrs. Claus, but the rest of the time, it all just feels like too much work. Par for the course.

Anyway, I’m rationing holiday reading right now because I still haven’t forgotten the year – it might have been 2020? – when I only read Christmas books all of December and was burnt out in a big way by the time the actual holiday rolled around. This was a big reading week, as you can see. I started the week by finishing The Historian on Monday night. That felt very much like a November book to me, so I wanted to get it done in November, and I did. In print I then moved on to The Professor, and spent most of the week over it. I’ll have more to say in a full review for the Classics Club, but it’s not Charlotte Bronte’s best work, by any stretch. Actually, I think most would agree it’s her worst. Anyway, I finished it – with one short hiatus to finish off The Almanac 2022 (in the dentist’s chair, waiting for Novocaine to kick in so I could get a flossing injury fixed – don’t ask). I always read The Almanac month by month through the year, so all I had left was the December chapter. Finally, after finishing up The Professor at last on Sunday morning, I picked up The Franchise Affair and read half of it on Sunday evening. I’m determined to finish the rest today. I have a flight to Seattle tomorrow for the last business travel of 2022 and I want to list to an episode of Shedunnit on the plane, all about the real-life kidnapping case that inspired the novel. So naturally I’ve got to get the book done before I head to the airport. There’s a method to my madness, really.

That’s a lot of reading – but there’s more! (Always said in my Marissa Tomei voice – from the courtroom scene in “My Cousin Vinny” – IYKYK.) On audio, I blazed through The Christmas Hirelings, read by Richard Armitage. (It was a pretty predictable, rather silly Victorian novel, but short, and I’ll listen to Richard Armitage read the phone book.) Having finished that, I downloaded God Rest Ye, Royal Gentlemen – not the most recent Lady Georgianna mystery, but I hadn’t read it yet and felt like a festive listen. So apparently audiobooks are the one area where I’m allowing holiday reads so far. (Once I get back from Seattle I’ll dive into festive reading in earnest.) I’m five chapters in and having a glorious time, as I always do when Georgie is involved.

Next up on audio, I have Christmas Days, by Jeannette Winterson, which I downloaded last year and have been saving. Very much looking forward to that one. And in print – no idea. I always take my kindle with me on travel and just see what strikes me in the moment. Look at me, reading spontaneously.

Very calm weekend before the holiday storm – ordinary, that is, maybe not calm. Nugget had a bowling birthday party to attend and it took him a few throws but he got his bowling skills back after they lapsed over pandemic times. Peanut had a Girl Scout meeting and we took a short hike. And that was about it. Errands, laundry, Peloton – the usual. Holiday craziness starts now…

What are you reading this week?

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Honduras Highlights: Dispatches from the Blue World

Over the past few years – starting in 2020 – we’ve dispatched Peanut and Nugget off to New York for a couple of weeks of grandparent fun over the summer. In 2020, we just stayed home in Virginia and worked, but in 2021, Steve and I snuck off for a “digital nomad” week in the Adirondacks – hiking and kayaking around our remote work schedules. This past summer, my mom called and asked if we were thinking of doing the same thing this time. We shrugged and said we would be happy to loan out the kids again, and started planning Adirondack paddles. Then one evening, as I was surfing the internet on my phone while sitting with Nugget at bedtime, it occurred to me – we didn’t have to go to the Adirondacks. We love it there, of course, but there’s no law saying that’s where we have to go when the kids stay with my parents in the summer. We’d been talking wistfully about scuba diving, after the fun we had getting certified in Costa Rica, and it hit me: we could go anywhere. We could go diving. I started researching potential locations and immediately narrowed the options down to two: Cayman Brac and Roatan. After some extra research, I decided – Roatan it was.

Roatan is the largest of three Bay Islands – Islas de la Bahia – off the coast of Honduras. It sits in the midst of a section of the vibrant, healthy Mesoamerican Reef. The reef is teeming with life all year long – everything from tiny nudibranchs and seahorses – to large pelagic species like whale sharks and hammerheads. It’s also warm, relatively shallow, and mostly free of currents: perfect for novice divers. Seemed like a no-brainer, so we quickly booked into Barefoot Cay Resort, a five-star PADI dive center, and booked our dive package.

We arrived at Barefoot Cay, checked in at the dive shop, and learned about what to expect for the week. Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t looking promising; one of the main points that sold me on this resort was the ability to get to dive sites within a ten minutes’ boat ride from the dock. As it happened, we were there during the windiest month of the year – July – and it wasn’t safe to dive on the side of the island where our resort was located. Instead, we were loaded into a van each morning and driven to the other side of the island (where the wind was much lower and the weather better, thanks to a line of hills breaking the wind along the backbone of the island).

Instead, we dove from a resort-owned boat that was docked off this beautiful sandy beach and charming stretch of shops and dive centers. The island is surrounded by dive sites on all sides, so we had plenty of options for incredible diving. I won’t recap every dive in its own post – each one felt very different to me, but it’s a lot of blue pictures that will probably run together. But there were a few standouts that I just have to show you.

This was our divemaster, Danny. We were paired with another couple – who were on their honeymoon, just like our dive buddies from Costa Rica; we seem to attract honeymooners – and the four of us dove with Danny all week. Our Roatan dive buddies, Alex and Emily, turned out to be just as fun, funny, interesting and kind as our Costa Rica dive buddies, Garry and Donna. The four of us hit it off immediately and I couldn’t think of anyone else I’d rather spend the week diving with – or dissecting the dives over cocktails with every evening.

The first couple of dives were nice and shallow – a good way to get our fins wet.

Ain’t no party like a garden eel dance party, ’cause a garden eel dance party is underwater! Mandy’s Eel Garden was a highlight in a week of highlights. And the garden eels swaying in the gentle current – well, I never thought I’d use the word “adorable” to describe eels, but they really were.

The Mesoamerican Reef was incredible – gloriously healthy and colorful. Our new dive buddies, Alex and Emily, described the bleached coral in the Caymans, and assured us that we were lucky to be exploring such a vibrant reef in Roatan. (Don’t mind the blue/green tint of the pictures here – I am still getting the hang of underwater photography. The reef was a rainbow.)

Of course, the biggest highlight of any dive is getting to swim alongside the best dive buddy. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather dive with.

Trying to use my fins to white balance. It didn’t work.

Brain coral! So spooky.

Speaking of spooky, Danny took us on one dive to the El Aguila shipwreck. Let me tell you, swimming along through endless blue gloom and then a mast looms up in front of you is a vibe. I felt a little bit like The Little Mermaid.

The couple that wreck dives together stays together, right Steve? I love this picture. Look how hardcore we look!

The opposite of hardcore: this seahorse. He was actually very large for a seahorse – several inches, with a big pregnant belly – and bright yellow. Our dive buddy, Emily, described him as a Giant Cartoon Seahorse.

Also not hardcore: this parrotfish. We saw them all over the place, and every single one looked like a child’s squeaky bath toy.

We did not see any whale sharks (wrong season – they do turn up anytime during the year, but July is not their big migration time so they’re a rare sight) or hammerheads, much to Steve’s dismay. (We’ll just have to go back to Roatan – twist my arm.) But we did see a massive nurse shark sleeping on the seafloor. See the dorsal fin and long tail tucked away? Look closely.

One pelagic species we did see: spotted eagle rays, which flew past us as casually as you please. They were gone in a flash, but what a flash it was.

On one of our first dives, Emily spotted a conch. After she mentioned seeing one, I started seeing them everywhere.

A river of “goggle eyes” on our last dive. I started diving to face and overcome a fear of fish, so to rest peacefully in the water and take in this site – and find it impressive and moving instead of terrifying – was a huge victory for me.

We also made a game out of spotting as many Caribbean spiny lobsters as we could.

Tunnels, swim-throughs and tight squeezes. Steve didn’t really enjoy these, but our divemaster added them into a few dives because Alex and Emily did. (Important for everyone to get to do what they like!) I viewed them as a personal challenge: could I make it through a swim-through without freaking out? I was really proud of myself for tackling this more intermediate level diving.

These are just a few of the highlights Roatan had to offer! Next week, I’ll show you where we spent our surface intervals. Check in with me then!