Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In contrast, there was something strangely comforting about having your cereal choices
winnowed down from fifty-seven to three—Corn Flakes, Cocoa Puffs or Rice Crispies.
You're in or you're out, case closed.
Although this had provoked minor irritation at first, now it felt strangely liberating:
thank you for not making us think so hard about our fiber intake
.
There were other things we liked. The liquor aisle was surprisingly well-provisioned.
No, there was no Dutch triple-distilled gin but there was
Tanquerey
and
Beefeaters
, not to
mention
Stoli
vodka and
Jose Cuervo
tequila. Also, a decent selection of wine, particularly
red. What more does one want?
In addition, there was the oddly compelling kitchen/hardware section, which changed
imperceptibly from visit to visit. Sometimes it boasted a large and varied inventory of
bathroom-related items—shower curtains, toilet brushes, plumber's friends in several dif-
ferent colors and shapes—while at other times the focus seemed to be on garden supplies.
Sometimes you simply didn't know what you'd get. I remember once seeing rat traps
dangling next to lingerie sachets.
One of
Morales
' most noteworthy features is its deliciously chilly “cold room.” This
is a U-shaped annex to the main store, entered through one set of automatic sliding glass
doors near the cash registers and exited through another, where fruit, vegetables, dairy
products, meat and the random bottle of
Veuve Cliquot
Champagne are kept.
The temperature is probably around fifty-five degrees in there. On a hot afternoon, after
we've wrestled our way through the crowded sweaty aisles of the main store, it's sheer
heaven to complete our shopping experience in the cold room.
Sometimes, I confess, we even linger.
Not that there's much to linger over.
For example, although Michael and I have always loved our green vegetables, they're
decidedly not a staple of the Vieques diet, and the pickings in the cold room are depress-
ingly slim. Occasionally we'll find a bunch of fatigued-looking broccoli wasting away in
the produce section, and once or twice we've come across a head of cabbage that looks
like it was rolled down a muddy hill to the market. But usually we end up buying frozen
vegetables just to get our greens (this was before we discovered the “vegetable man” near
the hospital or, even more recently, the farmers' market near the GE plant).
Also, counter-intuitively, we seldom find lemons or limes at Morales. You'd think cit-
rus fruit would be a dime a dozen in Vieques, but not so much. Instead, we've learned that
the
limones
growing on the tree in our side yard add a perfectly acceptable note of tartness
to our vodka tonics.
Then there are the lines. If we arrive in town on Saturday we know we're in for a very
long haul. It seems that most people on the island, not unlike working folk everywhere, do
the majority of their grocery shopping on Saturday afternoon. We've grown used to stand-
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