Thanksgiving in Anguilla

Spending Thanksgiving on a tiny Caribbean island teaches you some curiosities. Like tree-shaped air fresheners, for example, are considered by some people to be collectible items. Not to mention that bath towels can double as swans, playing with your food is sometimes acceptable, and kitesurfing can be a gorgeous addiction. Most importantly, you can deduce that watching the OSU/Michigan game in 84-degree weather is significantly preferable to watching it in 26-degree weather.

Last week’s family vacation to Anguilla was filled with enough whimsy to pique our imaginations and enough Zen to ease our frantic pre-holiday minds. We stayed at the Viceroy, a new hotel filled with more marble than all of Carrara. The restaurants where we dined, including Cobà at the Viceroy, Pimms at Cap Juluca, and Jacala Intuitive Cuisine, teemed with farm-fresh vegetables and just-caught lobster and crayfish.

As you may expect, Anguillans are quick to smile and slow to stress. It was remarkably heavenly that for a couple of days, our biggest dilemma was determining what number SPF to smear on our bodies and whether to order dark or light rum. Beating the Wolverines seven straight years in a row didn’t hurt anything.