Yesterday I made a brief trip "downtown" with some friends. "Downtown" is the heart of St. George's, where cruise ships arrive and you can visit all sorts of fun markets for food and souvenirs.
One of the best highlights of downtown is the smoothie shop in the mall. You can get familiar flavors like chocolate or strawberry, or you can go local with flavors like five fingers (starfruit), sea moss (algae), paw paw (papaya), or passion fruit. Each smoothie puts Jamba Juice to shame, and the prices aren't half bad either. This time around I got a sour sop smoothie. Sour sop is a fruit with a fleshy white interior and a spiky green exterior. It's sweet, but as the name suggests, there are also some sour undercurrents. It's not a fruit that I would want to attack with my mouth every day, but every once in a while in smoothie form it hits the spot.
My other favorite thing to do downtown is walk around the spice market. The first time I went, I came home with a little bag of fresh nutmeg and a tiny metal grate to grate it with. I use it in soups and smoothies and pumpkin things, and it tastes GRATE (haha . . . grate). As far as souvenirs go, I'm going to bring my brothers back bamboo everything for Christmas. I hope bamboo is in style in the states, but if it's not, they'll be wearing it anyway. It is all the rage over here.
Finally, the fruit and vegetable stands (pictured below) are a superb place to find fresh roasted peanuts, green oranges, and if you're lucky, tomatoes. (Oh how I miss fresh tomatoes!) Next time I go I'll be sure to have someone hack off the top of a coconut for me so I can drink the insides. So far I've been hesitant to do this because of the horror stories I've heard about women having their faces chopped off with machetes and never seeing their noses again, but I'm not sure I believe those stories. I need to just man up and try it. Hopefully my next St. George's blog post isn't a picture of me without a nose, sipping coconut water happily through a straw.
