A couple of weeks ago, I ventured up to New York City’s second “Korean Town” (arguably, the more authentic version) in Flushing, Queens, with Julie and her friends. We had seen Anthony Bourdain (and David Chang of Momofuku fame) eat “live” octopus on the Travel Channel show “No Reservations” at a restaurant there called Sik Gaek, and so we naturally thought: “Yes! We have to try that.”

So, ahem, this is what’s it’s like to eat really, really fresh octopus. Now don’t worry, the octopus is dead — the moving tentacles are an involuntary contraction of the muscles, or something like that.

PETA would not be amused. And you may not be amused either. Do NOT watch this video if you’re faint of heart and don’t want to see people eat something that is squirming around on a plate.

Oh, and how does it taste? Pretty good. Not too bad. It’s more of a novelty, though: I’m not going to be ordering this dish very often.

(click on photo to enlarge to its full glory)

To say it’s about 90 degrees (falling only to 80 at night) doesn’t even begin to describe just how hot it is here in St. Thomas, heart of the U.S. Virgin Islands. Heck, I lived in New Orleans for six years, but I wasn’t prepared for the ponderous blanket of humidity that hugged us today as Lucy and Florent exchanged vows outside. Despite the heat, their late-morning ceremony was quite cool: simple and heartfelt. Julie took note of how even the minister snapped a few quick photos of the bride and groom at the gazebo overlooking the Caribbean Sea. It’s hard not to get carried away when you’re surrounded by such natural beauty.

Yesterday the lot of us (family and friends of the newlyweds totaling 14) took a chartered boat to the British Virgin Islands. Virgin Gorda features “the Baths,” imposing natural rock formations with caves and pools. We saw granite boulders jutting out of the earth that were shaped like a skull, a whale, a roaring lion and an elephant’s butt. Meanwhile, Jost Van Dyke, once a pirates’ haven, is now the party isle of the British Virgins, featuring the Soggy Dollar Bar. We also did a little snorkeling in the warm, turquoise waters.

(Photo by Julie Kim; top photo by Dave Baker)

After the wedding, Julie and I took an “open air” safari bus (OK, the back of a pickup truck) to Magens Bay, St. Thomas’s most famous beach, once ranked one of the world’s top 10 by National Geographic. It’s a gorgeous strip of white sand, yes, but I’m not entirely sure you can go wrong with any beach in this area.

And now — well, it’s nap time.

We’re back from Mexico! Now we’re looking ahead to the U.S. Virgin Islands. One week from now. That’s right, back-to-back destination weddings.

The bulk of the five-day stay will be on St. Thomas. Snorkeling trip on tap. Much lounging on beach expected.

(Photo by Julie Kim, copyright 2009)

Before Julie and I left for a quick trip to Central Mexico, our friend Rosa implored us, “You have to go to Guanajuato!” — describing how she broke out in tears upon seeing the rainbow of houses draped upon the mountainside. So we added an overnight stop to Guanajuato, the last on our five-day mini-tour. I can say without hesitation that the city has not disappointed. The panoramic view is phenomenal (“far and away, the most beautiful” in the whole country, one travel writer has put it), and it’s all accessible to Julie and me simply by opening the double doors to our small third-floor balcony. (The “Suite José Marti” at El Mesón de los Poetas downtown is well worth the 80 bucks or so a night.)

Guanajuato was a colonial mining center, which may help to explain the complicated series of underground traffic tunnels and the tangle of impossibly narrow streets. There are carved wooden doors, Spanish archways, courtyards, aging monuments to mining legends and revolutionary heroes. The main square is alive with mariachi musicians, assorted tourists, children playing, men hawking panchos, church bells clanging wildly, dogs curled up on the ground in the afternoon shade.

We could get lost here — I mean really lost. But still, it’s exciting to explore the hidden alleys with their stairs and slopes leading higher and higher up the hill, looping around old buildings (crumbling, but a controlled sort of crumbling) pocked with graffiti. We keep following the path as raindrops begin to patter on our shoulders, and the path twists again, veering just out of sight around more houses. I look at Julie — “Should we keep going?” “Yeah,” she replies with a smile and a tinge of adventure in her voice, “just a little farther up.”

(Photo by Julie Kim)

* * *

We’re actually in Mexico for a destination wedding (Julianna and Michael’s lavish and fun hacienda fiesta held Saturday night, complete with eight-piece mariachi band, a separate mariachi trio, a tequila donkey, ice cream wagon and fireworks show). But this is vacation. San Miguel de Allende, our base camp for the previous four-fifths of the trip, was beautiful in its own right. It’s a diverse town known today for its artists, colonial architecture, shady plazas, quiet gardens and gringos (12% of the population). We had a fantastic dinner on a rooftop with sunset views of the towering 17th-century parroquia and surrounding mountains.

Julie has been going ga-ga over the guacamole, made to order with the freshest ingredients imaginable. I lost count at around six different orders of guac and chips at various locations.

(Photo by Julie Kim)

Flying a kite along a crowded beach, even on a fairly windy day, isn’t as easy as you’d think. I could say that the trick is releasing as much of the string as quickly as you can — just set that sucker way up into the wild blue yonder before the fickle wind closer to the ground sends your poor kite thundering back down to the sand dunes. I could say that, but I’d be bullshitting you. Truth is, I really don’t know the secret to keeping a kite aloft. But I do firmly believe that if you’re gonna soar, soar high.

I’m in Montauk, on the easternmost tip (the South Fork) of New York’s fabled Long Island. This unseasonably warm and beautiful weekend just happens to include my birthday (April 25), and the trip comes courtesy of my girlfriend, Julie, who knows the secret to sending my heart newly aflutter is getting away from the jackhammers and jackasses of The Big City.

Modern-day Montauk sprang up from a small fishing village around Fort Pond Bay in the early 1900s. (The area’s history goes back much further than this, of course. For example, the oldest surviving building was built in 1797.) Unlike the Hamptons, those snooty neighbors to the west, Montauk has remained something of a working-class oasis. The hotels, one or two floors, are modest (think: beadboard walls); the beaches are not raked clean every morning. I suspect there aren’t many hip-hop moguls with summer compounds here.

We arrived in town on Friday night after an interminably long ride on the Long Island Rail Road. After a heated argument over the contents of a salad, of all things — a tragic misunderstanding blown atmospherically out of proportion — we set out yesterday at noon for lunch, our appetites kicked into overdrive.

At Duryea’s Lobster Deck you can look out over a misty Fort Pond Bay as you crack open lobster likely plucked from the very same waters. Duryea’s is the kind of joint where you step up to the counter to place your order, take a seat at one of the tables outside, sip from your can of Mug root beer and wait till a pager signals that lunch is served. We got a half-dozen oysters (sandy and not exactly the best we’ve ever had, if you know what I mean) and a 1 1/4-pound lobster each, which came split open for easy handling, drawn butter for dipping and flanked by a baked potato and cole slaw.

We were stuffed. But that didn’t stop me, when we got back into town, from picking up a double-scoop waffle cone of homemade “mint Oreo” ice cream from John’s Drive In. And meanwhile, Julie snuck off to Montauk Bake Shoppe to select a couple of extra-sugary birthday surprises: a giant cupcake and a chocolate mousse cake. My belly wasn’t used to this star treatment. Two Pepto Bismol capsules later, I felt well enough to walk to the beach, where a trio of gulls were sorting through a small pile of garbage as the sun began to set. Not exactly what I’d call an unspoiled beach; yet it was a sight for sore eyes considering I was watching a snowfall two weeks ago.

For dinner we chose Hewitt’s Shagwong Tavern on the main strip. A sign in the window pleaded: “Piano player wanted. Must have knowledge of opening clams.” We were led to a darkened booth where the walls were peppered with black-and-white photographs of ships, airplanes, horses and chairs, and where nonthreatening 1980s pop music whispered forth from the speakers overhead. Julie chose a clam chowder to start and, incredibly, her second lobster of the day (this one weighing in at 1 1/2 pounds). Fries, cole slaw and a string bean/carrot mix — and another container of drawn butter — rounded out her feast. “I feel like I’m sweating butter right now!” she would exclaim later. As for myself, to kick things off I had an order of clams cooked in their shells in a spicy beer broth with sausage. And I followed that with the “Seafood Trio”: broiled flounder, salmon and swordfish served with a mound of mashed potatoes and the string bean/carrot combo. It was all very tasty. But I did realize later that I had six different kinds of seafood stuck between my teeth!

This morning we got up at the crack of 11 a.m. for more gluttonous punishment, pancake and eggs at the Plaza Diner. It’s Sunday, our last day here, and we briefly contemplated renting bicycles so we could ride out to see the famed Montauk lighthouse (oldest in New York State), but we abandoned that idea in favor of soaking up WAY too much more sun at the beach. And so here we are, facing the Atlantic Ocean, sun in our eyes, and I’m wondering: just how high can this kite go?

I finally get this blue plastic bird soaring with every inch of string let out, and I stand amazed at the powerful feeling it gives me. I place the spool in the hands of a snaggle-toothed 5-year-old girl from New Jersey, shortly before the kite begins a fatal nosedive onto the roof of the Ocean Beach hotel. It’s not long before five more kites are aloft from the hands of various other beachgoers intrigued by the aeronautical challenge.

Keep soaring.