A Trip to the Beach

This is the true story of a Vermont couple who decide to set up a restaurant on a Caribbean island. The restaurant becomes a success and the couple become very attached to their island home. It seems an idyllic life, until the approach of Hurricane Luis, with 200 mile-an-hour gusts.

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Set on a beautiful Caribbean island, this is a story filled with calamities and comedy, culinary disasters and triumphs and indelible portraits of the people who live and work there. The story begins when Bob and Melinda Blanchard sell their successful Vermont food business and decide, perhaps impulsively, to get away from it all. Why not open a beach bar and grill on Anguilla, their favourite Caribbean island? One thing leads to another and the little grill turns into an enchanting restaurant that quickly turns into an enchanting restaurant that quickly draws four-star reviews and a celebrity-studded clientele eager for Melinda's delectable cooking. As the Blanchards learn to adapt to island time, they become every more deeply attached to the quirky rhythms and customs of their new home. Until disaster strikes in the shape of Hurricane Luis - a category-4 storm with two-hundred-mile-an-hour gusts which devastates Anguilla. A Trip to the Beach is a love letter to a place that becomes both home and escape.