Music has always been an important part of my life. This year we discovered and fell in love with a New Orleans-style band, Tuba Skinny. As soon as we learned that they would be performing at the Shalin Liu Center in Rockport, MA, in late August, we bought tickets immediately. Using that as the foundation we built a two-day mini-vacation, which included a day at the beach, lobster rolls, fabulous live jazz music, and a dinner in the nearby village of Annisquam. Fortunately, we found an excellent hotel in Rockport, Captains Bounty Beach View, which made everything easily accessible.

For my wife, the beach is the most important thing. Naturally, she was thrilled to be able to arrive at the hotel early that Sunday afternoon, check in, and walk 400 feet from there to the beach, to spend the next 4 hours, swimming and reading her book in the comfort of her beach chair.

After a quick dip in the water and an hour of reading, I had enough. That enabled me to go back to the hotel, shower, walk around town, pick up an order of two lobster rolls, and return to the beach long enough to inhale the late lunch together.

The performance started early — at 5 PM. We had great seats in a beautiful setting, and the band was superb. I can offer just a brief sample here. I can recommend a number of their YouTube videos if you are interested.

Of course, if you have read my blog in the past, you must be wondering “what about the food??” Aha, here it comes. Dinner that night was at a very good, small seafood restaurant, Talise, in the village of Annisquam, which is part of an old seafaring town — Gloucester, MA. We lucked out in getting a table at 7 PM on a busy night.

The highlights of the meal were:

• house-made sourdough bread
• exquisite oysters on the half shell
• spicy pasta and clams
• 2020 Lapeyre Jurancon Sec wine from Gros Manseng grapes

One last food event of note was breakfast the next morning. We ate at Two Little Birds Eatery, just a short walk across the street from the hotel. The food was very good. As an example, here is their avocado toast plate featuring avocado, pickled onions, watermelon radish slices and two kinds of sesame seeds. It was both a culinary and a visual treat!