| MARTHA'S
VINEYARD: REFUGE FROM CHAOTIC AMERICA |
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 Such diversity on one land mass is fascinating. Edgartown, for example, is upscale with whaling captains' old homes, a superb whaling museum with great exhibits, a much-photographed lighthouse and picturesque churches. Oak Bluffs, a former Methodist retreat, is more informal and lively with its 1000 famous Victorian gingerbread cottages and Flying Horses Carousel, listed on the National Register as the oldest in the United States. Vineyard Haven (part of Tisbury) is the year-round port and more commercial. Those two latter towns boast the East Chop and West Chop Lighthouses. Aquinnah, the most westerly town, the home of the original Wampanoag Indian tribe, has the fourth lighthouse, the Gay Head Light that looks down on the ever-eroding Clay Cliffs. (The fifth lighthouse, on Chappaquiddick, protects the most easterly approach to the island.). Chilmark which has the fishing village of Menemsha is liberal and rural with rolling hills and stone-walled sheep farms. West Tisbury is more the typical New England village. "Just don't expect your map reading to be easy," says Brooks. "West Tisbury and North Tisbury are both south of Tisbury. Otherwise some of the names are logical: Bend in the Road Beach, for example, and Music Street in West Tisbury which got its name because, at one time, every house on the street had a piano." |
| In some towns it seems every street has a restaurant. | |
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It's hard to get a bad meal on Martha's Vineyard. Restaurants run the gamut from the upscale places like Opus at the Winnetu Inn and Resort on South Beach whose lobster bisque is a delightful sensory bombardment; and Atria on North Main Street whose desserts are out of most persons' proverbial world; and the Coach House at the 1891 Harbor View Hotel whose young chef specializes, amongst other items, with cheese dishes (he buys up, for example, the entire stock of Blue de Termignon from a 90 year-old woman with nine cows in a small farm in a French national park). Then there are simpler summer places like the little Coop de Ville on the harbor at Oak Bluffs, bought 18 years ago by Pete Berndt when he was aged 25. His grandfather, Dr. Ned Cook was once the head neurosurgeon at the Mayo Clinic but Pete is equally proud of the fact that he had to close his snack bar once to do the catering for President Clinton who was entertaining 80 friends on the island. It's not clear whether they were all female. |
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