It feels like we've been away a lot longer than just a weekend. Perhaps we have Son o' Stompy to thank, as we were up and about, making the most of the day, earlier than perhaps we'd have liked, having been woken up by lots of noises from the surrounding rooms.
We spent the morning wandering around Montauk, heading off the main street a little bit and pootling in and out of the shops. The atmosphere reminds me of little seaside towns we used to visit in Norfolk. We found an actual bakery, so were mercifully spared the clingfilm-wrapped croissants for the second day in a row.
It was another beeaaautiful morning, so our chosen breakfast location was the beach at Hither Hills state park which again, was an amazing sprawling deserted beach - this time with cool dunes at the back of the beach and those spindly wooden fences that I have in my head as being typical of Hamptons/Montauk beaches.
Behind the dunes, there was a handful of campervans and tents and I can imagine it's a really great place to camp - the beach is enormous and beautiful and then there are
'walking dunes' and woodland to wander through right there, too. Unfortunately you're not allowed to swim off Hither Hills beach, though. The waves were really big and angry - it was brilliant to sit and eat breakfast watching the shore get a pounding.
The light in the sunny sunshine was just amazing - like on a photoshoot with those silver reflecty things. So as we strolled down the beach, I indulged in something of a photo frenzy.
Bidding Montauk goodbye, we headed to East Hampton, to rub shoulders with the fancy folks. With good tunes on the stereo and beautiful wooded roads to drive through, the half hour drive did not suck.
The main bit of East Hampton is quite small - just a kind of high street (albeit one with Tiffany, Ralph Lauren and Gucci on it) with a couple of little streets going off it. But it looks as though it's manicured with nail scissors - it's all extremely fancy and just so and I found myself approaching the visit more from an anthropological perspective than feeling in any way at home!
Having had no t-shirt joy in the nice little ramschackled beach shop in Montauk, Max made a bee-line for Ralph Lauren. You may think Max is a happy-go-lucky, laid back scruff of a chap, but he LOVES his labels! He doesn't buy many clothes, but when he does, they invariably bear some cool brand and were on sale for half the price they should be. He also loves a bargain.
And apparently there were bargains to be had in Ralph Lauren. I saw a lady trying on the most exquisite evening gown - a full length black beaded number with a kind of fishtail skirt and really deep v-shaped halterneck top - that was on sale for... $16,000!!! Reduced by 20%, or something!! It did look absolutely amazing - it'd outshine anyone on any red carpet anywhere - and it was fun to finally find out where people buy dresses like that. But as the woman trying it on pointed out - she could get a car for that money.
Max found a really cool t-shirt for $20, so was very happy to be able to wander down the high street of East Hampton, swinging a Ralph Lauren bag around. There wasn't too much more to see, other than fancy shops and a nice windmill plonked in the middle of everything. We certainly couldn't find any restaurants (judging by the size of the lady trying on the Ralph Lauren gown, eating isn't high on the list of priorities in East Hampton), so we decided to go to Sag Harbor for lunch.
To get to Sag Harbor, we had to drive through a few of the other Hamptons, all of which were perfectly nice and picturesque. Max got the iTrip working like a dream and we fittingly listened to a Josh Rouse album (he sings a song called, 'Winter in the Hamptons'), which again made for a nice sunny driving soundtrack. The iTrip is amazing - it allows you to broadcast your iPod on a radio frequency, then tune the radio of your car into that frequency, so you pick up the music from your pod! I'd read bad things about how weak the signal from the iTrip can be and how the iPod needs to be right up against the radio to work, but it was great for us. Woo!
Sag Harbor is loads nicer than East Hampton. It's still quite fancy, but in a less 
hardcore way. It feels more lived in and organic and was really nice to walk around. The weather started clouding over, so we had a nice light lunch in a Belgian place and then decided to make our way slowly back to LaGuardia, via the Paumanok vineyard.
We foolishly decided against using Polly to get us to the vineyard and got a little lost and then when we got there, it was raining. So Max just gulped down a flight of four wines and we left. I planned to get Max a bottle of his favourite wine as his final birthday present, but he reminded me of ChampagneGate at the airport and pointed out that the same thing would happen on the way home.
So we just drove back through the rain - this time with Polly guiding us. Unfortunately the iTrip started picking up loads of static and then Polly led us on a merry dance when we realised we could programme the satnav to take us to the nearest gas station and we ended up in the middle of suburbia, nowhere near anything resembling pumps. Technology was failing us by the second!
Yet again, our plane was delayed and we sat on the tarmac for about an hour because there was a traffic jam of about 8 planes ahead of us, which was an unusual sight.
Just like when we came back from New York, returning to DC felt pleasantly like coming home, though it was lovely to feel like we'd been away for ages. We had a quick bite at Raku (rapidly becoming our traditional post-weekend-away first stop) and then went back to the apartment, where Max had some more gifts to open that had been too heavy for us to take onto the plane as hand luggage. These included the complete DVD boxset of 'Seinfeld' from Max's brother which - in my eyes - not only made up for the Phil Collins CD he also gave him, but has assured us of many nights of pre-bedtime fun once we've polished off 'The West Wing'. Woo!
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