A Nice Day

The day of Hubby’s keynote address dawned very early. His speech was scheduled to begin at 8:00 a.m. and we made a point of being early. We, however, were the only ones. Due to scheduling problems on the part of the conference, we did not get into the conference room until almost an hour later.

Hubby was introduced to the audience, the largest one I’ve ever seen attending one of his conference addresses, as a graduate of both his PhD university and Berkeley, where he obtained his undergraduate degree. For about two minutes, all I could hear at the back of the room was, “Berkeley! Ja! Oh my, Berkeley!.” It seems that he need never have gone on for graduate work since this audience at least was only interested in his first four years after high school.

Hubby’s speech about “The Future of Namibian Agriculture” was quite interesting for this lay audience. The most startling statistic he produced was that 10% of government spending in Namibia was on defense and only 4% of it on agriculture. This was both shocking and amusing as Namibia isn’t exactly at war with anyone. The highlight of the speech, however, was provided by Hubby himself – he kept using a laser pointer! This was especially silly and annoying since we had discussed this very issue that morning and agreed that laser pointers were stupid. Hmmph!

But the best part of the day was yet to come – dinner. We were unable to get reservations at “The Soup” restaurant much to my consternation. After some discussion with local people from Windhoek, we were told to try a restaurant called nice that is run by the Namibian Institute of Culinary Education. It was, we were told, the local version of Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen.

With our interest and taste buds sufficient piqued, we headed off for this local hot spot and were not disappointed. We began our meal with cocktails and were presented with a lovely amuse bouche of a cold beef samosa and cold cauliflower coleslaw served on a warm plate. Our starters, Kingslip fish in a balsamic reduction for Hubby, and carpaccio of Namibian veal for me were lovely and kept us anticipating what was still to come.

Our main courses continued to reflect the wonderful local foods that are hard to come by outside of countries like Namibia. My grilled Oryx was perfectly cooked and accompanied by wonderful little potato croquettes that melted in my moth. Hubby’s meal was even better – a Kudu loin wrapped in a wonton pastry that was so tender that it could have been cut with a butter knife. The deserts although less memorable, were also lovely.

As so many people said when they described the restaurant to us prior to our dinner, Nice was nice. From the lovely décor to the well-trained staff, our meal was a hit from start to finish. The only complaints we had (no pepper grinders on the table and hard butter) were small and easily remedied in the future.

We had a nice day from start to finish. From Hubby’s well-received address to our fabulous dinner, it was a day that we knew had set a high standard for the rest of our vacation. If only he hadn’t used the silly laser pointer!