DANCE. Dance used to be a HUGE part of my life. I did ballet and jazz from ages like 6-16. I stopped dancing when I got to college. Got lazy, never got the courage to try out for a dance team. I have trouble watching So You Think You Can Dance, because I miss dance that much and always wonder what could have been. MUSIC. I’m a huge fan of music. I have the most eclectic iTunes library on the face of this planet. I don’t discriminate when it comes to music. I listen to just about anything. My iTunes on shuffle: 1. “Cash Flow” by Major Lazer, 2. “I’m Still in Love With You” by Al Green, 3. “Bittersweet Symphony” by The Verve, 4. “Radio Ga Ga” by Queen. ART. I appreciate art. I dig museums. I love to paint.
*****************************************
So I’ve been M.I.A. from my blog for quite a while cuz I been busy hustling and tryna get that paper (aka I been reading my sister’s friends’ med school essays and getting paid $20-45 to proofread/edit them). Another slightly less dorky reason I’ve been away is because of a lil trip to THE BAHAMAS aka my new favorite place in the world! It was a much needed girls trip with my sister, Mom, and Grandma that started at the beach and ended at Senor Frogs : )
I was highly impressed with The Bahamas…from the people to the beaches to the downtown area. As a Jamaican, I tend to be highly bias of the islands, but I have to admit that The Bahamas is giving Jamaica a run for its money. And I also learned that behind the US and Canada, it’s the third richest country in the Americas and one of the richest in the world where the majority of the population is Black. Shoutout to my black
folk! Anyways, thought I’d give yal a little play by play of our pretty eventful trip…
*****************************************
**WEDNESDAY**
5am flight. Yup we’re cheap and had to book THAT flight. We all packed light for the first time in our lives and then get to the airport and face $100 in checked-baggage charges. FAIL.
Arrive at The Bahamas airport, which is undergoing major construction. We depart the plane and have to walk what feels like a mile across the tarmac to some other random building to go through immigration. Nice start to the trip! Arrive at The Sheraton Nassau Beach Resort and finally realize we’re in paradise! Get to our hotel room by 10am and knock out cold by 10:05.
Rub eye boogers out of our eyes at about 2pm, put on our bathing suits, and hit the beach where we’re met with this…
We start to get hungry but we didn’t buy the all-inclusive package and have to pay out of pocket for food. Stop by the poolside restaurant and see $17 burgers on the menu! Yikes! My sister and I immediately schlep down the street to Burger King, which is having a sale on the Original Chicken Sand
wich meal—only $4.99! We wonder how on Earth we’re going to survive and eat for the rest of the vacation : ( Get back to the beach and my mom, Mrs. I-Can-Make-Friends-With-Anyone, has SURPRISE-SURPRISE made a friend with a fellow Jamaican woman who’s in The Bahamas selling timeshares. She invites us to a free lunch tomorrow…all we have to do is listen to some timeshares presentation. Sign us up!
For dinner, we decide to hit up one of the resort’s restaurants called Amici. $14 appetizers and $36 meals. This should be interesting! My sister suffices with a salad and my mom and I split a meal. Then our waiter, Bertis, treats us to free drinks. When he brings the bill, we see he only charged us for our meal…the salad and drinks were on the house. We’re eating here every night!
*****************************************
**THURSDAY**
Free lunch! Afterwards, my sister and I hit the beach, then go to the pool, then back to the beach, then the pool again…ahhh vacation : ) I start reading "The Giver," meanwhile my sister is reading "Catcher in the Rye"—two books we shamefully should have read decades ago. We look over and a Black-Hispanic couple is getting married. Gotta love interracial love : )
Dinner at Amici’s and this time Bertis truly outdid himself! He treated us to a bottle of wine, free Strawberry Daquiris, Caesar salad for appetizer, 4 entrees, and dessert for each of us (worth: $300+, check: $157, what Bertis made us pay: 89bucks). Across the restaurant a wedding party is having their rehearsal dinner and it’s another interracial couple…this resort sure loves The Swirl!
In the middle of eating our dinner, a tall cutie and seemingly member 
of the wedding party comes over to our table and throws the whole "don't I know you?" pick-up line at my sister! They chitchat and upon him leaving, my mom, Grandma, and I badger my sister with questions and analyze the situation, as this NEVER happens in real life…only in the movies! My grandma demands to know his profession, his college major, and basically his mother’s maiden name and is upset with my sister for not gathering this information from their short 3-minute conversation.
Head back to our room and watch a cheesy JLO movie. I later struggle to sleep due to my mom and grandma’s snoring competition and my sister kicking me in the groin every hour or so.
*****************************************
**FRIDAY**
Fish fry, fish fry, fish fry. Everyone keeps telling us we have to go to the fish fry. We board the local bus and head into the city to find this infamous fish fry. We finally get to see Nassau outside of our resort and realize the city is undergoing loads of construction due to “Bahamar” (a major resort metropolis project being built on the island: http://www.bahamar.com/). We get to the fish fry and its basically a row of restaurants selling baked conch, fried conch, conch fritters, sautéed conch…clearly conch is a delicacy here.
We choose a restaurant and our experience was subpar. Our waiter moved like molasses and the food was extra greasy. We head back to our resort and chill on the beach.
Dinner at Amici’s then we head to the world famous Atlantis Resort, which is on Paradise Island. We get there and realize the place is like a mini-Las Vegas. We also learn it costs $120 for day-passes to their water park. (Guess we can cross that plan off our list!) Grandma and Mom check out the casino while my sister and I hit the nightclub, which charges $50 for non-Guest females.
Naturally, my sister gets us in for free : )
The nightclub is fun, but filled with too many teenagers and an Italian posse with their shirts buttoned down to
their navels.
*****************************************
**SATURDAY**
It’s blazing hot today and we spend the day going in and out of the water. In the pool, I overhear a conversation that epitomizes childhood:
Six-year-old #1: Wanna play Shark?
Six-year-old #2: Ok, how do you play?
Six-year-old #1: I’m the shark and I chase you around.
Six-year-old #2: (ponders for a moment) Ok!
We watch yet another interracial wedding on the beach...
Our final dinner at Amici’s and Bertis already has our table picked out. Sad to depart him but thank him for the excellent service : ) Head upstairs to the lounge and listen to a jazz singer before heading to bed.
*****************************************
**SUNDAY**
Unfortunately it’s time to depart Nassau. But first we head downtown to the market to buy some nicknacks. I’m disturbed b
y the amount of Bob Marley t-shirts, towels, bags, etc that I see, seeing as Bob Marley is Jamaican! Hello people?! Get your own reggae icon Bahamas!
We head to Senor Frogs to join all the drunk white people coming off of the cruise ships. We each (with the exception of my God-fearing Grandmother) order Bahama Mamas and get a little tipsy….my sister does the ChaCha slide. Three shades from being drunk and disorderly later, we finally head to the airport and leave The Bahamas : (
Our layover in Charlotte is extended an extra hour. I do some intense people-watching and realize the trend among young Southern men...
…I decide I prefer my rough-around-the-edges NJ/NYC boys much better. After a freezing cold flight home...
Me: Do you have any blankets?
Stewardess: Sorry, we only have enough for first class passengers. But you may purchase one (of our paper thin "blankets") for $7?
...we’re back in good ol’ Jersey.
No comments:
Post a Comment