Grey Day At The Beach

I thought I'd start today's post with a couple of pictures that I forgot from yesterday. I'm taking pictures with 3 different cameras depending on what we're doing so I need to be better organized!

As part of the welcome party they had this station where you could sample coconut water from fresh coconuts. Just out of frame is the table full of Appleton's Rum that you could have mixed in. Naturally, we did that. 

We thought something was on fire but it turned out to be insect fogging. It happens every evening and they ensured us that the fog is very safe for humans and only repels the mosquitos. We're making an effort not to be around when it's going on in any case.

This is one of the resort cats. They just seem to hang out and wander wherever they want. Maybe they insure that there isn't a mouse problem?

   Another pretty nice sunset on the beach.

Our third day started with a light rain shower and some wind. We headed out for an early breakfast at one of the fancier restaurants called Eleanor's. It's one of two places where you need to make dinner reservations. We'll be going back there tomorrow evening for our anniversary dinner. 

    Eggs Benedict and a shrimp frittata for breakfast. 

This is such a large place that we still had places to explore so we set off and wandered. We had noticed that there are many different flowers and flowering bushes that were new to us. Here are a few.

Even though this looks like we just had breakfast, walked around for a few minutes and then had lunch, we didn't do that! We spent around 4 hours walking around the grounds and the beach etc. 

Next stop was lunch at Barefoot which is the place on the beach with a sand floor. They have a couple of big smokers to do jerk chicken and pork. I had to try that as I'd read about it on Trip Advisor. The flavour was good but not as spicy as I was expecting. Marilyn had grilled swordfish salad which was also good. We think the food here is generally toned down to accommodate less adventurous diners. 

    I wanted to include this Caribe Grackle as they are the most common bird we've seen. They're similar to our grackles but smaller and they have a more annoying sound. They're also quite fearless and will go into any of the open air restaurants. 

    Conch fritter appetizer with mango chutney. 

    Jerk pork. 

    Grilled swordfish salad. 

We walked over to the big pool complex after lunch and by some major fluke we found two available chairs under a covered part of the deck! They were the only seats available and we had them. We made a trip to the swim up bar and came back to our chairs to sit and observe pool life. It reminded us of Vegas with a somewhat older crowd.  As it turned out, this was a good choice because the skies eventually opened up and it poured for quite a while. 

    A partial view of the big pool with someone's Blue Hawaiian.

This was also Antigua day so, before the rain came, there were some shows on local music, culture and food. Even though we'd just eaten, I had to try some of the local food too. We met a couple from England and chatted with them for a while as it continued to rain. They were quite interesting and we hope to meet up with them again. 

   This plate has a dumpling at the top surrounded by jerk chicken wings. The greenish stuff is okra, spinach and mango. Not my favourite. And the orangey part is salt fish and that was good. 

So, it was still pouring when we got back to our room. We chilled, read and possibly had a glass of wine. One of the benefits of the rain was that it made some of the birds try to hide out in the palms next to our balcony. I've been trying to get a shot of the bananaquit. It's a small, very quick bird that hardly ever sits still. But, I guess they don't like rain. I was able to get a few shots that I don't think I would have gotten if it wasn't raining.

And our final thing for today was dinner at Soy, a sushi restaurant. I didn't think that you'd get decent sushi here but I was wrong. We were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the fish and rolls. It's not Sushi Kaji but it was certainly a better than average dinner.