Twenty Years!

Twenty years ago today we were rushing around at home preparing for 50+ people to arrive at our house for our wedding. Today we're in Antigua at a pool deciding on which drinks to start the day with. Actually, we started early with mimosas for breakfast. Well, not only mimosas. We had food too at the Italian place. They serve a great breakfast buffet with the custom omelette station as well. It was a pretty good start to the day.

It was quite windy this morning but we decided on a beach walk while the weather was good. Some unsettled conditions were forecast for later. It's amazing every day to see all the shades of blue in the sea. We were even treated to a full rainbow way out over the waves. 

    The rainbow is a bit faint, but it's out there!

    This mansion is for sale at only $6 million US. 

    Looking back towards the resort. That's a shipwreck in the foreground.

    Marilyn did a bit of perusing in one of the beachfront shops. 

   

   We saw more interesting flowers today as well. No idea what they are!

   And this is my favourite shot so far. It's a crested hummingbird feeding. 

After walking, we staked out seats at the smaller swim up bar pool nearest to our room. We sat under the shade a palm tree for a while and considered what would be an acceptable time to get a drink. I went over and got a couple of things and then almost slipped in a puddle that was not visible to the human eye due to the marble tiles. Luckily, I made a pretty good save and didn't spill anything or injure myself. 

    This is the inside of our small swim up bar. They definitely have a lot of choice!

        The really colourful one is a Reggae Top. I'm staying away from the frozen ones!

    This is one of our favourite things. Every afternoon, someone shows up and replenishes the drinks in your room! 

Our anniversary dinner was at the fashionably late hour (for us!) of 8:45 at Eleanor's. This is one of two places you need reservations for and it's not very large. We had a great meal including ceviche, crab cakes, grilled lobster and lamb shank with Caribbean flavours. They knew it was our anniversary so a dessert came out even though we had declined at first!

On the way back we stopped in at the piano bar for a few songs as well. It was a great ending to a special day!

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. 

Day 2 - Settling In

   We see these guys all over the resort. They're called Antiguan Chameleons.

 After sleeping more than I have in decades, 9.5 hrs, I got up at 7:30 to see what was happening. The weather was beautiful which seems to be the norm here. Not many people were up. Some of the rooms have butlers and they were out reserving beach chairs. Kind of weird but that's what happens here and it's pretty much the only thing I've heard complaining about. The kid in me wanted to go around and take off all the reserved towels to see what would happen. Something tells me Marilyn wouldn't want me doing that!

We had a nice breakfast at the beachside place and got ready to go on a snorkelling trip. We were picked up at the beach which involved wading out to the boat in neck deep water. Not sure what happens if you're short. The boat cruised 15 minutes to a reef. It was ok but nothing compared to what we saw in the Galápagos last year. I guess we're spoiled now. We probably won't do more snorkelling because they only go to a couple of places that are similar.

    Looking out the back of the boat taking us to the reef.

    Marilyn's first deep water snorkel effort went really well. 

    The camera went a little crazy on this one but that's me. 

    There were some fish around but there wasn't much variety.

   There's a Neapolitan type pizzeria here too. This is a Caribiana with jerk      chicken, peppers and plantain. A bit spicy but really good.  

The rest of the afternoon was spent at a swim up bar close to our room. We tried a few different drinks and watched a water volleyball game. There are so many cocktails available! Since it's all inclusive here, you feel almost obligated to try lots of drinks! Yes, that's my story and I'll be sticking to it.

    Quite a variety! Marilyn has tried the Miami Vice and the Hummingbird so far.

    And this is the menu that I'm working on. The Caribbean Blue is my favourite   so far.

In the evening, we attended the Sandals welcome party. There was a giant buffet dinner on the beach along with a steel band. They certainly go all out with the food here as well as the drinks.

    This was one of the stations.

    And the steel band. 

Antigua - Arriving at Sandals

Wow, one year later and we're on the road again. I think we need to travel more often! We left Toronto at 0 degrees and having the plane defrosted so our arrival in Antigua after 5 hours was quite pleasant. As we descended to the island, we started to see the aqua blue sea and finally, the island. As we exited the airport, at 28 degrees, we had skipped a season at home and were in summer. 

    De-icing the plane. A first for us. 

    First views of the island. The sea was amazing. 

After a 15 minute ride in a van with broken a/c, we were at Sandals and everything was good. They dropped us at our concierge building and we were handed cool towels and champagne. Not a bad start. We had to wait a bit for our room to be ready so we explored the resort and had two mini lunches at two of the restaurants. One was right on the beach and had a sand floor. 

We checked into our room and it was great. We're on a second floor with a balcony the faces the resort. It's surrounded by palm trees and overlooks a pool. We continued to walk around as the place is quite large. 

    The sky was a bit threatening but there was no rain. Beautiful in any case.

As we had been up since 3 a.m., we were both quite wiped out. So, we watched the sunset on the beach, had dinner at an English style pub and retired to our room. So much for checking out the night life! I figured I'd write this post and then go to bed. Nope. After nodding off a few times and writing nothing, I decided to give in and went to bed at 9:30! Quite shocking for me. We were serenaded by tree frogs all night. I had no idea that they could be so loud!

    Marilyn watching the sunset. 

    A couple of local kids on the beach. 

    Looking towards the beach. That's one of the local cats.