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2003-05-29 ~ 9:02 p.m.
Grand Cay------Mon
WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION!!!
DAY CINCO! That's "five" or this many. (holding up hand)
Before I start, I was just wondering...For these past few entries, do you read the whole thing? Or just kinda read it in sections? Or do you all not even read this anymore?
Day 5 was refreshingly less annoying as far as sales were concerned. We did a lot of hassle-free shopping. I like hassle-free shopping. I like price tags. I don't like when my dollar is worth less than somebody else's dollar, which was the case in Grand Cayman.
YOU CAN SEE OUR FIRST SIGHT OF GRAND CAYMAN FROM OUR CABIN WINDOW HERE!
Grand Cayman is in the British West Indies. Their colorful money is also called dollars, but there's are worth $1.25 to our 1USD. I only got a couple of dollars and some change. I don't know about their higher denomination dollars, but everything a dollar and less ALL have Elizabeth II on them. Quarters, dimes, nickels, pennies. I mean..... would you even want that? Most importantly, would she need ID when writing a check? The interesting thing about the change is that whereas our says "quarter dollar" "one dime" "five cents" and "one cent" on the back, there's just have 25, 10, 5, and 1. Clever eh?
The 25 cent piece has a picture of a sailboat, the dime has a sea turtle in water (there's even ripples from where the head pokes out of the water,) 5 cent has a big shrimp and 1 cent has a birdy in a tree. They also did the more logical thing of making the dime bigger than the nickel. Did that ever annoy you too?)
Grand Cayman was celebrating its 500th birthday as Grand Cayman. There were flags everywhere with an artsy big five little 0 big 0, that is also on the dollar bill, which, by the way, is copyrighted.
We really didn't get to find out bits of useless trivia about Grand Cayman because we didn't take a cab anywhere. We pretty much stayed on the main strip.
There is a place called "Hell" in Grand Cayman, though. Someone a long time ago went to this place on Grand Cayman where there are a bunch of black rocks that look a bit foreboding and he said, "This must be what hell looks like," and the name stuck. Besides the rock, there is a post office so that tourists can be oh-so-clever and sign postcards that say, "We're in hell! Wish you were here!" and even have it postmarked from Hell. Yes... I was lame enough to do this. :D I didn't actually have to go to Hell, though. A customer service desk for the cruise ships already have a setup where they collect post cards from all the lazy tourists and have a runner go to Hell for them.
It was another stop where we had to take a tender from the ship to the island. We got up a little late that day since we didn't have anything besides shopping planned in Grand Cayman.
And it started to pour.
Those tenders are pretty much opened to the elements, so we got absolutely raped by the rain on our way in. Also lucky for us, there were a few other cruise ships there and we got to be the furthest one anchored from the island. Yay us. Our tender driver seemed to really try to make the best of the rain though. He sang. "Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaay O! Daa-aa-aa-O! Daylight come and me wanna get wet."
We noticed a few people had Hard Rock ponchos, one couple told us they were 5 bucks a pop, so after we got off the tender, we scurried to Hard Rock, picked up ponchos and a few souvenirs for friends, went outside....
And there was beautiful sunshine.
At least the rain was warm. This next picture is of me by a shop that sold postcards with Hell on them in my Hard Rock poncho. I was about to fill out my postcards. I remember feeling like a tired, wet rat.
YOU'D NEVER KNOW WHERE I WAS OTHERWISE
Ponchos don't breathe really well, so we soon took them off. The next few pictures are BRE's famous arm-length pictures. These made me laugh because we're on a BEAUTIFUL island and we take pictures that don't show at all where we are.
WARNING TO BITTER SINGLE FOLK!! THESE ARE JUST "HAPPY COUPLE" PICTURES!!
I HAVE SUNGLASSES IN THIS ONE!
BUT, SEE, I'M ON THE OTHER SIDE IN THIS ONE
While on the boat, there was one day where they gave us samples of rums and rumcakes. I absolutely adored the rumcakes. The big rum distributor in the caribbean is Tortuga. The Tortuga factories are on Grand Cayman specifically. I considered buying rum and remembered that I hardly drink at home. (Well, anymore since I'm all "happy" and crap.) But the rum cakes.... holy cow. I needed me some of those. They also are the perfect gift for most of my friends. Even friends at work. (As, for Christmas and New Year's one of the girls will make her own rum cakes and we are usually drunk before we hit the tables.)
We had a little Tortuga map from the boat, but there wasn't a Tortuga where there was supposed to be a Tortuga.....well... kinda.. We were where the map said we should be for one of their little Tortuga outlets, but instead, there was a Tortuga truck. Yes, we thought it odd ourselves, but the truckdriver did come in handy for directions for the actual Tortuga store. We thought it was funny, so we took a picture of the Tortuga truck.
The truck was actually there because people buy so much at the Tortuga stores, that they have a truck deliver the products to the tenders to take them to the boats for the customers. That was SO handy because we bought a case of Tortuga cakes, and there was no way we could carry them ourselves.
Also in the picture, in the background, you will kinda be able to make out the Hard Rock.
We had a delightful lunch at a restaurant that had only been open for a few days. This was where I found that Tortuga makes a yummy habanero sauce. This was also where I realized that Tortuga could very well someday rule the world. So, if for some reason, you find the need to buy me presents....besides my amazon wish list....GOD BLESS ROBERT AND CARLENE HAMATY
BUT GO HERE FOR ANOTHER HAPPY PICTURE OF ME AND BRE
Also on the right side of that last picture, you can see all the colorful flags with the clever 5oO.
By the end of our lunch, it started to frickin' rain again. Handy enough, we were armed with ponchos.....
AND MY TRUSTY COCKTAIL UMBRELLA!!
This next picture you can see the tenders that took us to the ships. You can see 2 ships straight away. If you really look, you can tell there's actually another ship behind the one on the right. None of them were our ship. Ours was even further back than that. I do, however, now firmly believe that there is a difference getting rained on at home and getting rained on on vacation. When you're on vacation, you really don't give much of a rat's ass. And if you do, you need to be on a better vacation.
This next picture would have been my favorite if it would have come out better. Stick with me here, I'm not imagining things. There is actually a rainbow in the picture. You can see a white arch in the picture. At the ends of the arch, you can make out the colors. There were actually two rainbows at the time. The one above didn't come out at all. What was interesting was that the one that you can kinda see starts with red on top, as a usual rainbow does, but the rainbow that was above it actually had the purple on top and ended with the red. If anyone knows why that would happen, let me know. It was really interesting.
I'm not sure what the next picture is of. I mean, I know the picture is of our towel animal of the evening, but I'm not sure what it's supposed to be. Our friends said it kinda looked like a stingray. If you ask me, it looks like our cabin steward knew what we were using the extra towels for.
This was also the second formal night. BRE was all decked out in his Tommy Bahama shirt. (Remember, he doesn't "do" formal.) Though, in his defense, Tommy Bahama kicks laid back booty. I actually think I looked pretty good this night. It seems that the more clothing that covers me, the better I look. That doesn't do much for the self esteem, but it's not like I'm running around naked either. Outside, anyway.
But this one here... I look like one of those little Japanese pictures that they put on some of their products or advertisements.
"EAT FISH. IT GOOD FO' YOOOOU."
Hey, speaking of fish. On this night, the midnight buffet was actually in the dining room. (It was usually on the Lido.....Deck.)(I'll explain "Lido.......Deck" in a bit.) And the buffet was a big gala thing. They made everything look like something. Carved stuff. Did stuff. It was an utter and complete waste of food. Not much of it got eaten. At least, not that night. They probably served it to us the next day. I think a problem was that it reeked of fish. Not of freshly cooked fish. Reeked of post-gutted fish...which there was. One of the displays utilized the heads and tails of a couple of fish.
It looked real pretty though. The forefront display of this one is fish made out of smoked salmon. The flowers there are made of radishes and onion. You see the front of the watermelon boat and some of the cheese statues.
There is a better view of the cheese statue. We're not sure if someone decided to cut a chunk off the statue because they were hungry or what. We weren't in to eat at this time. They actually did just have a time for us to go in and take retarded frickin' pictures of food. Which we took full advantage of. The sushi plate was to the side. (Look little flowers and hearts, how cute.) This was hardly even touched when the buffet started. I think we all took into account that everything on that table had been sitting from when it was prepared, through about 700 people going in to look at it, and then a line to actually eat it.
PLUS MORE WATERMELON WE DIDN'T GET TO EAT
OH GOOD. WE DID GET PICTURES OF THE FUNKY FISH HEADS
I like this next one. Of course, like most women, I have this thing about ice sculptures. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have one when I get married. Women just start to coo when other women bring up the fact that they had an ice sculpture at their wedding. It's one of those things that aren't meant to be understood. This one was 4 pieces.
I also learned something about ice sculptures. If they're from a mold, they won't have a "ribbon" in them. Apparently when ice is being prepared to be sculpted with chisels and all that, they have a machine to suck out some excess air to make the ice that much stronger and clearer. It leaves this ribbon of kinda opaque ice.
Also, ice sculpting is truly an art. There are a few ice sculptors from china who train from when they are very young, starting on trees and stuff like that. It, however, was not started in China. Italy, I believe. There are also big ice sculpting events that the ice sculptor on our ship has won many prizes in.
DEAR SWEET JESUS IS IT EVER GOING TO END?
OK! LAST ONE OF FOOD STUFF! YOU CAN SEE THE RIBBON IN IT
This next one is my favorite picture of me on the trip, which are always nice to have.
This day was a good day. I would consider going back to Grand Cayman. There was a couple that did get married while they were in Hell. It was funny because it rained like hell.
Ah, yes, Lido.........Deck. The elevators on the boat would announce what level you were on. Such as Lido............Deck. Promenade...............Deck. Always the pause. It became a joke. Our new friends even left a message on our answering machine saying, "Well..... we were thinking about going to the Lido...............Deck. You should meet us there." Yeah, lame......until you get on a boat and the elevator takes you to Lido.................Deck.
Good times.
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