Back from the BAHAMAS!!!

Boo. 5 nights was not long enough.

We just got back from the BAHAMAS about 2 hours ago. Since I'm pretty bad about keeping up with this whole blog thing, I figured I'd better go ahead and take care our BAHAMAS trip recap before I get really busy and decide not to write one.

I also took a trip to visit my fam in Ohio, but that's another blog for another day that should've been written two weeks ago.

I'm going to write this blog on a day to day recap because its easier to remember everything that way.

SATURDAY, JULY 4

We woke up pretty early to catch our 10am flight. I was concerned that Nathan's bag might have weighed too much and wanted to give us time to rearrange things at the airport if we needed to. Thankfully, his bag was juuuuust UNDER the weight limit, 48.5 pounds, whew! We breezed through the whole check-in process and had enough time to grab some breakfast tacos from Pappasitos before making the long hike to our gate. Our gate that was at the very, very end of the terminal. We worked off those breakfast tacos.

The flight was pretty uneventful. I had checked in online (LOVE THAT!!) and was able to change our seats to an exit row. No one had the window seat next to us so we got the whole row to ourselves, that was really nice! They served us a rather yellowy looking green salad, and a knockoff bbq turkey hot pocket thing. Nathan declined, but I decided I was hungry enough to actually brave the airplane food. The salad was salad, the hot pocket was ehh...the meat inside it was actually pretty decent but the "pocket" seemed a little doughy and not very tasty. Unfortunately, I didn't think to just eat the meat out of it until I was mostly done with the whole thing. Ah well.

We arrived at the airport in Nassau a little early, but had to wait on the plane for a good 15-20 minutes because they didn't have a gate for us. That was slightly annoying, but hey, we're in the BAHAMAS!!!

Thankfully, none of our luggage was lost, we checked in at the Sandals desk, found our shuttle bus and were the only people on it. Private shuttle, all right!! LOL!

Check-in was easy, and our room was ready right away. We had a little tour and were taken to our room. Two words. AWESOME.VIEW!!! We were on the top floor of the Windsor building and had a full on ocean view. Other than that the room was pretty average, nice, but nothing too exciting. But oh the view. I will definitely miss that.

We got to the hotel around 4pm and it had just rained, so we didn't really feel like jumping in the water at that point. We decided to go to the Orientation that they have twice a day. When we first got there it was pretty intimidating, everything was big and colorful and you're like "What is all this?" The tour they gave us wasn't that helpful, but it did give us a better idea of where everything was at.

We went back up to the room and changed clothes and went down to dinner. We decided to go to Kimonos (think Benihana's type place). I had read in some reviews that this is a good first night place because you can meet people. The reviewers were right, we met 3 really cool couples. One from New York, one from Pennsylvania, and one from South Carolina. Unfortunately, they were all leaving within the next day or so, booo!! But we had a great dinner with them and ended up chatting with them long after dinner and dessert were over. I really wished we could've hung with the NY couple a few more days, they seemed like a lot of fun.

We went back up to the room, changed into our swimsuits and hit up the hot tub that is closest to the beach. We got a drink from the bar and watched an amazing fireworks show. Apparently, you don't have to be in the United States to celebrate July 4th. They did a really good job with the fireworks and it was so cool to be able to watch it from a hot tub right off the beach.

At this point I would like to make it known for everyone that I did fully finish my alcoholic drink. Those of you that know me well, know that I don't drink. So this was kind of a big deal. Ha!! It was called a Goombay Smash and I had them add cranberry too it. I have no idea what's in it, but it was pretty good. My sister had told me to ask for a Malibu punch. They didn't have that but they gave me that Goombay Smash with cranberry, so there you go.

SUNDAY, JULY 5

We woke up around 8 am. This is actually pretty early for us, since we really like sleeping in during the summer. I had read reviews that said the good chairs get taken early, so we grabbed some towels and saved 2 chairs under an umbrella at the Manor Pool on our way to breakfast. The cool thing is that no one messes with your stuff when you do that. The Manor Pool is the really laid back, quiet pool.

We ate at the breakfast buffet. They had a lot to choose from and it was fairly tasty.

We spent half the day at the pool, lounging in our pool chairs, and floating around on the pool floats. I drank ANOTHER Goombay Smash (I know you all are SO proud of me), although for the record these are like small 8 oz dixie cups.

They have a pool/beachside pizza oven. The pizza was SOOOO good! We ate it in the shade while looking out at the ocean. After our pizza lunch we went out to the beach, found a couple chairs to dump our stuff and chilled in the ocean.

The water was SOOOO pretty and it felt really good too. Around 3 pm we had enough sun and headed back to the room for a little break.

We went back out to the Windsor pool (this is the crazy, loud pool) and played some ping-pong. Nathan totally kicked my ass, but we had a good time trying to keep the ping-pong ball from going into the pool. We were successful about half of the time. Thankfully, everyone was pretty nice there (at that point, most of the people in the pool were tanked, they were having a GOOOOOD time, ha!) and threw the ball back to us.

We jumped in, Nathan got us another drink and played some pool basketball. Nathan beat me at that too. At one point my bikini top came untied. I was jumping for shot, Nathan grabbed at it to mess me up and OOPS!!! No one was really around and it didn't happen until after I was back in the water, so I don't think anyone noticed my wardrobe malfunction, but it certainly gave us a laugh.

We went back up to the room to shower before dinner and found that we were a little "well-done". Or actually, I guess I should say medium to medium-rare. That last dip in the pool got us a little toasty. DOH!

We ate a Cassanovas, the Italian place. They had this really cool antipasto and salad bar. I ordered the lasagna and Nathan had the spaghetti and meatballs. They were both pretty good! The dessert was just okay, nothing exciting.

We went back up to the room, chilled for a bit and then decided we were hungry again. So we went to Cricketeers Pub where Nathan had a burger and I had some potato crisps. Basically they were like English nachos. Fried potato crisps (think potato chips) and they had this white, kinda blue cheese tasting sauce on them. They were quite tasty!

MONDAY, JULY 6

We had breakfast at the breakfast buffet again and then took the boat over to Sandals private island for our massages on the beach!! Although, for the record, a massage overlooking the ocean is slightly overrated because you are face down most of the time. But it was very cool, and I'm glad we did it. The massages felt really good too. And we scoped out the perfect place to come back to the next day.

We decided that today would be a good day to go into downtown Nassau and do a little shopping and check out Atlantis. Nathan's shoulder's were still a little crispy and we figured this would be a good way to keep them out of the sun a little.

We took the #10 bus to downtown Atlantis. Nathan got a t-shirt and I found my mom a really cheesy souvenir (she collects them). We then took the water ferry over to Atlantis.

I can sum up Atlantis in a few words. Big. Loud. Expensive. Way too many obnoxious kids running around. We didn't really explore Atlantis for very long for the above reasons.

We did however check out the casino. Neither of us have ever been in a casino, or gambled before (unless you count SNAP in which I totally owned the blackjack tables my junior year, the dealer, a friend's dad, was awesome and always busted and gave us "hints", good times), so we thought we'd try it out.

It took us a few minutes to figure it all out. I'm sure we stood out like a sore thumb trying to figure out how to get chips. After watching a guy at the blackjack tables just hand over some cash we figured it out. There was only one spot open at the cheapest table, $15. Nathan decided that I was probably the luckier one and let me have at it.

Since the minimum bet was $15 I handed over $60. I figured this would give me at least 4 hands, and if I lost all 4 hands, then we were done for the day. I think I lost the 1st hand, but then came back the next hand. It kept that way for a while. I had a pretty good pile of $5 chips at one point. I have no idea how much because I kept remembering Kenny Roger's advice "You never count your money, when you're sitting at the table, they'll be time enough for counting, when the dealing's done".

Plus, since I was a newbie I was trying to make myself look not so newbyish. Nathan told me I had a pretty good poker face. Don't get me wrong, when I got that first blackjack I was dying to whip out my camera and take a picture of it, but I kept my cool.

Towards the end, I decided to go against Kenny Roger's advice and put $60 worth of my chips to the side. I played, and lost a couple more hands and decided to leave the table. I won 10 bucks, woohoo!!! :)

I really should've have stepped away from the table sooner and probably would've won like $30. But it was a fun time, and my goal was to gamble, and come out ahead, which I did. We went in with $60 and came out with $70. I wish I could've been the guy next to me, who came in $400 and left with $700...yeah...that would've been nice. But alas, I'm happy with my $10 gain.

On our way out of Atlantis we stopped by their cigar shop and Nathan bought his first Cuban cigar. We hopped back on the ferry and were entertained by the ferry tour guide person. He was really funny! He pointed out Nicholas Cage's house (although quite honestly, we all just took his word for it because all you could see was a bunch of palm trees). We also learned about the meaning of the colors on the Bahamian flag, how spending money in the Bahamas is like recycling because they import about 85% of their food from the United States, and how their most famous fish dish, Conch (pronounced conk, this was also news to me as my entire life I've pronounced it phonetically), so Conch is apparently good for your sex life. Who knew?! And as if we hadn't figured it out already, our tour guide told us "In the Bahamas, we do everything SLOWWWW, because there ain't no where to go." That is the truth! If you ever go to the Bahamas, don't be in a hurry, and just relax, because they really are super slow.

We got off the ferry and hit up one of the liquor stores to buy some rum, because, well, that's just what you do when you can buy it tax free right? Ha! And then we went by the infamous Straw Market. Its this market where you can buy straw items (imagine that) and knock off handbags. I am not really into handbags and the ladies are like WAYYYY aggressive, calling out to you to come check out their goods. I knew I wanted a straw fan, because I had seen a girl with one on the ferry and thought it looked pretty cool. I took one look inside and saw how teeny tiny the aisles were and decided it wasn't a place I really cared to go. There was a lady selling the fans right out front so I bought one off of her. We were told you are supposed to haggle with them, but I'm not really a haggler, and my fan was only $5, and I could hardly see myself saying "Uh how about $4" when the lady had to give me change for my $20 bill anyways. Anyways, I could say that I actually went to the Straw Market, check that off the list.

We got back on the #10 bus, along with like 20 other people, some of whom, you could tell had not bathed in a while, and headed back to the hotel. It was nice to be back where there were no screaming, obnoxious kids.

We ate a the Crystal Room. It was kind of a jazzy, real classy type place. Our waiter, Duke, was awesome. Nathan had the salmon, which was really good, but I wasn't really impressed with my prime rib. I was however, in complete awe of our dessert, the chocolate volcano. WOW...sooooo good!!!

We went back to the room and chilled on our balcony. Nathan smoked his Cuban stogie. I was just looking around and noticed a guy on his balcony. He didn't have a shirt one, no big deal right? And then he turned around and bent over and I saw his bare butt!!! NO JOKE!!! I was like "Nathan!! Look!" We had a good laugh and figured that was the end of it when the guy went back inside and the lights went out.

But the show was not over yet. Oh no, he came out again, this time with his girl. She was blindfolded...yep, BLINDFOLDED!!!! Craziness! They totally went for it on their balcony!!! It was nuts. No pun intended, ha! Our balcony light wasn't on, but surely, SURELY they could see us right? Or maybe they just didn't care. Either way, it was highly entertaining for us.

TUESDAY, JULY 7

We decided to skip the pool, because well, we have a neighborhood pool at home. Granted, said pool does not have a bar, or awesome chairs, or no kids around, but all the same, its a pool. We had breakfast and then caught the first boat over to the private island.

The day before when we were there for our massages we found this perfect little tiki hut that had padded cushions on it, overlooking the water. Being the over analyzer that I am, I remembered which side of the boat got off first over at the island. We conveniently let everyone else get on the boat first, and then we sat down, right where we knew we'd get off first. We got off first and high-tailed it to our spot.

It was pure awesomeness!! We were in the shade the entire time, so we didn't get burned that day. The beach on the island isn't as nice as the one at the main hotel. It was however, great for snorkeling. We had brought our own snorkel gear and checked it all out. We found a little reef off the east side of the island that had tons of fish in it. We didn't see anything exciting like a sting ray, just lots of colorful fish and spiny sea urchins. There were a LOT of those. Some little, and some really big ones. The big ones were a little intimidating. Thankfully, they don't move much. Although I just thought for sure when we were snorkeling in the shallower water that one was going to jump out of the coral and get me. I'm not going to lie, it made me a little nervous.

We spent the entire day at the island and took the last boat back to the mainland at 5 pm. We ate dinner at the Italian place again.

The resort had a chocolate buffet at 10:00 that night. We got their at 10:10 and all the plates were gone and the buffet was almost gone! It was crazy! So we had a couple chocolate things, it was dark so you couldn't really tell what you were eating until you bit into it. I tried one thing and couldn't figure out what it was until Nathan tried it. It was a grape. A chocolate covered grape. Pretty good actually.

There was a singer on the other side of the resort by the Manor Pool. So we hopped in the Manor Pool and swam around a bit, and then got in the hot tub.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 8

It was our last full day, (tear) and the night before we were trying to decide how to spend it. Go over to the island and get the little tiki hut thing again? Spend it at the pool? Try to get an umbrella on the main beach? We decided on the main beach, and I got up early and staked out our spot. I had our magazines and beach bag strewn across 2 chairs, and then put a beach towel through the the spokes in the umbrella. Most of the chairs under the umbrellas were reserved by the people in the butler suites, so I was way excited to find such prime real estate that hadn't been reserved yet. I went back to bed for about 45 minutes and then we got up and went to breakfast.

No one messed with our stuff, so we chilled there for most of the day. Rearranging our chairs when the sun moved and spending a lot of time in the ocean. We got to witness a bunch of Italians totally snake a butler suite person's umbrella and chairs. They were quite proud of themselves in all of their speedo wearing glory. I was really hoping for some really big dude to come down to his reserved spot only to find the Italians in their speedos had taken them, and then a hilarious confrontation would ensue. But the rightful owners never came to claim their spot and the drama did not happen. Boo.

We went back up to the room to get out of the heat, and then went to dinner at the Crystal Room again, because this was our favorite place. We asked for Duke, our really fun waiter from the other night, but unfortunately he wasn't working. Bummer.

I had the salmon this time, which was yummy, and Nathan had some kind of chicken dish. And of COURSE we got the chocolate volcano again. So. Good!

TODAY, THURSDAY, JULY 9

The day we left. Boo. They were picking up our bags at 10:30, and we had to leave at 11:30 to go to the airport. That didn't leave us time to really go to the beach or pool, and we didn't want to mess with trying to pack a wet swimsuit. So we slept in, went to breakfast, got one last tropical drink from the bar and then headed to the airport.

On our way, the shuttle driver had to stop for a motorcade to drive by. It was the Prime Minister, no joke!

Customs was a breeze, and had we known that they wouldn't actually check our bags or ask what we were bringing back we would've bought another bottle of rum.

The airport was pretty lame. There was one cafeteria style cafe, we took one look at the options that looked like food poisoning on a plate and decided that wasn't a good idea. So instead we got raped by the Dunkin' Donuts. We spent $23 on 2 sandwiches, 2 drinks and a dozen munchin donut holes. They charged me $6 for a dozen donut holes!! If we ever get back to the Bahamas I'm going to make sure we eat A LOT before we get to the airport.

We were on a little plane this time, the kind that has 1 seat on 1 side and 2 seats on the other side. It was not a comfortable 3 hour flight. We were jammed in, and there was a baby screaming every 5 minutes. The iPods were mostly helpful in drowning that out, but you'd still catch it, especially during the landing when you weren't allowed to use your iPods.

Once again, both of our bags made it. Nathan was most concerned about my bag, because it was the one that had the rum in it, LOL!!

Pictures will be posted soon on Facebook. We took a bunch of pics with an underwater camera, and those will be a little later in coming as we actually have to get those developed.

We had a GREAT trip! Hopefully we'll be able to get back their agin someday.