Brian and I spent a few days in Jamaica last week. This was another trip he got through his lumber company (our 4th in 5 years). We have been to Jamaica once before (on our honeymoon) but this was a different side of the island so all that overlapped was the airport.
An airplane selfie - he's the worst about making faces when I take pictures. :)
Brian has been having some pretty severe sciatic pain. He had gone to his doctor and got some steroids which were definitely helping, but we went ahead and upgraded to the seats that head some extra legroom. Thankfully there was no one else on the row so we got to stretch out and it was VERY nice. It was such a pretty view out the plane window.
We landed and made the short drive to the resort. We checked in and I was so excited when we saw the view from our room - it was gorgeous.
We relaxed and settled into our room and got ready for dinner that night. We had a welcome dinner with the lumber company right off of the beach.
Brian snapped this pic of the sunset.
After dinner, everybody got to release lanterns - it was really neat! I can't get the video to upload, but they were like the lanterns in Tangled except about 3 feet tall.
The next morning I went to breakfast and this was my view:
Ha! If you know us at all, you know that Brian is not a breakfast eater. He'd much rather sleep late, so I'm used to eating breakfast by myself on vacation (or pretty much any other time). I used my breakfast time to text Susan - Hudson started feeling bad the day we left. Not horrible sick, but she did ended up taking him to the doctor and he had a viral infection that made him miss school all week. So I ended up texting every morning to get an update. :)
I ate breakfast and then headed straight to my spot for the next few hours:
I read, relaxed and people watched - it was wonderful.
Brian woke up and texted me and came down to hang on the beach.
We relaxed and after lunch decided to book some excursions or the next couple of days. Brian can only sit around for so long and then he needs something to do. :)
We had a great low key day and before we knew it, it was time to get ready for dinner. The light on our balcony was not great with the sun setting, so you could either see the background-
or us.
We ate dinner with 3 other couples at the Japanese restaurant and I lost 20 dollars on a slot machine in the casino and we called it a night. :)
On Tuesday morning, I ate breakfast and chose a lounger by the pool.
I sat and read and watch some shows on my iPad for hours. It was glorious. It was about lunchtime when I texted Brian and there was no answer. So after waiting a bit, I gathered up my stuff and headed up to the room and he was still dead asleep! We had an excursion at 1:30, so he got up and going so we could grab some lunch before we left. There was a little grill that had pretty good burgers right on the beach.
Talk about a postcard. #allthehearteyes
After lunch we hopped on our bus to go on our raft excursion. We had to pick up people at 4 other hotels, so the 25 minute trip took almost and hour and a half. But we really enjoyed it. When Brian and I go on vacation, we like to really see the country/island we are going and you can rarely do that in a resort. When you get out and talk to the people it really gives you a better picture of the place you are visiting. This rafting trip was great. Each raft "captain" had built their own raft out of bamboo. As you can see below they were quite long and only about 6 feet wide.
Our captain's name was Ricardo and he was great to talk with. We spent the next hour floating down the river and talking with him about his life in Jamaica and things we saw as we were floating. He asked where we were from and when we said Texas, he told us that every time he had somebody from Texas, he knew it would be a nice ride. :)
We had a great float down the river and returned to the resort and got cleaned up for dinner. We had a seafood buffet that night and I tried calamari for the first time and let me say, NOT a fan.
On our last full day, we had an excursion to the Rose Hall Great House at 10:00, so Brian had to get up at a decent hour. :) It was a short drive and we had a private driver, so it only took about 30 minutes to get there. Rose Hall is the great house of what once was a 6,000 acre sugar cane plantation. It is one of only a few left because most were burned in the slave uprising in the 1830s. This picture is from the front porch down to the ocean.
The house sat neglected for years and an American couple bought it in the 60's in the condition below. It was pretty much a shell of the former house.
They put over 2 million dollars into it and have restored it to a beautiful home.
You understand why they build these houses up on the hill - the breeze through these windows was crazy good. And the view was beautiful.
Annie Palmer's bedroom. She was the second mistress of Rose Hall. She was a horrible person and killed countless people including her 3 husbands. I won't go into detail about the history of the house here, but you should google it. Crazy. Town.
Our tour guide telling us about Annie Palmer's gravesite on the grounds.
After the tour, we came back to the resort and Logan and Mandy had signed up for parasailing and invited us to join. I had been wanting to go, so I was all about it. We signed up and they ended up pushing us back 30 minutes because it was windy. So we stopped by the man-whacking-at-a-coconut-with-a-big-knife cart. :)
After a 30 minute wait, they deemed it not too windy (it looked the same to us), so we climbed on the boat with our friends and 2 other couples. Evidently one of the guys from the other two couples was an NFL player from the Oakland Raiders named DeAndre Washington. I had no idea who he was, but I sneakily took a picture anyway because this is the closest I've been to being around someone famous. :) He seemed super nice and normal for somebody who signed a 2.6 million dollar contract a couple of years ago. Yowza.
Anyhoo, Brian and I were 3rd to go parasailing. You all know I have motion sickness issues - so I had on my patch behind my ear and had take some dramamine around lunchtime just in case. I was doing great on the boat and we went up into the air and it was awesome. It was quiet and you could see for forever. This is us on the way up...
And up higher.
When you see someone parasailing, it looks like they are just floating. I don't know if it was because of the extra wind or what, but we were flopping around pretty good. So out of the 10 minutes in the air, I did great for about 8 of them. They lowered us down at the end and dipped us in the ocean and then he took off and we shot up in the air. It was fun, but that's when my stomach started to feel queasy. We got back on the boat and I spent the next 10 minutes (while Logan and Mandy were in the air) concentrating on my breathing so I didn't puke. They came down and Mandy was feeling sick too. We were pretty happy to be back on the beach. Note: go parasailing in the morning - less, windy = less nauseated.
We went back to the room to rest before dinner and I ended up falling asleep. I woke up feeling a lot better and we got ready for our farewell cocktail party with the other couples on the trip. Again - Brian loves those selfies. :)
After the cocktail party, we had dinner and ended up going to a talent show (I use the word talent loosely - some had talent, some were drunk and thought they did). We laughed and really enjoyed it.
We got up the next morning and packed all of our things up. One last balcony pic...
We didn't have to leave the resort for a bit, so we ate lunch and then sat on a chair on the beach under the shade of a palm tree. There was a cool breeze and we laughed and talked... It was actually one of my most favorite moments of the trip. The view was gorgeous, but the company of the man I married almost 16 years ago was outstanding.
I treasure these getaways with Brian. They force him to slow down and relax (hence the sleeping for hours upon hours which he normally does NOT do). We enjoy sharing the experiences of new places and it not only recharges our relationship, but makes me thankful to be his wife. We had a wonderful time.
