You would think I was in a third world country for the past few days since I’ve been without internet. But no, I’ve just been in Ohio. Since I moved out to New York in 2006, my parents got rid of the internet and their crappy Gateway 2000.
My last jetBlue All You Can Jet flight was from Las Vegas to Chicago on October 6th. I extended my 30 day trip to spend a week with my family before heading back home to New York. I took a four hour Megabus ride from Chicago to Toledo for $29.
I spent the next 6 days in Toledo, visiting my family, watching hockey, and eating my weight in my favorite foods for every meal. It was kind of nice relaxing, worrying about nothing at all and not spending a dime.
I had a 7a flight out of Vegas to Long Beach, before heading on to Chicago. The flight was a bumpy 44 minutes over the mountains before landing in rainy Long Beach.
The Long Beach airport has definitely been my least favorite on this trip, and I’ve had two layovers there. A good amount of the airport is outdoors which I learned is no fun in the pouring rain. Especially when you’re wearing flip flops with traction equivalent to an ice cube. After landing, and walking from the plane to the airport, I had to exit security, walk outside to the other end of the airport, and go through security all over again.
Due to crappy weather, our flight took off about 45 minutes late, but we made it to Chicago safely.
I had planned on meeting up with a friend to get some Giordano’s Pizza for dinner, but his girlfriend was mugged while I was on the plane and they were on their way to make a police report when I landed. Instead, I went straight over to my family’s house where I was staying for the night and settled in. Thankfully (for my sake) they hadn’t eaten yet, so we ordered some Giordano’s anyway.
Giordano’s was the first and only Chicago-style deep dish pizza I’ve ever had, so I’ve become faithful to it. I’ve heard from a few Chicagoans that there are much better pizza places, but I have yet to discover them for myself. Any suggestions for the next time I’m in Chicago, craving some deep dish pizza with tons of cheese?
There was a group of about 50 All You Can Jet-ters in Vegas that day, partying hard down on the strip. Had I been in town longer than 36 hours, I would have made an appearance. Instead I went down to a skatepark to watch my cousin show off his skills.
We enjoyed some amazing Mexican food from a place called Chapala’s before heading over to visit more friends. I had to wake up at 430a for my flight, so I was in bed by 11 my last night in Las Vegas. Something seems wrong with that, doesn’t it?
I had a 10a flight to Las Vegas, but not before a two hour layover back in New York. By 5p (PST) I was in Vegas, and on my way to visit my family. The second I stepped foot into the slot-machine filled airport, I was overcome with an incredibly strong urge to binge drink and party like a rockstar. Due to my lack of funds (and friends in Vegas) I decided just to be a good girl and go spend some time with the family. They recently moved further away from the strip out to Henderson, which coincidentally is the same area I almost killed myself and two passengers a few years back by nearly driving off a cliff in the middle of the night. It may have been a little further away from all of the action, but the view of the strip from their new front yard was fantastic.
My first lazy day in 27 days. I spent the entire day laying on the couch watching another Entourage marathon, minus a failed trip to Chic-Fil-A. We hyped ourselves up the entire 20 minute drive out there, for crispy chicken sandwiches, waffle fries, and shakes. But apparently we were the only three people in the world who didn’t know Chic-Fil-A is closed on Sundays. Starving and fully pissed off, we went to Wendy’s instead. Totally barfarrafic. The rest of the day was spent napping and watching TV.
It shouldn’t be 88 degrees in October, but it was down in Naples. After scarfing down some french toast, bacon and chocolate milk at First Watch Diner, we took the dog down to the dog beach for the afternoon. I spent a good three hours dodging dogs and piles of poop of all sizes, and running through the water with them.
After a brief photoshoot with my two lovely hosts, I figured out a way to get all three of us in the photo.
We had dinner inside of a sombrero, which had potential to be amazing had they not been out of half the menu.
We went out that evening where we each consumed about 4x as much as alcohol as we should have. One guy, Corey, opened a tab, then went over to the bar with another guy and drank $114 worth of shots. I guess that explains why he spent the entire day Sunday in the bathroom vomiting.
I was back out the door and on my way to JFK by 930a on Friday. I got stuck underground on the E train for about 30 minutes (possibly due to water on the tracks from rain). Then of course, since I was already running late, the ticket kiosk at the airport was unable to confirm my ticket, so I had to wait in the check-in line for at least another 20 minutes. I don’t know if it’s just because it was a Friday morning or what, but the airport security line was unimaginably long as well. I waited for over an hour and 20 minutes to pass through security. With each person they let through, seven others got to cut ahead of us because their flights were departing in just a few minutes. So there we stood, the people who arrived at the airport over an hour early, waiting for those who show up at the last minute to cut ahead of us and make their flight. I was one of the last people to board my flight to Fort Myers, and I didn’t even have time for breakfast that morning. I got on the plane ready to order a meal, but jetBlue only offers boxed meals on flights over 3 hours and 45 minutes, and my flight was (of course) only 3 hours and 40 minutes.
When I got down to Florida, I spent my Friday evening lounging around indoors, doing laundry, eating stuffed crust pizza from Pizza Hut, and watching an Entourage marathon on Spike TV. After the whole Jamaica debacle, I wasn’t really up for spending any more money or doing much of anything really. The rest of my trip was fairly similar- visiting with family, watching tv, and lounging on couches.
Thursday I woke up to a tiny bit of sunshine, but by the time I got downstairs for breakfast the storm clouds were rolling in.
It was pouring all day again, but the winds had died down immensely. I managed to get out on the same flight I was booked for the day before, just 24 hours late.
I landed back in rainy, windy New York around 8pm. I made it home just in time to watch The Office, eat some dinner, repack my bags, and get some sleep before leaving again at 930am for Fort Myers. I’ll tell ya though, it has never felt so good to leave a Caribbean island.
I woke up at 7am to one of the most intense thunderstorms I have ever witnessed in my life. The thunder was loud, the lightning was bright, the rain horizontal, and the wind was blowing chairs across the sidewalk right into the pool.
Before long, the beach had completely disappeared as the waves rushed in and the water slammed up against the walls of the resort.
Since the resort was open-air, the inside of the resort was starting to flood and most of the areas were closed down.
As if totally oblivious to the weather, I grabbed my bags and went to check out to go to the airport. That’s when I saw the sign at front desk that read “ALL JET BLUE FLIGHTS FOR TODAY HAVE BEEN CANCELED.” I may have freaked out for a minute. Being stuck in a foreign country with no money for a hotel room during a tropical storm is not exactly an ideal situation. I spent the next four hours trying to figure out my situation, when Betsy and her daughter came down into the lobby. Since I was freaking out, Betsy offered up her room for me to crash in for the evening free of charge. Seriously, nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. If not for her, I may have ended up staying in the lobby all night. I kept my all inclusive bracelet on and enjoyed the resort all day long. There were some kids scouring the beach for seashells in-between the downpours, and they were finding some pretty amazing shells and crabs. I searched and searched for one of my own but no luck.
The beach was a mess. All kinds of things were washed up on shore.
The umbrella huts were knocked over from the wind and waves.
The Margaritaville booth was destroyed.
When the rain started again, we went back inside and enjoyed more indoor entertainment as we continued to get soaked.
We went up to the room to pray for the weather to clear up so that we could get out of Jamaica on Thursday. Jenice introduced me to her teddy bear, and she seemed pretty bummed that the weather had been so crappy, because her bear didn’t get to wear all of her outfits that she’d packed for her. So I said “let’s see ’em!” and with that we had an impromptu fashion show while watching “He’s Just Not That Into You.” Of course, since the teddy bear was the model, Jenice the stylist, I was the photographer.
I woke up with an intense craving for bloody marys which is strange because I’ve only had them once in my life before. I gulped down about 10 of those for breakfast.
It was raining, so I paid $15 for internet access and decided to play on that for a bit until I got bored. After a bit I thought “screw it. I’m on vacation and I’m not going to let some rain stop me from having a good time.” I changed into my bikini and went out to the hot tub where I met a couple groups of people from Pennsylvania and LA. After nearly an hour in the jacuzzi, one of the dads asked the kids, “who wants to go to the water park?” to which I shouted “me!” Then I felt a little weird, so I said “I mean, if that’s okay. I’ve been dying to go and maybe I won’t look like such a loser if I’m with some kids.” So we gathered our things, filled up on drinks, and went over to the water park. It’s not a huge water park by any means, but obviously enough to keep a group of children (and some fun-loving twenty-somethings) amused for an hour or two. There were two water slides and a lazy river, but all of the kids and I kept running in circles up and down the slide. Honestly, it was the most fun I had since I arrived in Jamaica. I bought a couple of pictures that the resort photographers took of me going down the slide with the kids. Once I get back to a scanner, I’ll post those.
It stopped raining for a little bit, so I went down to the beach with one of the moms, Betsy, and her 7 year old daughter Jenice (I may be totally butchering the spelling). They were from LA, and Betsy was probably about the same age as me. Nicest people ever.
The kids wore me out so I headed back to the room for a quick nap before dinner. Unfortunately I didn’t have time for a nap before dinner, so I got ready and went over to the Italian restaurant for another five course meal. I ordered a cheese manicotti with snapper, which was a very interesting combination. The dish had all kinds of mixed vegetables, and in my opinion it just didn’t mix too well. The manicotti was great on its own, as was the snapper, but together it was a bit strange for me. I also enjoyed a glass of red wine, fresh mozzarella and tomatoes, a caesar salad, calamari, eggplant, and a cannoli. The meal definitely didn’t compare to some of the amazing Italian meals I’ve had in New York, but Jamaicans also cook a bit differently. It was all good, just in a different way my ridiculously American taste buds aren’t used to.
During dinner it was really storming. The entire resort lost electricity quite a few times during dinner, but never more than a minute or two at a time. On the way back, there was a steel drum band playing in the common area.
After I made a quick Skype call to my mom, I went back to watch some live entertainment. Some guy proposed on stage (of course. What would a Caribbean vacation be without witnessing a proposal or two, no?) There were a few dance offs, and then some crazy man limboed underneath of a burning piece of wood about a foot off the ground.
The entertainment went on for several hours, inviting members of the audience to get up and compete in a few random competitions. They called five women up on stage for a cake eating contest. They blindfolded all five, then took them off of the first four girls, leaving the fifth one to believe they were all still competing. We watched and cheered on “all of the contestants,” and after the cake was gone they took the blindfold off the last girl to show her that she’d basically just been scarfing down cake alone, with all eyes on her.
Later in the evening I saw the cake-consuming winner hanging out in the lobby. She was actually an insanely nice woman from Toronto, who was down in Jamaica on business. I almost felt bad that they played such a prank on such a nice woman, but she liked caked so I guess that made it okay. Her coworker told me that he laughed so hard he threw up. I wish I would’ve gotten that on tape! I stopped and chatted with those two about all things New York, Toronto, and hockey related until I decided to call it a night to go up to the room and pack.
It took me all of 10 minutes to pack, so I sat on the balcony watching the thunderstorm out over the ocean until my buzz wore off. With each crack of thunder, all of the lights would go out in the resort. Kind of crazy seeing nothing but pitch black in front of you, except for the glow of lightning reflecting off the water.
