I've heard that there have been studies done proving that people's bodies are not truly relaxed until the 3rd day of vacation. Unfortunately for us, it rained the entire 3rd day! Actually, I shouldn't say that. We woke up late, met up with a friend, and got lunch in the hotel eatery. I had a meatball sub- it was kinda gross...too much oregano, not enough flavor in the actual meatballs, but whatever. Then we went to the rooms, got ready for the beach, and grabbed a cooler of beers. I was planning on a full day of tanning and swimming...fun in the sun!
We got on the beach, found the rest of our friends, and had just finished up slathering on sunscreen when the clouds rolled in. We literally watched them coming in over the ocean- it was pretty crazy. You looked in one direction and it was all sunny, and turned the other way and could see rain in the distance, and the dark gray clouds coming straight for us.
"It's gonna go right past us- no worries!" C was saying. We tried to wait it out as others packed up and ran for the hills. We stayed until the first drops fell. Luckily, one of our friends had a room right on the beach (they're patio opened up onto it- pretty awesome) so at least 10 of us crowded in there. (The rest of the group went to someone else's room.) The girls sat, while the guys were either outside on the patio or staring out the sliding glass doors when it got really heavy.
"It's gonna last 10 minutes, and then it'll be all sunny again! That's how it is in Florida! " C was overly optimistic. I think we believed him until we saw huge rods of lightning and heard the rolling thunder. We repeated that saying the rest of the day, as the the rain poured down. Once we realized that it wasn't ending anytime soon- about 40 minutes later- we decided the only way to salvage the day was to hit up a bar!! We found a small empty one in the middle of one of the courtyards. Well, it was empty except for a bartender and this:
"AAAAaargghhh Matey!"
When we first walked in, he was posted against a far wall perfectly still. I seriously thought he was a statue....until he walked over to get his parrot! Oh yeah, this guy was serious. Unfortunately, I had left my camera in my friends room, and this was all C could get with the camera on his phone (mine didn't have zoom capabilities and I didn't want to be too obvious!).
Eventually our other friends joined us- we had completely taken over the bar- it was awesome!
After about 6 hours of drinking, we decided maybe we should look into eating something. The group split up again- some went to a fancy restaurant 30 minutes away, we went across the street to an Irish pub, Paddy O'Sullivan's. We had a group of maybe 20 people- they weren't ready for us. I liked the food, but the waitresses did screw up a bunch of orders. Overall though, it was a fun time!
part of our group
see all those people behind me? that whole other room? that's our group too!
I remembered to take food pics! Here we have a burger with "queso fresco", smoked chipotle mayo, avocado, red onions, and banana peppers
mmm Red Stripe and sweet potato fries
he's no longer being "shy" but rather "incognito"...
And then we tried to go back and drink more at the hotel bar, but only got through about one before we were too tired.
Day 4 : Woke up, packed, got coffee, took cab to airport, and flew home. Pretty uneventful.
Until we got home.
I mentioned here that our apartment was getting renovated while we were away. Our kitchen and bathroom looked completely different, in a good way! We got new cabinets, appliances, a mantle over our fireplace, and new blinds. Also, C's mom had gotten us some groceries, a new shower curtain, new pillows, made the bed, vacuumed and dusted everything! So everything was nice and clean, and we were able to put most of our stuff away.
We still have about a box's worth of plastics bags with "stuff" in them, because drawers that used to be in our kitchen and bathroom weren't there when we got back! So we're still working on it, but overall, the renovations came out great, and we had a wonderful little getaway!
