All My People,
Well I’m so up-to date with my travel reports now; I’m actually typing this one from the airport in Antigua!!
So when I last updated you we had been in a rainy, thundering Jamaica and had practically done nada. So at the crack of dawn we left for Antigua or as the local’s call it Wadadli (apparently it is a nickname – so a local told me, I’m not sure) also a name of a local beer we tried.
We had to fly from Montego Bay to Kingston then onto Antigua – but the lovely man who checked us in at the MTB airport informed us that we could check our bags all the way through to Antigua even though we weren’t traveling on the same airline to Antigua. Don’t ask me how, but they did arrive ok so that saved a lot of time with collecting luggage at Kingston and checking back in for Antigua.
The flight to Kingston was short (17 minutes) and we had no delays, until we hit MTB. Our flight on to Antigua was delayed for about 1 hour and it was also going on to Trinidad and then Fort. Lauderdale so it was packed. After having to practically fight our way onto the plane past the Cayman Island U18 football team and the Jamaican Youth rugby team who where causing havoc on the plane. Finally we took off but the journey was not smooth (again!) the BWIA airplane food was nasty and the old lady next to me was instant on talking about Trinidad to me as I made the mistake of telling her I had been and played with Poison for Carnival, when all I wanted to do was sleep as I had been up since 6.15am!
We arrived in Antigua and the immigration and collecting your bags was easy because I think maybe maximum 20 people got off of that BWIA flight, the rest where obviously traveling on. Also the airport was small so you don’t have to walk 15 minutes like in the UK or USA. So as soon as we passed through immigration our bags popped up on the belt and we where outside in the SUNSHINE – something we had been lacking and was in a taxi on our way to Dian Bay Resort & Spa, where stayed on the eastside of the Island.
http://www.eliteislandresorts.com/site/resorts.asp?islandID=1&resortID=1247
Its about a 40 min drive to the hotel, on the way we saw the old cricket ground as it is right next to the airport and the new one being built for World Cup ’07 – which is huge and very impressive even though it is not yet completed.
When arrive at Dian Bay, the first thing I say to Tracy is – it so quite compared to where we stayed in Jamaica, the lady at the reception informs us that’s because the hotel doesn’t allow children, uninterested but please for the peacefulness, we check-in and our shown to our room, I’m ready to hit the pillow for some serious sleep. But no such luck, old maintenance/porter/bell-hop man, what’s to chat about carnival pre-party, showing us how to use the air-conditioning, the television, the fan, and the lights… He finally leaves us and it only took me max 2 minutes to make myself comfortable, but we decided to grab a bite to eat in the restaurant and have a quick drink at the bar as I was longing to be back in the bed.
Tracy & I spent most of our days in Antigua lying on our little private beach, soaking up the sun, sleeping on the sun-beds, although we did try Kayaking across the bay to the other side but swiftly ditched that idea when we got stuck and couldn’t make it over to Lovers beach and also seemingly was being dragged out towards the Atlantic ocean which met the Caribbean sea on the other side of the bay.
We did visit St John’s the capital for a night out. We went out to dinner with another guest from the hotel Lecia (who was from London too). All dying for some authentic food as the hotel food was all a la carte. So we caught a taxi into St John’s to Heritage Quay.
http://www.antiguanice.com/places/heritage_quay/heritage_quay.htm
Heritage Quay is where all the shops, restaurant etc are. We had a lovely seafood meal at restaurant called Commissioner Grill. If you ever go there, have the garlic shrimp…superb!
http://www.antiguanice.com/commissioner_grill/index.html
After that we met up with two girls that worked at the hotel Vivian and Stacy and moved onto a nightclub/restaurant on water called Coast.
This was a great night out; we also met the chef and the beach attendant from the hotel at coast. With the music playing we partied into the early morning hours I think we got back about 3.30am, considering we left the hotel at 7.30pm.
Other highlights, oooo getting decent chocolate for the fist time in ages, which the beach attendance little assistant who was 20 and that I affectionately named him chocolate boy after went and get some chocolate for me ?, watching the world cup finals, even though I was cheering for France being that they are our closet neighbors…what about the Zidane head butt? LOL, cor blimey…Oh yes and watching the BET awards and feeling inspired by Beyonce to work on getting great abs for about say 10 minutes.
We did plan to go to Barbuda and Shirley Heights, but we never quite made it due to lazy-ness and the fact that the hotel made you sign up for theses things and would take you only if it reached a certain number for the trip. It didn’t so we didn’t go. But Antigua will definitely be seeing me again! So as they say in Jamaica – No problem!
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