Jamaica vacation

I wasn’t necessarily planning to do a post on my recent trip to Jamaica.  Seems a little like rubbing it in when I’m quite aware that most of my friends and family are working away in dark, cold northern climes.  But I did post photos to Flickr.  I didn’t take my camera with me at the request of my husband who thought our vacation might be significantly more fun if I wasn’t in PhotoAlthea mode.  However my phone works pretty well as a camera, and all the images we took I was able to upload to Flickr from the hotel lobby.

So here’s the deal.  If you don’t want to hear about someone else’s warm-weather, ocean-oriented vacation, click away now.  No hard feelings.  Come back later for more regularly scheduled Dotzour news.

But for today, at the request of my sister and a couple friends, I have a little debrief of our wonderful trip to Jamaica.  Yeah Mon.

Speaking of Yeah Mon, there was a sign in the Montego Bay airport for an iPhone app called Yeah Mon that would translate from Jamacian for you.  Here’s a screen shot.  Pretty silly stuff.

 

Bryan and I got to travel to Jamaica sans kids thanks to the generosity of Bryan’s mom, who flew up from the sunny and beautiful Texas weather to the frigid north to watch Andrew and Sylvia while we were gone.  Bryan’s dad joined her for the weekend.  THANK YOU guys!!!

We left Madison in the wee hours on Wednesday morning, drove to Milwaukee, flew to Atlanta, and went from there to Montego Bay, Jamaica.

Alterra vanilla latte and a good book.  A nice way to start out!

And here’s a picture of a happy Bryan and Althea as we set off together.

Here’s a gate that I was pretty excited to call my own.

As we flew over the ocean, I was just so in awe.  As a Midwest girl, I just haven’t been near the ocean that much in my life.  Then we started flying over an island.  Turns out it was Cuba!  Look at the color of the water down there.  From the air we could see from one side of Cuba to the other.  And apart from the coast, the ground looked much like Wisconsin to us.  Could have been Sun Prairie down there:)

We’re not in Kansas, Toto!

We woke up at 3:30am in Wisconsin, and at 3pm, we arrived in Montego Bay, Jamaica.  Our hotel was near Ochos Rios, and the bus ride there took about 2 hours.  We were a little weary and felt so happy to find that our hotel – the Jewel Dunns River Beach Resort, a couples all-inclusive, was lovely.  I’d been reading about it on Trip Adviser, but you never know what it’ll be like until you see it.  Here’s the view from our bedroom.

I almost fell asleep at dinner that first night.  Could have been that the cold medicine I took wasn’t supposed to be combined with a couple glasses of wine.

The next day, we explored the grounds and found a good spot by the beach to relax.

Yay!  We’re on vacation!!

I finished The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo and started in on the second book in the series.  Every hour or so one of us would get up and get (free!) drinks from the bar or some (free!) food from the grill.  One of my favorite drinks was called a Jamaican Smile.  If you want to make it at home, combine rum cream, coconut rum, 1 small banana, strawberry daiquiri mix, pina colada mix, strawberry syrup, and ice.  So sweet and sooo yummy!

Ahhh, memories.

The hotel has six restaurants, and we enjoyed them all.

Day 2: Back on the beach.  Agenda: read, nap, drink, eat, stare at the ocean, swim in the ocean, return to beach chair, repeat.

Look at that color!!  I couldn’t get enough of that turquoise and blue.

This is down in the courtyard looking up at our room.  We were on the floor in the middle with the projecting balcony.  Hi room!

Here’s the pool with a waterfall.  The swim-up bar is on the right.  I’d been happily anticipating a swim-up bar.  On our third day, we floated around in the pool on mats while drinking piña coladas.  Rough stuff.

I loved watching the waves wash up on the beach.  I am so amazed at the tides and the salty water.  Here are my footprints on the beach.

And here is a little beach scene.

There’s me on the beach!

Reading material – day 2 and 3.

On the third day, we went on a morning expedition to Dunn’s River Falls.  I didn’t bring my phone, so I have no photos, but here are a bunch so you can see what it looks like. We signed up through the hotel and took a bus to the falls.  From there we were assigned a guide, and we started at the bottom of the falls and climbed them holding hands.  It’s about 800 vertical feet from the ocean to the top of the falls, and there are lots of lagoons and pools along the way.  It was a lot of fun!

Here we are on Day 3.  After our trip to the falls, we spent the afternoon on the beach or at the pool.  Then we got cleaned up for our last dinner.  We had reservations at the Jade Samurai and were excited about enjoying some Japanese food.

Bryan volunteered to catch some flying shrimp, and here he is about to have shrimp thrown right at him!

On Sunday morning, we woke up early to watch the sun rise.  There is is, coming up.  Ahhh, our last hours in Jamaica.  It was lovely…and I want to be there still!

Here’s the two of us as we’re waiting for the bus to pick us up.  Adios warm and sunny Jamaica!

If you’re like me (it took me a while to learn how to spell Jamaica), you don’t have a good sense for where Jamaica is.  Here’s a map to orient you (the “A” is pointing to Ochos Rios). Click on the map to see a larger version.

That’s our trip in a nutshell!  We got home late on Sunday night.  I’m so glad that Bryan and I got to get away together for a little escape.  <happy sigh>  It was lovely.