Some thoughts and pictures from our trip...

We just returned from another wonderful week in Negril. From the time the plane touched down until we were greeting our driver was 25 minutes. I've never seen anything like it - apparently arriving in the morning is much better! We tried a lot of new places and really enjoyed ourselves. I won't bore you with the details, but will provide some pictures.

We stayed at Rooms this trip, and loved the location on the beach. They lost our reservation, so we didn't get a great 1st impression. If it weren't for that though I probably would consider staying there again.

View from our first room...
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View from our oceanfront room...
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Arrival day was a blur, so sorry, no pictures were taken.

Sunday consisted of a whole lot of nothing, we did go to Ivan's for dinner which was great as always, but I didn't take a single picture...

Monday we tried Cafe Goa for breakfast and enjoyed it. Wanted to go for the Sunday Brunch party, but we were up too early that first morning to wait that long for breakfast... I love how it's so well camouflaged by the trees and bushes :)
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After breakfast we cut through YellowBird to get to the beach. Of course that meant we had to stop for a dirty banana! Can't beat the 2 for $400 JA
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1st time I've seen this on the beach. They did stop and speak to a couple of guys with horses, but nothing was done...
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We had dinner that night at Alfred's - 1st time there. Had the fish and chips, really enjoyed the fish. After Alfred's we went back to Yellow Bird for a dinner dessert Dirty Banana. I think they do make the best one on the beach!

More later...

Great pics! Sound like I need to head over to yellow bird in a few weeks :)

Wondering if you noticed a taste difference between the imported and brewed on the rock stripes?

I saw the police jeep as well. Am hoping they calm those riders of horse down!

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Originally Posted by STRIPER

Wondering if you noticed a taste difference between the imported and brewed on the rock stripes?

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No taste difference that I could see, but I'm not a Red Stripe afficianado by any means. The "imported" ones are brewed in JA but are meant to be exported. The ones we saw were destined for Brazil and Canada (actually noticed the french on the bottle before i saw the big "Imported") My guess is they fell behind on the ones bottled for JA and kept some of the others for local use. Wondering if this happens every busy season?

Nice pics

I always stay at Hidden Paradise, so you must be following my foot prints from Café Goa to Yellow Bird then to Alfred's. LOL. In the picture from Yellow Bird you can see the license plate I brought from Nebraska this past year. It was cool to find out the owner of Yellow Bird is from Lincoln, NE. Can't wait until next February 2015 to see all my friends again.

2nuts,thanks for the reply,that does make sense now,for a moment I thought they were importing some stripes and as all we can get in the states now are brewed in Latrobe I was thinking a might have to start a riot or something haha,looking forward to some real stripes end of May,soon come!

2Nutz ~ great pictures! That is the exact same thing we encountered and heard about the "Imported" Red Stripe bottles.

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Originally Posted by smokehouse

I always stay at Hidden Paradise, so you must be following my foot prints from Café Goa to Yellow Bird then to Alfred's. LOL. In the picture from Yellow Bird you can see the license plate I brought from Nebraska this past year. It was cool to find out the owner of Yellow Bird is from Lincoln, NE. Can't wait until next February 2015 to see all my friends again.

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That makes sense - they had a LOT of Nebraska stuff hanging :) I love that little bar - it's a great spot!

More please

I love the beach in the early morning...

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We walked up the beach to Coco to say hi to some friends and have some breakfast. This was taken at Firefly, hard at work expanding the bar. Looks good :)

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One of the few sunsets this trip...

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Dinner at Jah B's and a Red Stripe destined for Canada...

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by smokehouse

i always stay at hidden paradise, so you must be following my foot prints from café goa to yellow bird then to alfred's. Lol. In the picture from yellow bird you can see the license plate i brought from nebraska this past year. It was cool to find out the owner of yellow bird is from lincoln, ne. Can't wait until next february 2015 to see all my friends again.

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gbr!

Thanks for the pics! Great as always!

They are a huge help in grinding out these last few days till we get there.

Nice pics...we were neighbors. I was there with my oldest daughter. You prob. saw me limping around lol. I kept up pretty well though. through all the walking and tours we did.

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Originally Posted by BIG SHINY n Mango

Thanks for the pics! Great as always!

They are a huge help in grinding out these last few days till we get there.

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Thanks! Anything I can do to help :)

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Originally Posted by Guy Raudenbush

Nice pics...we were neighbors. I was there with my oldest daughter. You prob. saw me limping around lol. I kept up pretty well though. through all the walking and tours we did.

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Apparently we sat right beside you on the beach most days - the pic you posted of your daughter - the guy in the corner in the red shorts was my husband :)

Alright, so on to Wednesday. Another beautiful morning in Negril. We needed to get some breakfast, cash and more "groceries" so we decided to start by walking up the beach to Coconuts Int'l.

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The food was great (we both had the lobster omelette and some hash browns) but it did take a while. No worries though, we enjoyed the nice weather and the beach. After breakfast we cut through the empty lot next door to the road and hit the ATM at Time Square. Checked out the bakery while we were there and picked up 2 of the infamous gizzadas. Saved them for later (still full from breakfast) but they definitely lived up to the hype. Popped into Shamrock for our "groceries" and daily bottle of OJ. I'm not sure if it's better than the juice vendors on the beach, but it was good. We cut through back to the beach at Alfred's and saw these flowers...

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Back to Rooms for mimosas and to rest up for the bar crawl that afternoon...

FYI......the flowers are called Lobster Claws

Please keep up the great work and pictures,we need our fix!Thanks for sharing!

Great pics!

Heliconia flower. Love those

Next up was the bar crawl. We've done it every trip since December 2012, so this was our 5th. Lenbert pulled up with a VERY full bus, but the 8 of us from Rooms managed to squeeze on :). Lenbert had promised us at least 2 new stops, in fact we got 3.

The first stop was Grace's house, always a pleasure. The 2nd stop was a surprise. New to the crawl but not new to us, I'm sure you'll recognize this place...

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Next up was the Sky Bar, this picture was taken from the bar

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Next stop was Home Sweet Home. Our first time there and it was lovely, they have a nice bar and it's a really nice spot. And of course, several people just had to jump :)

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Xtabi was next and more jumping. We got ourselves a drink and took the time to tour the property and chat with the gardener.

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By now the bus was rocking, Lenbert loves his old disco tunes, and it gets everyone singing and dancing in the aisles. Our next stop was Just Natural, our first time there. What an interesting place!

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Last stop was Sir D's, sadly not much of a sunset that night. We went over to the lookout and chatted with a very interesting Rasta. I only wished we'd had more time to speak with him longer.

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More tunes and dancing on the way back down the Cliff Road. Another great bar crawl thanks to Lenbert :)

Thanks!

So I thought someone would comment on the sunglasses on the statue at Xtabi, don't remember them being there before LOL

We woke up Thursday morning to very angry seas...

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We decided to try Alfred's for breakfast this morning, it was good, but a little greasy. Mr. Nutz loved their coffee and there is something to be said for this view :)

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After breakfast we needed to get some OJ, so off to YellowBird for "dessert" and a bottle of juice.

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Back to Rooms to enjoy our orange juice. If only every day could start like this :)

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One of the few sunsets that week. This was taken from a 2nd floor OceanFront room (2603) at Rooms. Nice view...

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For dinner we went to the Italian Cafe. Several other folks we met that week spoke very highly of it and they weren't wrong. Even with their recommendations it was still a pleasant surprise. We had a caprese salad to start and a lobster pizza (sorry I rarely think to take pictures of food), very good and a really nice atmosphere. We will definitely go there again :)

This is the outside courtyard area which I already posted in another thread...

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This is the inside of the restaurant...

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Love it. , thanks for sharing.

Great photos!

Thanks :) I have one more day to share, maybe tonight I'll get it done...

Alright, time to finish this up :) Friday was our last day, and we had to make the best of it. Breakfast at Alfred's again, followed by the customary mimosas. Lunch was a patty from Niah's, soooo good. We shared one, which Tony was kind enough to cut in half for us while we enjoyed a drink at the bar...

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Being Friday, we had a choice of either Drifters or the Boat Bar. Our friends really love the Boat Bar, so off we went. It was our first time there on a Friday afternoon and we really enjoyed it. How any of those guys could play, much less stand, is beyond me. It was a lot of fun watching them and listening to the music as they switched in and out. Here are a few pictures from the afternoon.

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After the boat bar we walked up to Idle Awhile for dinner, we'd had a nice meal there before. After an agonizing wait, we finally got our food, which was edible but nothing special. By now it was raining and the 4 us had no shoes (you think we'd know better at our age!) so we grabbed a taxi back to Rooms. Getting out of the taxi we were commenting on how poorly lit Rooms was at night; in fact the power was out. I can live with that, but no ice? EEEEK

I'll leave you with a few random pictures and the hope that we'll all be back soon...

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thanks for the t.r. and pics, soon come