Happy Anniversary!

[Monty&Melo]

So we've been home for a week now, and it already seems like months. We are pretty much hooked on Jamaica and Negril and 10 days there goes by like 1 and 1 day at home feels like 10. Maybe someday we will flip the script. We had one of the best weeks of our lives celebrating our 25th anniversary with family and friends in our favorite place, arriving November 30 and leaving on the 8th of December.

So...as much fun as we had, I have to confess, this trip was a LOT of work. We had my two brothers, one of which was a Newbie to Negril and both brothers brought their significant others and they were both newbies. We also had two of our good friends with us, one of which was a newbie and one of which had been before and one of their significant others was a newbie. So in total we had 5 newbies with us and add to that the fact that one of the newbies (my sister-in-law) is extremely gluten free and we worried the whole time about her eating something that contained gluten in it or eating something that was cross contaminated with gluten. Needless to say, this trip was going to be interesting.

We took a crazy flight out of Louisville that left at 507am, made our normal plane change in Charlotte and were due to arrive in Mo Bay at 1035am. Wrong, we got in early and were in and out of the immigration and customs hall about the time we were supposed to arrive. A new record, 17 minutes from touchdown to first Red Stripe at the Grouper just outside the airport. Our driver soon arrived and we had about 2 hours to kill until the next group showed up and then another hour to kill until the next group showed up. It would be 6 hours in total from the time we arrived at the airport until the time we arrived in Negril, but our attitude is that the Negril vibe takes over the moment you walk out of that airport and smell the exhaust at the departure area. From that moment on, we are seriously relaxed, almost like you can feel it in your shoulders, the stress just leaving your body.

We jumped in the van and headed out to stock up on important provisions (beer, rum, rum cream, wata, etc) at the Mega Mart. Our first visit there, when it is just the two of us we normally just stock up once we get to Negril.

Here is the pic of our first beer, just outside the airport



And the picture of the Christmas Tree outside of the Mega Mart



More later...