We were privileged to have been part of your wedding vow renewals yesterday & enjoyed a beautiful evening with your family & friends...25 years...Congratulations!!
Monty & Melo
Also, so happy to spend some time at Red Dragon with you today...25 years today - your first time in Jamaica!!
Last edited by Bnewb; 12-05-2018 at 10:36 AM.
Mazel Tov !!!
Linston's Zion Hill Taxi
Captain Dave
Look like you two must’ve been married in Junior high. Congratulations!
We will post more pictures and details of our fabulous week here in Negril when we return to the states this weekend. Thanks for all that shared in our special day, including Rob (the Master of Ceremonies) and Lisa (the Master Videographer).
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...
Mega Mart was awesome. Here is a picture of our receipt. If you do the math, with the GCT (No GCT on the bottle deposit of JMD$10 per bottle), Red Stripe came out to $27.52 per case using JMD$120 as the exchange rate. That's a little over a buck a beer. Well worth the price. And remember to buy your drinks (Ting and Sprite) and Rum (if you need that much) in quantities of 3 or 6 to get the 5% or 10 discount.
After loading everything up in the van we headed down to the hip-strip in MoBay to buy "bridesmaids" and "groomsmen" gifts for our friends who were joining us on the trip to celebrate our vow renewal. They really weren't playing the part of bridesmaids and groomsmen, but we are sort of nerdy like that and wanted to get them a little something to show our appreciation for them traveling to Jamaica to join us. The girls got Christmas Ornaments and the guys got Shot Glasses.
After the short shopping trip we headed back to the airport to pick up my brother and his girlfriend, my brother had been with us twice before, but his girlfriend was one of the newbies. They landed about 1pm and exited the airport about 145pm, we could tell though that the airport was getting much busier and worried about the next group of 4 (including another newbie) who were landing about the time my brother exited. Sure enough, at almost 3pm we spotted the 4 of them. Once we loaded up everything we were off to Negril.
We've made the trip from MoBay to Negril probably 25 times, but this one would prove to be the longest, about 2 1/2 hours, it took almost 45 minutes to get out of Montego Bay. The newbie from the last pickup gets car sick and she literally looked out the window and pretty much didn't talk to anyone the whole time on the way over. Needless to say, we were even more nervous about managing this group of people for the next 9 days. And my Gluten-Free sister-in-law was not even on the Island yet, we had to return to the airport tomorrow to pick her and my brother up. It was close to the point where we were wondering if we might have overdone it, trying to manage 10 of us on this trip. Time would tell.
To make matters even worse, by the time we got to Negril it was pouring rain. The good news (which we obviously didn't know this at the time) was that this would essentially be the only rain we had the whole week. We wouldn't see rain again until the next Friday, the night before we left and that was just a little shower. The weather the entire week was awesome, but more on that later.
We unpacked (quickly) and headed down to the west end for our traditional first night dinner, Chicken Lavish. I got my Conch Soup and Curry Goat fix on, while most everyone else had the fried chicken, the newbies said it was the best fried chicken they have ever had.
Back to the hotel to hang out with Delroy at the Rondel bar for a few minutes and then off to bed. The week was just getting started and we had been up since 230am and wanted to get a good nights sleep so we could hit the beach running tomorrow. Tomorrow's adventures would include going back to the airport for the very last pickup, happy hour at Canoe (lot's of Rum Punch lovers in the group), and dinner the with "man" Quality.
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