Bahamas – Day 4. I don’t want to go home.

We told ourselves that we would get up really early and get to the pool really early so we could maximize the pool time before leaving.

Well, we didn’t set alarms and were quite surprised when we woke up to find that it was already 8:50 AM!  We threw open the blinds and found… sun! Blue skies!  It was a beautiful day!

Tzvi threw on clothes and was out by 9:00.  He went straight to the pool and got us seats.  Actually, our seats were already waiting.  On one side of the lagoon pool there are about ten lounge beds that are sort of separated from the other seating; you have to walk around the pool and go over a little bridge to get there.  We had assumed they were really expensive to book for the day, but when we asked on Saturday how much they were, the attendant told us they were free, just first come first serve, but that she could hold one for us on Sunday if we wanted.  Yes please!

So Tzvi got there at 9:00 and found our bed reading and waiting with the beautiful sun beating down on it.  I got dressed quickly and made it there a few minutes later.  It was such a nice morning.  It was so hot and sunny and even the water was warmer.  We swam a lot and tried out swimming in the quiet pool as well.  We ordered iced coffees and a bowl of fruit with chili spice that was just delicious.  We laid in the sun and enjoyed the last few hours of vacation.

There’s very little to write about, but here are lots of pictures of us enjoying the end of vacation:

the hot tub

Around 11:30 we ordered lunch.  Tzvi had fish tacos and I had corn croquettes.  We also had our fourth local crushed avocado of the trip and we shared a Bahama Mama.  It was all delicious.  After lunch we took one last dip in the pool and then at 12:20 went back to the room. 

We quickly changed, finished packing up, had our bags taken down, and said goodbye to the room.  We timed it all to a tee. The Bahamas government recommends you arrive at the airport three hours before your flight.  That was crazy and our hotel said two hours was fine.  So we got in a cab (a real one this time) at 12:49 and got to the airport at 1:03.  Our flight was at 3:00.

 Before going on, here are a few parting shots of the hotel. I don’t think we’ve posted these before, but just so you can get a sense of how beautiful this place is:

our room

the lobby

the library

the manor bar

We checked in at the airport, dropped our bags (no line for bag drop), then went through security (short line).  So far so good, but we figured passports would be the hold up.  Except a magical thing happened when we got through security.  We saw a sign for Global Entry!  That’s right – passport control is actually U.S. passport control (since come back into a domestic terminal in the U.S., you go through U.S. passport control here).  We went right up to the kiosk, got a ticket, went straight to passport control, got stamped, and we were done.  And it was only 1:25!  Tzvi started to get all upset that we could’ve spent at least another half hour at the pool.  He was right, but I told him to try to look on the bright side, that at least we didn’t have a long wait.

Once you go through passport control I think you’re technically back in the U.S. because there’s a sign that says “Welcome to the United States” and they only charge $3.25 for a coffee at Starbucks.

We were supposed to board at 2:25, but that didn’t happen. At about 2:45 they basically made an announcement saying that they needed two people in aisle seats in rows 1-5 (which are the extra-legroom seats) to give up their seats. They said they would credit them back the $50 they spent on the Even More Space seat and then give them $100 JetBlue credit. They would be moved to a window and middle seat. I don’t even understand how that is an incentive. It was truly awful and they basically said that if no one volunteers we would sit here and wait.  I don’t even know how they are allowed to do that. We should really write to Jetblue. Everyone on the flight was so angry and things were getting tense.  Finally two people volunteered and they started boarding, but people were getting so nuts that the gate agent just stopped everything and started yelling for everyone to back up and said they were stopping boarding until people could calm down.  At that point Tzvi had made it through but I hadn’t.  It felt very much like a WWII movie where a family gets separated crossing the border while trying to flee, except then they started boarding and I got on the plane.

Once we were finally seated and they closed the doors, they announced that we would be waiting even longer for extra scanning of cargo bags. I don’t even understand what that means. If there were cargo bags why don’t they scan them before they have a planeload of people? It was so frustrating and we took off an hour late. We only landed a half hour late, but we could have been so early. At least the rest of the flight was good, but what a difference from our flight to Nassau.  Everyone was so happy and excited on that flight.  All I have now is a distant memory of landing in sunny Nassau and seeing people strip off their sweaters.  Now passengers, still grumpy from the delays and airport Nazism, did the reverse as we landed in freezing New York.

Anyway, we got off the plane, got our bags fairly quickly and headed home.

It was a great vacation. As always, it was too short, but we’re so lucky we got to have this quick trip away.  All of our fears of poor service were for nothing because the hotel was amazing and the service was top notch.  Also, Tzvi didn’t go into anaphylactic shock at all, so the epi pen wasn’t needed, and that was a very good thing.