Day 5 – Thursday August 6, 2015. dark and stormy.

We woke up this morning around 10 am, got dressed and headed out of the room.

Again, I went to the gym and Tzvi went to the pool.  After about a half hour, we met at Windows on the Sound for breakfast.  I ordered two eggs and coffee, and Tzvi ordered coffee and the fruit/cottage cheese plate. My eggs came with potatoes and toast, which was a nice surprise because they still charged me the lower price.  Right after he ordered Tzvi realized that the fruit/cottage cheese plate + coffee = the same price as the continental breakfast buffet (everything on the buffet except for the hot food) and that they have fruit and cottage cheese on that buffet.  So Tzvi switched to that and ate a lot of pastry and fruit and cheese.  Also, they had whole avocados, so Tzvi got one of those too.  I ended up eating a lot of his fruit and pastries, so that really worked out.

After breakfast we got changed and headed down to the beach.  It wasn’t such a nice day, a little cloudy and gloomy.  We were under an umbrella, but there really wasn’t any sun.

After a little while the rest of the family joined us and sat next to us.  Around 3, me and Tzvi and my parents walked next door to Horseshoe Bay, where we met Deborah and Alan Heller (from Beth Sholom) who are on a cruise and were at the beach for the day.  We said hello and mama and pop pop sat down to talk with them.  Tzvi and I went in the water at Horseshoe Bay and it was really nice.  The whole beach was full of people with Norwegian and Celebrity cruise ship towels and you could tell they were cruise ship passengers.  The water was nice there, a little different from our beach and maybe even a little warmer, even though it was literally right next door. The sand was also pinker. We’ve been there a few times before and it never fails to disappoint.

After a while we walked back to the beach and left my parents there with the Hellers.  When we got back to our beach we swam a little more in the ocean but it was a little colder and the weather was turning even gloomier, so we ended up packing up and going back to the hotel with the boys.  We went directly to the pool, took seats, and Tzvi and I ordered hummus with pita and vegetables and chips and guac.  Eventually my parents came up too.  The weather was better by the pool, warmer and no wind.

Tzvi swam in the pool and the hot tub, while I ordered a nutella milkshake. It wasn’t so nutella-y but it was very good.

Around 5 pm we left the pool and went back upstairs, where we showered and dressed for dinner, while watching the first part of the republican debate. First impressions: Carly Fiorina.

We left for dinner around 745.  We had to walk all the way over to the golf course.  On the way, we passed several lizards, a sleeping cat, a rooster and some chickens.

Dinner was at Bacci, the Italian restaurant overlooking the golf course.  My parents had a 730 reservation and were seated several tables away.  (Tonight was the separate dining night.)  We started by ordering cocktails.  I got something fruity with grenadine and ginger beer, and Tzvi got something with gin, which was insanely strong and basically got him drunk.  To start, the waitress asked us if we wanted the house bread or the garlic bread.  We didn’t want to pay extra for the garlic bread, so we said the house bread was fine.  It turns out mama and pop pop got the garlic bread and said it was really good.  We said oh well, aw shucks, but they were very nice and told the waitress to send over an order of garlic bread to our table (thanks mom and dad! It was delicious). 

To start, I had the minestrone soup and Tzvi had the melanzane, which was basically a small plate of eggplant parmesan.  For our mains, I had fettucini with tomato sauce and Tzvi had ravioli with Bermuda corn, asparagus and brown butter sauce.  All was delicious.  There wasn’t much for dessert (everything had amaretto or wine) so we decided to get the check and head back to the hotel.

We got into bed, put on the debate and ordered room service for dessert.  We got a cappuccino, a bowl of strawberries with whipped cream, and a really interesting apple pie which was like its own mini pie (with vanilla ice cream of course).

Now we’re watching the debate.