February in Paradise

Here we are in paradise. There is no other way to really say that. We left Greensboro Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, and it was snowing. Now a little over 24 hrs later, after a good nights sleep, we’re sitting overlooking the blue-green, see the bottom Caribbean.

The story starts with us leaving home Tuesday afternoon to spend the night in Greensboro. We had an 06:00 flight out of GSO, and decided we would rather roll out of bed @ 04:00 with a short drive, than roll out of bed at 02:30 with an hour drive and uncertain weather. We booked a couple of rooms at the Red Roof Inn on old Regional Road, not too far from the airport. Jerry takes care of rating our hotel stays on Trip Advisor, but I’ll just say the Red Roof Inn was pretty much what we paid for, a cheap place to sleep prior to an early flight. Everything was OK with the exception of a little screw up that had Jerry and Brenda assigned to a room that hadn’t been cleaned yet. However that turned out ok as they got upgraded to the “King Suite” for their inconvenience. Prior to crashing at the RRI, we stopped for a bite to eat at FATZ Café that was just up the street from the motel.

This is a restaurant that appeared to be a chain, and based on the signage, not open more than a couple of weeks. It was obvious after we were there for a while that they were still undergoing some growing pains. Let’s just say the service was very friendly but somewhat ineffective. I got a little worried when I went to the restroom, and happened to look into the kitchen. (This particular door probably wasn’t supposed to be open) I saw 12 or 14 people in various uniforms standing in a mob gesturing vigorously. This didn’t bode well for the fate of our dinner, as I related to my companions upon returning to the table. But then maybe they were just having a pep rally to get the old team spirit going. In any event, our food started arriving, and the salads were definitely salads. Finally the main courses arrived and looked appetizing. Brenda and Jerry had ordered a Philly Steak Sandwich to split, and the kitchen crew graciously split the sandwich and the accompanying fries to two plates. Vickie had ordered a smothered chopped steak, and it looked good, but had an odd taste to the gravy. I tasted it and thought they perhaps used wine or vinegar to deglaze the pan albeit a little heavy handed. I had ordered a Thai Shrimp dish that was supposed to come over fried potato straws. It ended up coming over very tiny thin onion rings. The whole thing was dusted with wasabi sesame seeds, and looked pretty good. It tasted OK, but was way to salty, and the sauce was an unimpressive, probably bottled, oriental chili sauce type of “stuff”. On the whole we were unimpressed by the food and the prices were low to medium. After dinner it was back to the Red Roof, and watch a little tube to get sleepy early for an 0:400 wake up call.

As Robin Williams said in Good Morning Viet Nam “What does the O in O4:00 stand for?………….. OH MY GOD IT”S EARLY” The clock went off, the phone rang, and I was my usual disoriented self at 4 in the morning. In the ensuing years since my retirement, I have grown fond of the luxury of waking up naturally (as in when I’m damn good and ready). Forced rapid activity in the wee hours of the morning somehow seem non intuitive to my system these days. Here I’ll diverge for just a second and talk a little about the shower arrangements at the Red Roof Inn. The bathroom in the RRI was necessarily quite small. But the way it was set up the commode caught you right about in the shin if you opened the door and entered briskly. Then when I was taking a shower, they had this little package of shampoo that seemed cool, until you tried to open it. With wet soapy hands, it was impossible. So I even tried drying my hands and working on it, but the darn thing was still impenetrable. I finally resorted to biting it with my teeth and finally gave up when it dawned on me that a mouthful of shampoo was imminent. Someone else will get to fight with that little monster another time. Also a quick note about the RRI bed: although the mattress was quite comfortable, Vickie and I both learned the hard way not to sit down hard on it. Seems as though they have dispensed with the usual foundation unit and substituted a hard wooden board. This makes the bed quite tailbone jarring when you sit down briskly.

But we did what we had to do, were on our way, and had a quite pleasurable experience both at GSO and Atlanta on our way to St. Maarten. We had a nice layover in Atlanta, and used our AMEX Platinum Cards to take advantage of the Delta Crown Room. They had a nice spread of breakfast type munchies and the ever-present endless supply of adult beverages. We were soon in a much more tropical state of mind, and aboard the flight for St. Maarten. The plane was not slap full as we have been experiencing in recent travel and we had room to stretch out and enjoy the uneventful 4 hr flight.

Arriving in St. Maarten, you immediately knew coming up the jetway you were in the tropics. The heat and humidity were instant reminders. Immigration in St. Maarten was painless, and all of our luggage faithfully followed us. We had a reservation with Dollar Rent a Car, and a nice man led us out to where we would meet the shuttle to the car rental agency. Fun started here. The driver of the shuttle bus must have gone to the Cancun bus driver’s academy. For those of you that don’t remember that is where bus drivers go to learn the driving technique that involves wide open throttle followed by full braking then repeat, all done inches from the vehicle in front of you. This driver wasn’t a true believer however because one time he actually apologized for a particularly close call. Some of the others on the bus said no problem, It’s ok, doesn’t bother me. I took a different approach, I told him no problem man doesn’t bother me a bit----I’m blind. My fellow travelers began berating me heavily and told the driver I was not in fact blind. Well it broke the ice, and soon the driver felt confident enough to bypass the long line of standing traffic in the wrong lane playing chicken with an oncoming truck. He held out as long as he could stand it then ducked into a parking lot on the left to let the traffic clear long enough for another wrong lane dash down to the exit of the car rental place. He ducked in there, but had to once again stare down the oncoming traffic to back out to get to the entrance of the lot. After that, renting the car went fine with no great surprises. Our “Full Size Car” ended up being a Hundai Elantra, so we ended up with three bags in the trunk and one between the girls in the back seat. We had some general directions, and we sort of generally followed them, and actually found our place. On the way to get to it we drove through what appears to be a huge abandoned golf course condo development that is unbelievably seedy. (Read ready for the bulldozer) I have to find out about that and will relate it later.

Arriving at our lodging we were very impressed, the place was beautiful. The maid was still finishing up, so we dropped off our stuff, and headed down the street to an outside café we had seen for some adult beverages and tropical breezes. Turned out to be the Atlantis Casino, and the outdoor bar was called the Sugar Cane. We had some reasonably good tropical like drink thingies, with abominably slow service. While awaiting the glacial drink service, Vickie found a nice gentleman that gave us directions to the local grocery/liquor store. Just what we like, one stop shopping. After our refreshment, we headed off to the grocery to stock up for our four days in St. Maarten. We rounded up the necessities, and headed back to the Cliff. (That’s what our lodging is called The Cliff at Cupecoy) Now that we were really able to move in and check out the surroundings, we were really impressed. The place was very large with absolutely top-drawer furnishings. We have our own double balcony overlooking the pool, beach and Caribbean. From the living area and balcony you can hear the waves crashing against The Cliff. The whole combination is unbelievable. The resort has a Christian Dior Spa, indoor and outdoor pools, it’s own private beach, and exercise room with every machine known to man and a Concierge. Also most interesting is that the place is not even half full, maybe even less than that. There are hardly any cars in the parking lot, and we’ve seen few other folks. Like having our own private resort. We are certainly enjoying it, and spent the first day just enjoying the sun and being warm.

More later,

Wes and Vickie