Jamaica, beautiful every day of 10.

I have already written some words about Jamaica but those were for the time when Jill and I went "off the reserve" as a friend here in Canada said. This blog entry is purely for our time at the resort - in other words, bliss.

Jill watches Paige in the main pool.

Ten days of wind down after 6 weeks or more of constant travelling and change was exactly what all of us needed. The girls spent much of their time in the swimming pool, Ash spent his in front of the computers and mum and dad spent theirs doing as little as possible. This was helped by having a nanny - Tina.

Tina with kids at FDR resort

Tina was our saviour when it came to occupying Paige during the day. They became good friends and spent much of their days in the pool or doing the things that Paige wanted.The resort is touted as a family site and it really is designed for the relaxation of ALL in a family. The facilities are older than others, but that fact actually adds to the appeal I thought.  Jill and I wandered into the next door Breezes resort that does not allow children and there was a feeling of sterility, somewhere you only go to party but not feel at home.  The resort offered a range of activities, such as tennis with a coach - something that Jill took 'advantage' of.
Eating and drinking was a favourite pastime for the Jenkinson family too. The kids enjoyed special cocktails such as the chilly willy while mum and dad enjoyed any cocktail that they could find on the internet and had heard of in the past - which did not amount to much.
We sorted our meal times after a couple of days, with the kids eating early from their own menu and restaurant. Later, as the kids played in the kids club or watched TV in our villa.

Dinner at the veranda restaurant

Our villa was a two story affair with two bedrooms upstairs and a day bed downstairs in a lounge room-kitchen area. Ash slept on the bed downstairs and the girls shared a room upstairs. The downstairs area had a small balcony that looked over a tropical garden and out to the sea.

Balcony view



 We really didn't need a kitchen as we could get food at any time from the snack bar and meals always seemed to be so big that wanting extra food was not usually an option. However Ash did enjoy dropping by the snack bar for an ice cream or THREE most days, helped along with a plate of chips every now and then. When he found that we had cable TV in our villa he declared that he was "in heaven."

I agreed with him for different reasons, leisurely mornings followed by even more leisurely afternoons and absolutely NOTHING that HAD to be done meant Jill and I could truly unwind. Wireless internet from the villa helped me to relax by updating the blog and tidying up the records of our travels.

Beach front feast being prepared for dinner one night


The employees at the resort never stopped working. A simple sounding statement, but they were constantly engaged in maintaining the resort in seemingly "busy work"activities. I felt as though they had to be seen to be busy by the guests just to justify being there, and perhaps that was the case because I don't think that labour relations are high on the priority list for these places.

Apart from the trip that Jill and I took to the nearest big town for tourists, Ash and Megan joined us on a trip to the Dunn River Falls - Paige being too young stayed at the resort with Tina. That is another blog entry, along with the whole families trip to the green Grotto Caves.



Jamaican sunset



Towards the end of our stay, we got to see a beautiful tropical sunset which helped to top off a great stay. The picture here shows the steps to the water slide. Paige eventually gathered the courage (with much of mum's encouragement) to go down this slide and then couldn't get enough of it. A pity that was the second to last day. Tina wouldn't do it as she cannot swim and according to her, most Jamaicans can't swim! A strange idea for a small island nation surrounded by tropical waters - next they'll be claiming to have entered the winter Olympics with a bob-sled team!!

Washington? Capital idea old chap!

After New York, Washington was a refreshing change for a range of reasons. Number one was that it was easier to drive to and from the places that we wanted to visit and we could even get a park within walking distance of the major sites.
Our accommodation was definitely a change too, but not refreshingly so. After 4 days or so in a air conditioned hotel room in New Jersey, we were hit with high humidity and higher temperatures in the tent trailer. With no wind during the evenings, it was a sticky couple of days.

Some of our neighbours in the Greenway.

The campsite itself was interesting too and kind of fits with the culture of Washington - accessible to everyone. Nestled amongst suburbs close to the heart of Washington is a park known as the Greenway where anyone can camp for $16 per night (no power or water). This is quite a change as far as North American campsites go and certainly an oddity to be so close to a city.

Paige, Ash, Megan at The Lincoln Memorial

Jill and Ash at the Washington Tower

The reason that it seems to fit with the Washington culture is that when we drove in to park, we found FREE parking and admission to the Smithsonian museums was also FREE! We visited Lincoln's Memorial for ....FREE and wondered at the Washington Tower and what it must look like from the top. We could have found out too if we had arrived early enough as it was FREE to enter for the first 1000 visitors to get there. So much free entertainment was beginning to make me giddy with excitement after our pockets had been vacuumed clean in the money hungry 'Big Apple' just north.

Paige flys a plane at the Smithsonian.

Strike a pose!

We had a cunning plan for our brief stay in Washington and set about putting it into action soon after arriving - we were going to get the trailer fixed while we holidayed in Jamaica. How clever we thought, there won't be any pressure for the repairers as we could leave it for 10 or even 11 whole days to get it fixed. What we hadn't reckoned on was the sheer volume of work the repair places were doing at this time of year. After talking with a workshop boss and explaining our situation, I expected him to say, "Sure that will work well, you can collect it when you get back." He obviously didn't read the script in my head, because instead he said, "Too busy - can't fit you in for another month at least." Helpfully he offered another workshops number to call, which we did there and then, only to find that THEIR workload meant a 6 week waiting period for repairs!!

As if...

Out the front  of the Lincoln Memorial.

With despair settling in, we were rescued by one of the workshop repair guys who quietly introduced us to our saviour and said ignore the boss, he wouldn't know, besides we were "in transit" and that meant we had priority needs. What a great guy. So leaving the trailer, we headed off to a hotel for our last night in Washington before Jamaica. Dad assured everyone that the swimming pool would be a great way to pass the afternoon - except that he got the wrong hotel - there was no pool at this one. Bugger. Luckily the rooms were so fancy (apparently $400 each per night full rate) that the kids didn't mind a lack of swimming pool. Phew.

The car had to be left at another parking lot which had been booked online the week before. There were a couple of small problems with it though; firstly it wasn't actually at the address the GPS showed which led to some soul and car park searching. Eventually when I did find it, I couldn't get in because I need a token from the hotel which I couldn't get until I showed my printed booking - problem #2. I didn't have a PRINTED booking, just the original version on my laptop. Luckily the gay concierge was more accepting of an electronic copy than the not gay concierge was and I got my token. The taxi ride back to my hotel made it embarrassingly obvious how easy it was to drive from one to the other if you knew where to go.



Crowne Plaza room ($400 p.night!?)



For dinner that night it was Thai food at a nearby restaurant. BIG servings meant much leftover food.

The next day the hotel shuttle made life easy for the airport run.

We stayed one more night at a different hotel in Washington, not so upmarket, and again NOT GPS friendly. The first attempt took us nearly back to where we started from after driving within spitting distance of the hotel. The second attempt was only saved from the same fate by some irregular driving and calls of, "Sorry we're from Ontario!" in Australian accents.

Now, 11 days after dropping our trailer at the repair workshop and having tried three times to contact them over the past week to ask how we could get our trailer from their closed business on a Saturday, we decided to just drive over a chance it. Sure enough the place was closed - nobody to be seen. But our trailer was sitting where we had left it with a number on it. Great - fixed! So we hooked up and drove off, to another state. And remember the part about Washington's culture - the repairs were FREE!

Don't feed the squirrels