After Kingston yesterday, I was not surprised that I slept in this morning, and Sharon was likewise inclined to have a very low key day today. So it was well after 9am when we made our way to the Regency for breakfast, and we took our time sitting on the deck and watching the little bit of boat traffic and the sea birds fishing in the bay. Light tropical breeze… so harsh. We took advantage for a little while by sharing a double outdoor hammock.
We didn’t make it through In a Lonely Place last night – actually only about half an hour – so we sat on our room’s patio with a laptop and watched the rest of it. Then we wandered back into the main resort and found the games and entertainment room and borrowed a backgammon set. I got a “Monkey’s Fiddle” from the swim up bar and we found a table in the shade and proceeded to finish off our morning with a lesson (I’d forgotten how to play) and three games, only one of which I was allowed to win 🙂
Drifting into the afternoon we headed back to the Regency for a light lunch – actually somewhat challenging as the buffet options regularly include entré options like grilled fish, ribs, cooked potatoes, hot veggies, etc. The trick to not feeling bloated like a stereotypical tourist seems to be to take what you like in small portions.
The afternoon was a total retreat: the Royal Caribbean resort boasts six pools in the main resort area (apparently there’s another on the island) including one within steps of the room we’re in, It’s smaller than the main swim up bar pool and surrounded by about twenty pool chairs, but there have never been more than five or six other people here at a given time. We found a couple of chairs with an umbrella, piled up our stack of books, magazines, digital material, and just baked away the afternoon, pausing occasionally to slip through the pool or float on it’s surface. We did this for several hours! Eventually we took a bit of a break from the sun and went back to our room to rinse off the chlorine and enjoy some air conditioning and a brief nap.
We changed for dinner and then wandered over to the big restaurant bulletin board to see what was on for dinner this evening – no contest: tonight was a Caribbean Night beach party. The beach was set up with multiple serving tables offering a wide variety of Caribbean dishes from ackee and saltfish to curried goat and jerk everything. Dessert options were similarly varied and decadent. Seating was in groups around large circular tables and we ended up with a group of people who were associated with an east coast company – or related to those people. They’d been at this resort for about a week and were letting it rip for their last night here.
Entertainment at dinner and afterwards was MC’d by a DJ who was pretty committed to getting the audience to participate, and despite (in our opinion) his aggressive style (and volume) he was largely successful. A large part of his appeal was clearly his ability to showcase couples who were here to get married and/or honeymoon, and were keen to celebrate this – as a result many people were inadvertently impromptu singers, dancers and performers in small competitions with each other while island dancers encouraged from the sidelines.
Eventually, as the crowd became rowdier and the DJ became more and more distorted, Sharon and I decided to return to our room and watch the next in our film noir series – tonight we saw Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce.