Wednesday was a very fun day, we saw our friends at breakfast (the first time all week they got up in time for breakfast, which is served until 11am) and then they saved us a spot at the pool. Having friends on a resort is hilarious. Those of you who are fans of the TV show Friends, might remember Monica and Chandler’s honeymoon and the friends they met who then pretended to be too busy to be their friends once they’d gotten back home. Luckily, Brian and Chelsea are also fans of the show so we brought up tidbits of that episode all week. It’s really a hilarious dynamic. You want to be their friend but you don’t want to be pushy or appear needy. Pretty much you are trying desperately to act cool when you know you aren’t. When we saw they’d saved us chairs AND gotten towels for us I knew we were in!
They are from Raleigh and Brian went to N. C. State so we chatted about that a lot. They had just gotten married the Saturday before so she and I talked about the wedding a lot as well. I told them they were crazy for getting up the next morning to board a flight, but what can ya do? We spent the entire day at the pool, eating lunch, and then back to the pool. I knew I was getting sunburned but we were just having too much fun! This is the day Sandals Boy (I’ll explain in a minute) and Brian became pretty much addicted to the drink, Cool Runnings. They had multiple. As did I. Chelsea stuck with the “Dirty Banana” which they introduced me to. It’s basically a banana milkshake. With Rum. We were sure it was like 1000 calories each but we were also sure we didn’t care. Basically the day went like this: The girls hang out at the side of the pool with feet over the side (the water in the pool was FREEZING but the sun was super hot so it was a constant battle to get comfortable) while the boys stand around in the water and make frequent trips to the bar. So frequent that the bartender started calling Brian by name (and by name I mean he called him “Billy”) and gave them a hard time about several things: the two of them perhaps being “together” and he asked “Billy” to give the blender a break from all those Dirty Bananas. He, of course, threw Chelsea under the bus but James (the bartender, duh!) asked why, if they were all for her, Billy kept drinking from them. Pretty hilarious.
Here we are earlier in the day, not sunburned yet, not too intoxicated either. But cute, if you ask me. Oh, you didn’t? Darn!
Now to explain Sandals Boy. We attended orientation the first morning we were there to try to get a lay of the land. (Our friends were there too. We actually met them on the “fun” van ride into the resort as they were on our flight as well.) At this time it was explained that if you engage in the activities on the resort you receive points. Once you receive a certain number of points you get a pair of “beaded mini sandals”. We heard this often. On Wednesday Sandals Boy decided that he wanted those sandals. I cannot over emphasize how much he wanted these sandals. It was all he talked about for basically three days. I told him it was going to be tough because we had signed up for an all day excursion on Thursday so we wouldn’t get ANY points Thursday and at this point we only had 10 each from Orientation. He was determined. And our friends joined in on the obsession which just fueled his fire. At 4:30pm there was a pool volleyball game that would be our first points activity. By this time we’d spent at least 5 hours in the sun drinking. So you can imagine how pumped we were for this volleyball game. You’d think our lives depended on it or something. We headed over and got warmed up. I was…nervous to say the least. I hate volleyball, I’m terrible at volleyball and in the water I’m much less agile than on land. (HAHAHAHA, god that was funny). Our team was us, our friends, and a random older (50ish?) woman. The other team was 3 guys (one of which was married to our teammate) and 2 girls, most of them a bit older than us. Pretty simple rules: 3 games, rally scoring, girls can serve twice if they don’t get the ball over the first time, no spiking on the girls unless it’s your wife.
The first game we won and we quickly realized our “ace” was the older woman, she could really serve! I also got better as the game went on and even made a couple nice plays. Let’s be honest though, the boys really carried this team. We were at a disadvantage, as the other team had 3 boys and we only had two, but I’m not one to make excuses. Especially when it comes to competition. The game was intense and all out hilarious. Any time a girl needed a second serve everyone yelled “booby rule!” (you try keeping a straight face after 5 hours of drinking rum) and at one point we scored a point and a guy on the other team yelled out, “I didn’t hear the whistle!” Our “playmaker” (the guys in charge of these activities) looked at him and said, “I don’t have a whistle”. Hilarious. We won all 3 games, if memory serves me correctly (and I’m sure it does) so we received extra points for winning. Sandals Boy is doing the math and checking out the activity board to see if it’s possible to get his sandals! At that point our friends went upstairs to take a nap before dinner. We both had reservations at Kimono, the Japanese Steakhouse, that night, them at 8:30pm, us at 9pm (“We’re you, but 5 minutes later!” – Friends episode I mentioned earlier).
After the game (which made us all a little hyper) I went to collect our things from our pool chairs. When I turned back around I’d lost Sandals Boy. I found him, chatting it up with some other “friends” of ours we’d met at dinner Monday night. This older (50 or 60ish) couple from Toronto (Vancouver? Does it matter?) and Sandals Boy were having an intense convo about something, I think it might have been football? The woman (I can’t remember their names to save my life) asked if I wanted to sit down but I was trying to move my husband along so I could get a nap! Finally he got up and I convinced him to come down to the beach to take some pictures. We’d planned on visiting one of the other Sandals resorts that day to see if their beach was better but our volleyball game got in the way of that trip! Here’s a photo we took with the underwater camera. Quality: not so good, hair and drunken smiles: awesome!
As we were standing there I lost a flip flop in the waves (I’m telling you, these waves were HUGE). I started to search for it but immediately realized, it was gone. The tide was too strong, give it up. What’s a $3 Old Navy flip flop worth anyway? (3 dollars, duh!) But no, not my husband. He was determined! He saw my flip flop a couple yards down the beach and he went after it like I’ve never seen him before. He dove into the water and snatched it! Here he is in hot pursuit:
I was about to pee my pants I was laughing so hard and he turned around, flip flop in hand with the proudest smile on his face. Hilarious!
We went back to the room, took a shower, took a nap, loaded up on aloe and watched some tv. Seriously, dinner at 9pm? That’s brutal. Finally it was time to go so we got dressed up and headed out. This time it was acceptable to take a shuttle (although still very walkable) so we did. We arrived and found out we were the last couple of the night. Everyone else was in groups of ten but we had our own private room. Cute. Dinner went quick. But awkward. I didn’t take any photos of the chef because it was so awkward with only the three of us in the room. Sandals Boy even tried the Mahi-Mahi which is a huge deal. I was very proud. It was a great dinner, horrible dessert (do you see a theme?) and then off we went. Here we are at dinner:
You can obviously see my husband’s sunburned face but I don’t look too bad. Until you check out my shoulder. Ouch! Because we were facing the boys, my chest, shoulders, and arms were in constant contact with the sun, while the boys got most of the abuse to their backs.
We walked back to the Piano Bar to meet up with our friends. We had a couple drinks with them, one in which the bartender literally poured Sandals Boy’s Bourbon into the drink and splashed it with coke. It was supposed to be funny…which it was, but then he just handed it over and that was his drink. We left after a short time because we were exhausted by such a long day and knew we had to get up at 7:30am (ouch) to make our bus for the excursion the next day. I basically didn’t sleep that night because I couldn’t breathe. I finally bought some sinus medicine that morning but it wasn’t helping much.
Here’s one last photo of the restaurant.
I was trying to show that it is located on a cliff over the ocean which is really cool. You can also see that it’s raining…shocker.
Fake Trophy Wife 