New Friends

Saturday, 19 July 2008

This morning we picked up a couple that I met on the flight from Kingston, Jamaica. They’re staying at an all-inclusive resort called La Luna. We’ve never been there, so this gave us an opportunity to check it out. Dave & Amanda Vice are from the Atlanta area and this is their first trip to Grenada… celebrating their 10^th anniversary. We took them downtown to the spice market & the (very small) mall by the cruise ship pier for some shopping. Then we had lunch at the Nutmeg Restaurant and enjoyed the view again. They said they’d been to Fort George already, so we took them up the hill to Fort Frederick where the view is fabulous! From high on top of the fort, you can view to the west to see the cruise ship pier, the carenage, the prison, and almost to the south where the airport is! Then looking to the east you have a totally different scene of a valley filled with houses! This is one of my favorite places to take guests because it’s not advertised very well and it has the best views of the island… from about 800 ft.

Dave & Amanda had already done an island tour the day before, so we mostly took them to places to shop. She was looking for a gift for her mother-in-law, who was babysitting their 2 children. I suggested a Caribbean cookbook and we went to a little gift shop that I knew carried a few. While we were there, I decided to purchase a coffeemaker that I’d seen earlier. We decided to go with the Mr. Coffee brand because it seems that’s the only one here that uses the flat-bottom filter. We’ll just have to use a transformer, which will work out fine. (Our microwave needs a transformer as well, so we’ll run them off the same one.) The price for this one was the best I’d seen anywhere… $170 EC (translates to $63.67 US), but turns out they gave me a discount because it was the last one they had. So for a total of $150 EC ($56.18 US), I finally have my coffeemaker! Nothing fancy… just an on/off switch, no timer, no bean grinder. You could probably buy this model in the US for about $25-30. So tomorrow morning I get to have a real cup of coffee!

So then we took them back to their hotel… then invited ourselves for a tour of the place! Their “room” is actually cabana-style, with a big A/C bedroom and a covered deck for their “living room”. They have an attached bathroom that’s open to nature, with a little private hot tub just outside. It was pretty neat, but I didn’t think it was worth the $500 US a night! They seemed to have a good time today. I suggested they should return to Grenada during the dry season… they’d get more beach time in Jan-Feb-Mar. Regardless of the weather, they seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Photo: Another view of Grenada from atop Fort Frederick! The airport would be beyond the farthest ridge.