2nd Night in the Bahamas

The night is young! The night is young! But I am sooo tired. Haha. A very popular complaint from many of us. Today, we walked sooooooo much! We woke up to Ritika's alarm at 7:10 am. Chance was the first to hop in the shower, then Kayla or maybe first versa.

I am actually continuing this post at 1:19am.... when I first started it, the time was somewhere between 7 and 8 pm. I am beyond exhausted. I had a very packed morning, satisfactory but oh so tiring. After breakfast, we headed out not really sure what we would do today. We got sidetracked by a market across the street and ended up walking through it. There was amazing plait work and of course the usual touristy bags and souvenirs. It lead us on the other side of the road towards the ship and dock so we walked down the pier a bit. Finally concluded we would take the trek to Paradise Island. Now this was essentially on the opposite side of the island and much more tourist-y. Certainly explains why it was much more gorgeous haha and expensive. We had to walk for darn near 30 minutes and even cross a bridge. It was worth it though. We had a blast walking through the strip (Atlantis resort). There were overpriced elite shops and the influence of the American culture was prevalent. We made sure not to buy anything from those stores for the sake of gaining an authentic Bahamian experience. We tried the sample of the Original Recipe Rum cake. It was delish! This was after we left the casino - funny story. We walked up to one of the machines (none of us had gambling experience haha) one had a credit of .20 cents. We then walked over to the penny machines and with no success tried to play so Emily cashed it out. Definitely had to put in more than a penny or play .20 cents worth haha. We each played one of those "three in a row" kind of games for a $1. Emily won $1.75, I lost mines on the wheel of fortune, Ritika lost within one try and luckily found a dollar on the floor so she got hers back! After that we were (and I admit lol) thinking "Hmm..." I wonder if there are any machines sitting with something.... haha

But we left and headed back towards the hotel. We needed to make sure we caught everyone at a good time to finally sit down and split the monies amongst us. We took a detour towards some Market Paradiso spot just to find cold beverages. Ritika and I passed up the overpriced options and suffered it out on the longggggg 30 minute plus walk back to the hotel. Another cool thing was the very same place was like a ferry terminal and offered some cool packages for parasailing, taking a picture with dolphins and snorkeling. None of us were prepared to do any of the above and definitely did not have extra funds to spend on them. I feel like I have been here forever and have to remind myself that it is a transitory location and that I still have 12+ more countries to go to. This is only the beginning. The journey hasn't even began yet.

So we got into the hotel. We end up having a complicated ending to the money situation... one of the girls felt she was forced to sleep in.... (drumroll) the bathtub because she didn't feel comfortable crawling into bed last night. Mind you, she went out (and came back really late...she saw us getting ready for bed before she left) and we all stayed in so we were sleeping when she came back late night. She felt that everyone should (and we complied...eventually) pay $2 or in essence, she shouldn't have to pay as much because she did not sleep in a bed last night. As I pointed out to her... that was the dumbest thing I ever heard, and it was a poor choice on her part. We were all sleep, no one would have expected or required ANYONE to sleep in a bathtub...and lastly, we left room for her and the discomfort was more of her personal problem. Emily was the negotiator and we did as she asked, but I had to make sure she knew that we weren't pushovers. That was completely illegitimate and a poor excuse. Especially since she slept in the bed while we went to breakfast earlier this morning... It's early on in the trip so I guess taking the peaceful option wasn't such a bad idea haha... again, it was a red flag and we all called her out on her obvious and (immature) efforts to swindle us haha.

Chance got back and he made a face when we told him to add $2 to his portion of the fee. I and Ritika couldn't stop laughing. I guess the stupidity was sinking in about the whole situation. Who does that? Who would rather crawl into a dinky (okay not dinky per se, but gently used bathtub with a blanket) instead of tapping someone (worse case scenario) and saying hey, I need a little more room. The other factor was she was relatively drunk last night so I completely saw it as a faulty excuse. Womp womp! Next...We were free to leave the room once we cleared that situation up because we didn't want to inconvenience anyone. We walked alllllllllllll the way past the road the taxi took us from the airport to the hotel to the "fish fry" marketplace. We ended up at some "Twin Brothers" place where they had signs saying they were feature on CNN or some other publications for great and tasty food. I had some Bahamian-style Conch fritters - which was like deep free conch with what tasted like a stuffing of some sort with scallions. A side of plaintains and a side of macaroni and cheese... I also had some type of drink that tasted like a pineapple soda... It had some fancy Bahamian name though. We were incredibly stuffed early on... definitely due to our stomach shrinking. We hadn't eaten since breakfast so while we were hungry, we just couldn't eat any more.

Came back to the hotel... lounged around a bit... also how I fisrst began this blog... then I ended up heading with my roomies with Jamie and bunch of folks. The current big thing was some beach party... we went for a bit (it was in its early stages so nothing was really established) so a huge group of us ended up going to Senor Frogs. That place was huge with open views of the water and the ship =) It was funnn... definitely an entertaining people watch experience. We couldn't stop laughing. This one particular older gentleman was ridiculously intoxicated and he was floating around dancing near us (and other unhappy females)... he looked like he was hardly cognitive of his body motions. The music selection wasn't as great as I would hope but there were enough good songs to hold our attention. The energy was there... I was just tired, the demographics were different and it was hard to stay interested when we all wanted to know where everyone else was... I guess we shall find out tomorrow. Everyone will essentially be here because we board the ship really early in the morning on the 12th!!

We were hungry and started walking towards McDonald's that we saw earlier but although it claimed to be 24 hours.... the store area closed (drive thru remained open). Ritika and Emily were game for climbing over the grass area and walking towards the drive through to order... Aisha and I talked them out of it... lol. McDonald's isn't all that great for that added complication. We ended up at Imperial again because its a "23 hours 7 days a week spot." It was where lots of folks go for late night meals so there were some obnoxious characters.... was relieved when I got my fish and chips.... fortunately we got outta there in a decent time and just came back to the hotel room, ate and watched a little tv.

I am tired. I haven't slept since 8ish this morning, and my feet are screaming for rest haha. Can't wait for tonight's sleep because I have a longgg fulll exciting day ahead of me. Check in for workstudy on the ship is from 10-12 or 12-2....not sure which one is accurate but I am following the first one. In which case the mandatory meeting will be at 1 pm... then I have access to the ship (cafeteria, my cabin) from that day forward. Anyhow, I can barely keep my eyes open and the more time I spend typing on this thing, the less I have to sleep!!! Ciao