Jan 1
Woke up at 6:30 excited to greet the day and check out the beach! I went for a walk the length of Orient Beach (4 km round trip) and found it quite breezy and humid but beautiful all the same. So wonderful to finally see it in person after so many days of researching and looking at others pictures and videos of their trips. I was finally here! I spent about 1.5 hrs walking the beach and recognized some fan favourites such as Orange Fever, Andy and Cheryl's, Chez Leandra, Pedro's, Papagayo, Sexy Fruits, etc. So cool to see all these places that I'd only read about before! After scouting the full range of the beach I returned to find Paula still sleeping! As I sat down to patiently wait I thought I might as well do that in bed and surprised myself by falling asleep myself for another 1.5 hrs! That's vacation I suppose!
After Paula got up we had some toast and fruit that we bought at Grand Marche and headed out about noon to check out the beach at its busiest. Quite a change from the picture I saw at 7:30! There were only 3 cruise ships in but the beach was pretty busy. Five cruise ships are expected in tomorrow. The waves were pretty heavy at the northern end by Mt Vernon, lessening as you got closer to the shelter of Club Orient at the southern end. The sun was shining and the water was beautiful shades of green and blue. We walked right down to the spit of land at the sound end of Club O. The beach was much quieter here as may be expected because the south end in front of Club Orient is clothing optional. CO or not it would certainly be our choice to spend the day as we're not much into the crowds.
About 1 o'clock we decided to get something to eat and settled on coconut shrimp, conch fritters and rib appetizers at Chez Leandra. Throw in a bucket of 6 beer for $10 and you have the makings of a fantastic lunch! Once satisfied at Chez Leandra's we browsed some of the shops out back where Paula took a fancy to a hat and a wrap. Francois offered the pair for €30 but I asked if he took US$ and he took them at par which equal to a 40% discount. However, I only had $20 with me. Francois suggested we take them both then come back and pay him tomorrow. A very trusting offer we decided to accept and so ended our first shopping transaction!
Lunch and shopping used up all the cash I had taken for the day so we decided to head back to the condo to get more cash before heading to Perch beach side bar for happy hour! I must give out some kind of "IT guy" vibe or something because a French woman stopped us by our pool and asked for help setting up the wireless on her iPhone. She was trying to Skype her sister in France for New Years. I got it working at our room but she wanted to try it in her room so off we went. An hour and a half later I succeeded in explaining she had no WiFi in her room and that I couldn't help her any more. So she then proceeded to show us her jewelry collection that she was planning to sell on the island. At this point I gracefully excused us and we headed back to our room although unfortunately happy hour at the Perch was now a distant memory. Instead we had a rum in the room while catching up on emails etc then picked up a chorizo and four cheese pizza from the onsite pizzeria. It was pretty good but we'll look for something different tomorrow.
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