Ahhhhhhh, Barbados. Jackie, Katie, and I simply couldn’t get enough of this Island. It was our second port on our eight-day cruise and we had heard it was the ultimate party-island. We had planned to be drunk-skied long before we docked and boy did we follow up on that plan!
Forever indebted to Jay…ski -
So we docked on Barbados around noon and took a shuttle bus over to the Bridgetown Port. With no excursion booked, our plan was to once again…Go to the beach. We looked on a map given to us by a Carnival worker and saw a place called Malibu Beach and asked a cabbie to take us there. "You don’t want to go to Glitter Bay Beach?," he asked us. "Is that one better?," I replied. "Much better," he said. "Okay, then, I guess we’ll go there," I stated.
We hop in the taxi—which was a van—and our driver Jay takes us, and five other people, to Glitter Bay. Along the way, he’s telling us facts and tid-bits about the island and graciously answering our every question we posed. Honestly, it was like getting a free tour. One of the most interesting things we learned is that people in Barbados can own their home, but not necessarily the land it’s on. Jay said if the house is not cemented into the foundation, it can be moved!! So bizarre!!
After about a 15-minute ride through the hills of Barbados, we arrive at Glitter Bay Beach. We each give Jay $5 bucks for the ride and he says he’ll come back and pick us up whenever we want. Flippin sweet!! We decide a two-hour stay would suffice. We walk through a little ocean front café to get to the beach and oh my gosh was it beautiful.
We sun for two hours and during that time-frame, the following occurred: Katie posed for a photo with a monkey on her shoulder. Local guys would not stop pestering us to buy some "Charlie". We met the most adorable toddler, Julie, who we later saw on our cruise ship. Met a nice couple from somewhere down South, who told us they had been hosed by their cabbie (Jay rules!!).
Jay arrives right on the nose to pick us up and on the ride back to the Bridgetown Port, he tells us more about the island and agrees to pick us up after we get showered and changed on the boat. Sure enough, he’s there at 5 p.m. to take us to a restaurant of his choice for dinner and we invite him to eat with us. We go to the Waterfront Café and have the best meal we had eaten all week. We paid for his dinner to thank him.
He then takes us over to The Boatyard, a bar we had heard about all week long and were told we HAD to go there. (At this point, Jay is now giving us cab rides for free). The place is jammed with 20-somethings and it’s clear it’s a total Spring Break-type bar. (More to follow on the Boatyard).
We’re there for about three hours and Jay stayed the whole time waiting to take us back to the boat…again, for free. The guy was the nicest, sweetest person we’d met all week and we all agreed that Barbados might not have been as fun had we not met Jay. He was the bomb!!
Strippers beware, thers'a new gal on the pole-
So, we’re at The Boatyard proceeding to get ham-skied. Katie hops up on a stage located behind the bar and starts to shake what her momma gave, clutching a stripper-like pole while doing so. Without warning, she jumps up and swings around the pole, prompting several men’s jaws to drop. "She’s done that before," this guy Don says to me (Don’s from Pittsburgh and was staying on the island. We became instant friends when I congratulated him on the Steelers’ Super Bowl victory). Katie assures him that she has had no such training in the art of pole spinning and proceeds to give it another whirl.
Well, I guess the first time was beginner’s luck, because Katie goes crashing down attempting this spin. Like the good-sport she is, she posed for a post-accident picture. Don decides to buy us a shot and I suggest a SoCo Lime (aka "Easy Living" for those in New Orleans). Well, the shot comes over and it’s ALL lime juice. I tell Don that he didn’t really get his money’s worth and he proceeds to ask the bartender to fix us four more. (Now, as a bartender, I would never suggest doing this, but to be honest, these particular liquor-pushers were horrible and therefore, Don’s request seemed reasonable).
This time, the shots are ALL SoCo, which I don’t mind, but apparently Katie did because she immediately threw it all up on her feet. She and Jackie run to the beach where more throwing up occurs. I run over with a cup of water and the security guy asks if she’s okay. I said yes, that she just had a bad shot. He asked why she was throwing up on the beach and not in the bathroom and I said because the beach was closer. (Was this guy really expecting Katie to weave through a crowded bar, up a flight of stairs, and into a bathroom stall? Just not possible.).
Katie comes back to the bar and says she’s fine and that a double vodka red bull will make her feel much better. Oh the things we say when ham-skied!!
If we ignore it, it will go away -
Back on the boat, leaving my stellar Karaoke performance behind and heading to the club (Medusa’s Lair) with Curtis, Katie is nursing her drink of choice (Crown and ginger). Five steps out of the parlor and she drops the glass. It absolutely shatters on the floor and we pause momentarily. Katie then states, "Just keep going. Maybe no one noticed."
This couldn’t be further from the truth, however, as the lobby full of people to our left (mostly filled with gray hairs) stood stunned with gaping mouths as we laughed it off and made a B-line towards the club. Classic Katie.
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A very short post to follow on Martinique and then my tales from my vacation will cease. Sorry if I’m boring you guys with all this, but I want to have full documentation of this trip. It was a once in a lifetime as far as I’m concerned.
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