Well,we are home and unpacked, so here are the last two days of our journey!!

October 7-Wednesday


Hard to believe that a month is gone. We leave Barbados this afternoon, spend the night in NYC and leave NY tomorrow evening. We will post our photos as soon as possible and we hope to be able to post this blog tonight (but didn’t make it).

The day began with a drive back into Bridgetown to return Dick’s swim fins and we stopped for coffee at a little marketplace. Then we returned the car to Fred who agreed to taxi us to the airport at noon (for the standard fare).

I(Nancy) took my snorkel and mask to the beach and snorkeled around the beach for a while –no coral but lots of small fish, mainly loaches, a few wrasses and other assorted silver fish. The reef is not far out, but it’s still a good swim and we never made it out there. Guess we will have to wait for the next trip.

The Maraval Guesthouse proved to be a good choice for us, inexpensive for the area ($45 USD per night with private bath and comfortable beds), communal kitchen, right on a fabulous beach and conveniently located. We were a bit surprised by the prices of restaurant dinners in the areas- $30-60B ($15-30 US) -considering that it was off-season but, as noted, we were able to find roadside stands with great food for $15B and less and out of the city prices were more reasonable.

Got to the airport in plenty of time- practically no one at customs or security. When we got to the gates, we found that the plane had been delayed coming out of New York due to weather, so they said. We noted that was the first real delay we had experienced. Not many people on the flight- probably the majority were people on the last leg of their Jet Blue pass. We compared notes and everyone had nothing but good things to say about Jet Blue, other than the necessity of returning to the states after each leg of the trip.

Arrived in NYC at 9:30pm, cleared customs and immigration quickly and took the Super 8 shuttle to the AAE hostel, the same place we stayed our first night in NY. This time we were in small room with one set of bunk-beds. It also served as a hallway to another similar room. A young German woman who had been touring Nova Scotia and a young German man who was touring NYC were also staying at there. They were from different parts of Germany and met at the hostel. I’m sure it was a relief to them to be able to chatter a bit in German although their English was very good.


October 8th- Thursday

Our plane leaves at 7pm so we have a little time to explore before we head for the airport at 5pm. Decided to go for the shuttle again since roundtrip added only $3 to the $7 each we had already paid –a true bargain in NY. The subway, two blocks away from the hostel to the air-train to the terminal was $7.25.

This morning we hiked to the subway stop and set off to see some of the things we had missed, starting with Rockefeller Center. The ice rink was not yet open but will be opening in a couple of weeks so they were working on the framework for that. We were able to get some pictures and walked up to the entrance to the Top of the Rock observation deck but they were booked and we didn’t go up. However, we did see the beautiful Swarovski Crystal waterfall chandelier.

We had heard about an exhibition at Grand Central Station Transit Museum that was supposed to show pictures and provide a tour of the infrastructure of the NYC subway system. Since we both are fascinated by the underground world of cities we set off to view it. However, once we got there, we found that it was really just propaganda for a new extension of the subway that they are building to connect two parts of the existing line, and was not nearly as interesting as if it had all been historical. We also found that the subway tour is held only on Wednesday afternoons, so we missed that, too.

A hike to the 2nd Street Deli yielded a good lunch and enough left over to provide sandwiches for our flight back to California. Thanks to the subway system we easily made it back to our hostel, then caught the shuttle to the airport. The flight home was uneventful except where a line of thunderstorms made it a little rough. When we reached the Sacramento airport, First Class Shuttle was there and waiting for us. After all of our nation-hopping it seemed strange to get off of a plane and not have to clear customs and immigration.

It’s always mixed feelings at the end of an adventure like this. We’re glad to be home at last, though dead-tired, but sorry that it’s over. All-and-all the trip has been great: flawless flight connections, good lodging, eerily marvelous weather, spectacular sights and wonderful food. Most of all, meeting and interacting with wonderful people in places very different from ours, whom we would never have met were it not for this unique opportunity. Thank you, Jet Blue, for making this Great Adventure possible!!

We will be posting both a “Things we learned” and “Raves”, special things we want to mention as well as a representative set of photos of the various areas we visited. Hope you all have enjoyed our trip.