I'll blame the lack of posts on the extreme insanity Megan and I lived in the past month (like selling my car literally 5 hours before we left for the airport). But through it all we made it finally to Grenada.
(The picture to the left is our apartment, we are on the bottom furthest away.)
Today is the evening of day one. Technically we arrived last night but it wasn't till about 10:30pm that we got to our apartment, at which point we just crashed.
Don't you just hate it when your faced with talking to someone who has complete control over your situation and you can't do anything about it? This comes to mind after our experience with American Airlines at LAX... I called two months in advanced, asked how much extra to bring pets on board after giving my exact flight numbers destinations, etc... "$80 per dog", OK thanks, how much luggage is allowed... "two checked items per person, 50 lbs max each, one personal item and one carry on bag"... OK great, anything else? "nope have a great trip". .... OK so now fast forward to Saturday afternoon I spent about an hour balancing every suitcase out to exactly 50 or 51 lbs each. We had four suitcases between the two of us, two dog carriers (as carry-on), and two back-packs. We arrive at LAX and, now the situational control issue comes into play, at the check in desk the lady tells us "you can have two check in items per person but they can't be above 70 lbs combined" this means our 200lbs of luggage had to be reduced by 60 lbs. After arguing for a while and getting now where but just more frustrated we were given some trash bags, and opened up all our luggage in the middle of the terminal (for all to see) and started tossing things out. Thankfully my mom came with us when we checked in and was able to take this stuff home with her. Next she said "the dogs are $100 each", I said that AA told me $80, "That's domestic flights only". In situations like this there isn't a single thing you can do.
After that stressful, embarrassing and frustrating experience we said our good byes to my mom and headed for security where there was a bit of an interesting experience... anyone ever brought two dogs on board before?... We learned as we got there that first our check-in lady screwed up something about our receipt for the dogs, we found this out as the security lady read us the riot act about how our paperwork wasn't correct and that the check in lady screwed up... (um OK thanks but it wasn't our fault and what can we do about it now?), next we had to hand carry each dog (out of their crate) through the metal detectors, not a big deal unless you have two completely freaked out dogs who's natural impulse when scared is to bolt. We caught jasper before he got too far, and after seeing that I kept a tight grip on wiggly Felicity. After this point the rest of the journey was pretty smooth. The 7 hour lay over in Puerto Rico was pretty long, but we were so tired we really didn't care.
So today, we started off by sleeping through half of the day waking at 11am. This was largely due to jet lag as CA time this was only 7am. Either way we woke up to growling stomachs and TOTALLY empty cupboards and fridge. Nothing like hunger to spur our first outing, luckily for us it was less then a quarter mile down the road, not too bad. We filled two hand baskets to the top (not heaping, just full) of some basics, shampoo, PB & J, bread, mac & cheese (yay!), two bottles of water, ect... it all came to a nice sum of $254 EC which equates to $94 US dollars... OUCH! Yeah stuff is EXPENSIVE here. Later we did find a larger grocery store down the road a bit further that has a larger selection and slightly better prices but still expensive.
Anyhow we are happy, HOT, and getting a little more comfortable with our new place. Tomorrow we will be off to the SGU campus, for the first time, for a meet & greet event. I've taken a few shots of our place which I'll do my best to post. More later!
OK, So I can't stop quite yet, check out this shower head-ish thing. It points perfectly straight down with no option to bend it forward, annoying but we can deal. We have absolutely NO idea what the hose thingy is for. I've fiddled with the only "switch" if you will, on this thing and it doesn't seem to make a difference.
This looks like a boring door jam picture right? well take a look at the small box way up above the door with the red switch on it. Didn't notice that until i mentioned it did you? Neither did we. After waiting over 10 minutes for our shower to get warm to no avail we took ice cold showers, which wasn't that bad considering it was 83 inside but it was still chillier then we like. Later on, Megan spotted that little box which has very light print which says "water heater"... apparently we are supposed to turn on the water heater (which is IN the shower head) just before hoping into the shower and presto we should be getting warm water, I'll let you know how that turns out later. By the way that is the ONLY hot water in the entire place, all sink water is cold only, unusual but oh well.
Don't you just hate it when your faced with talking to someone who has complete control over your situation and you can't do anything about it? This comes to mind after our experience with American Airlines at LAX... I called two months in advanced, asked how much extra to bring pets on board after giving my exact flight numbers destinations, etc... "$80 per dog", OK thanks, how much luggage is allowed... "two checked items per person, 50 lbs max each, one personal item and one carry on bag"... OK great, anything else? "nope have a great trip". .... OK so now fast forward to Saturday afternoon I spent about an hour balancing every suitcase out to exactly 50 or 51 lbs each. We had four suitcases between the two of us, two dog carriers (as carry-on), and two back-packs. We arrive at LAX and, now the situational control issue comes into play, at the check in desk the lady tells us "you can have two check in items per person but they can't be above 70 lbs combined" this means our 200lbs of luggage had to be reduced by 60 lbs. After arguing for a while and getting now where but just more frustrated we were given some trash bags, and opened up all our luggage in the middle of the terminal (for all to see) and started tossing things out. Thankfully my mom came with us when we checked in and was able to take this stuff home with her. Next she said "the dogs are $100 each", I said that AA told me $80, "That's domestic flights only". In situations like this there isn't a single thing you can do.
After that stressful, embarrassing and frustrating experience we said our good byes to my mom and headed for security where there was a bit of an interesting experience... anyone ever brought two dogs on board before?... We learned as we got there that first our check-in lady screwed up something about our receipt for the dogs, we found this out as the security lady read us the riot act about how our paperwork wasn't correct and that the check in lady screwed up... (um OK thanks but it wasn't our fault and what can we do about it now?), next we had to hand carry each dog (out of their crate) through the metal detectors, not a big deal unless you have two completely freaked out dogs who's natural impulse when scared is to bolt. We caught jasper before he got too far, and after seeing that I kept a tight grip on wiggly Felicity. After this point the rest of the journey was pretty smooth. The 7 hour lay over in Puerto Rico was pretty long, but we were so tired we really didn't care.
So today, we started off by sleeping through half of the day waking at 11am. This was largely due to jet lag as CA time this was only 7am. Either way we woke up to growling stomachs and TOTALLY empty cupboards and fridge. Nothing like hunger to spur our first outing, luckily for us it was less then a quarter mile down the road, not too bad. We filled two hand baskets to the top (not heaping, just full) of some basics, shampoo, PB & J, bread, mac & cheese (yay!), two bottles of water, ect... it all came to a nice sum of $254 EC which equates to $94 US dollars... OUCH! Yeah stuff is EXPENSIVE here. Later we did find a larger grocery store down the road a bit further that has a larger selection and slightly better prices but still expensive.
Anyhow we are happy, HOT, and getting a little more comfortable with our new place. Tomorrow we will be off to the SGU campus, for the first time, for a meet & greet event. I've taken a few shots of our place which I'll do my best to post. More later!
OK, So I can't stop quite yet, check out this shower head-ish thing. It points perfectly straight down with no option to bend it forward, annoying but we can deal. We have absolutely NO idea what the hose thingy is for. I've fiddled with the only "switch" if you will, on this thing and it doesn't seem to make a difference.This looks like a boring door jam picture right? well take a look at the small box way up above the door with the red switch on it. Didn't notice that until i mentioned it did you? Neither did we. After waiting over 10 minutes for our shower to get warm to no avail we took ice cold showers, which wasn't that bad considering it was 83 inside but it was still chillier then we like. Later on, Megan spotted that little box which has very light print which says "water heater"... apparently we are supposed to turn on the water heater (which is IN the shower head) just before hoping into the shower and presto we should be getting warm water, I'll let you know how that turns out later. By the way that is the ONLY hot water in the entire place, all sink water is cold only, unusual but oh well.
(Above) This is from our front door looking south-ish. (Below) This is a small pictorial tour of our apartment.
(Above) Our bedroom
(Above) The dog's room... our YOURS FOR FREE!!! if you visit... hint hint nudge nudge...
(Above) Bars on the windows... the idea is a little scary but they do a good job of making them look nice. Every single building on this island seems to have these, we aren't too worried though.
2 comments:
at trip sounds like the type of adventure you DON'T want.
I'm glad you guys made it safely... If Bill and I figure out how to get rich quick, we will be sure to stop on by :P
We saw some shower heads like that in Costa Rica. There they nicknamed them suicide showers, 'cause you're taking a shower with a 220V live wire (the heating element) just overhead.
Ahh, third-world charms. =)
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