Bay Street and P.I bridge…

Today I walked, and walked and walked…I went along Bay street, where the famous straw markets are. It sort of reminded me of going to the little markets in India. A lot of the same stuff, a lot of bargaining but definitely fun! I saw some really pretty buildings and found out the all government pink are painted pink, hmmm, my kind of city for sure!

Just Sayin'

I walked over the bridge the closes the gap between Nassau and Paradise Island (the P.I bridge) which gave me some amazing sights of the two places.  I got a couple of pics before reaching the otherwise, where I caught a ferry that took me back to where I had started. Diyls picked me up and we went home to have another fabulous family dinner, I could get used to this!

Atlantis, over the PI bridge

Later on Merle and I went out to the Green Parrot, where our now mutual acquaintance Patrick was working, unfortunately that was his night off. However the view from the restaurant is so beautiful, it was totally worth it.

A pic from my walk around town/Bay Street

Day 2 and a little sun…

The next morning I woke up to find out that Dilys (my aunt) was on route to come get me, as she had got my message that morning and had already called to make plans to get me. She showed up and after hellos, hugs and forgiveness was equally distributed...my real Bahamian adventure began with a walk to the beach right in front of their house. Merle has recently started a new job so Dilys and I drove her to work, ran some errands and then went back to have lunch with Merle at a cute place close to her work. That night we had a nice family dinner outside, it was so beautiful!

On the beach

Oh, by the way the best thing about driving around today is that I realized in the Bahamas they drive on the lef side of the road. It’s crazy to see after 2 years! Although some of the people there drive like taxi drivers so there was no way I was going anywhere near a steering wheel!

Ah, South Africa :)

Sometimes there are angels around…

Arriving at the airport much later than expected, I rushed to fill out the various visitors forms, (from the help of Patrick, since he knew more about Merle than I did) hoping that my family hadn't waited too long for me to arrive. I got my luggage and headed out.

Welcome to the Bahamas

Waiting around for family members that I was a little worried I might not recognize after 10 years, in a foreign country, with no cell phone reception…not something I’d like to repeat again! After a while I realized I should probably try to call them, so I managed to connect my laptop to the internet, and facebook stalk them…only to see no one’s number on FB, the company my uncle works for, but not much else. So I sent a few emails and FB messages with the hopes of reaching them. I then tried to google their phone number, which I never found.

I saw a few taxi cabs, but realized I didn’t know their address. Yes, let this be a warning to you to always have the phone number and address of the place you are staying at printed and kept with you when you are travelling (also your return ticket if you are travelling abroad) I wandered around for a while before coming to the conclusion that I had been *sob* forgotten.

This is where your survival instinct kicks in and you begin to access the situation and decide what the best option would be. There was an elderly man, who I had seen walking up and down looking for someone and we eventually got talking, he was waiting for his wife to come in from Miami. He helped me to look for Mike and Dilys’ number on another internet site. After a while he decided it might be best if he went home to see if his wife had called to say what time she was getting in. He offer to give me a lift to where ever I needed to go, and also offered me the flat on his property as a “home away from home” for the night if I needed it.

At this point I decided that would rather take my chance with one elderly man than the groups that were now congregating around the airport (past midnight.) We drove back to his house, where he had a voicemail from his wife about her cancelled flight. He let me use the internet to send another email to my family with his street address, name and phone number in the hopes of meeting up with them the next day.

He showed me to “my own” flat, which had an amazing sea view! It was a really cute place, but by this stage I was just ready to hit the sack…zzzz on my first night in the Bahamas…Thank you Mike Parnell

Flight delays and making new friends…

My flight from Fort Lauderdale, FL -> Bahamas was delayed, and I’m not talking about a few minutes or even an hour, I’m talking hours! I had to get back in the ticketing line because I had switched airlines (to BahamaAir) The line in front of me could only be described as ridiculous! After finding out that there were two flights headed towards the Bahamas (mine and one going to Freeport) leaving within 30mins of each other. Somehow I don’t think this is very good planning on the airlines part.

I just kept thinking of images like this...

I probably managed to chat to almost everyone in line while waiting around. I even met a group of guys who are part of the Bahamian rugby team! They were all really nice guys. Finally at the front of the line, I was super excited! I kept telling everyone “We are going to the Bahamas” Most people in the line told me they didn’t know how I could stay so positive after waiting in a queue for 4hours. I just told them “we are going to the Bahamas! :D”

This is where I wanted to be!

Once in front of the ticketing lady I handed in all in important information hoping this would be a relatively quick process…Famous last words I guess. She started to process everything and then stopped to ask for my return flight. I gave for the time, date and airline information (not printed out though) which apparently is not good enough and you need to show them the ticket.

Still thinking about the beach :)

At a lost I turned to my new “friends” and asked if anyone had a itouch, blackberry or iphone (since I am not part of the smart phone generation, and rather part of the I’m an au pair and my host family pay for my phone…so I have a text message machine that answers calls, and not much else generation.) Thank goodness for the guy behind me who pulled out  an ipad and asked if it would help. Dude, you totally rock! After pulling up my ticket and showing ms ticket lady she smiled and handed me my ticket. YAH!

And images like this...

I ran to the boarding gate, to discover they were holding the plane til all the remaining passengers were ready to board, So I sat around and spoke to the rugby guys again. Then I found out that one of them had gone to school with my cousin (Merle) who I was on my way to visit, what are the chances?

An actual drive in the Bahamas

The first two of three…

My first flight was Nashville, TN -> Charlotte, NC, which would have gone smoothly if the “easy” self-check in computer had found my county. Unfortunately this was not the case. It would not scan my passport, so I was supposed to manually enter my information in and choose my country from a list…which never had my country. Um, it’s not like I live in Timbuktu oh wait that’s place really does exist.  After finally getting the front desk to print my tickets for my first two flights, I made my way through airport security and “the body scanner” which to be honest with you, doesn’t phrase me. If it’s going to stop me having to take off jewelry, belts and under wire bars (that actually happened to my mom) then I’m all for it.

Charlotte, NC (Google image)

My next flight was Charlotte, NC -> Fort Lauderdale, FL. The flight was delayed, but not by much. The flight was relativity uneventful, which is good as it leaves time for me to blog about my final flight…dum dum dum…

Fort Lauderdale, FL (Google image)

A little place called Nashville…

Back in December when I was in Boston,  I met some of Sue and Alric’s friends. One of their friends had a nephew from Nashville, we spoke a lot and I told him I was planning to go Nashville at some part in my American adventure. He offered to show me around if we ever did manage to meet up in Nashville.

Downtown Nashville

My host parents gave me what was left of my vacation at the end of February, early March. I contacted Philip and made plans to visit Taylor Swift’s home town. I flew into Nashville early on Saturday morning, meeting Philip at the airport. He drove me downtown and we parked the car so we could walk around and see all the cute shops and pretty buildings in Nashville. We went for lunch at a quiet spot called Bosco, and later headed out to Percy Warner Park, where it was a beautiful day.  It was crazy to see some of the buildings there, some are so cute and quaint…and some are definitely not!

The Parthenon (in Nashville)

That night we attended a farewell for two of the guys that worked as interns at Ernst & Young. One of the guys was a South African, so I was pretty excited about going out and meeting someone from back home J We went for drinks at Sambuca and then moved onto Mai for a little dancing. Fun times in Nashville!

At Percy Warner Park

Sunday morning was a lazy day as I didn’t have much to do, before making my way to the airport, where I would soon be heading for the Bahamas, and my next adventure…

So long Nashville...

Good morning Baltimore…you can’t stop the beat…

If you read the posts heading and started singing a little, you have probably watched some form of “Hairsrpray.” I have previously watched the movie, and love it! Anything with a mixture of singing, dancing and acting can’t be too bad, usually! So when Julia told me that the local high school in the area was staging the musical I jumped at the opportunity. We decided to make it a group event and managed to get about 10 people together for it.

Hairspray (google imagine)

The show was amazing, the talent of these high school students, was pretty unbelievable. There role of Tracy Turnblad’s mother was played by a boy, who just happened to be the brother of the girl playing Tracy Turnblad…I have no idea how she managed to keep a straight face and not burst out laughing watching her brother dressed as a 60’s mother jamming to “welcome to the 60’s”. As I said they were really good!

Google Image