Bryan Family Christmas Cruise, Part 5: Just a situation, mon

And now for our final port of call - Montego Bay, Jamaica.  Of course we were greeted by the sounds of reggae and Bob Marley wannabes hustling us for tips.  Welcome to Jamaica, mon!  We muscled our way through the cruise ship crowd and found the right group of shore excursion people, hooking up with our driver Don who proceeded to fight traffic and zoom us through the craziness that is Christmas Eve traffic in Montego Bay.  We wound our way around several problems...only in Jamaica, it's not a problem, it's merely a "situation."  I don't think my Type A-ness fits in with the island vibe very well.

Now, Jamaica's not quite as sparkly and clean as some of our other dreamy beach destinations - in fact, on this one we were driving past the iffy parts of town AND then quite a way into the countryside to go on a plantation tour.  At least we had an entertaining driver!  But you know, I just can't get used to the "drive on the left" business...and people are crazy-aggressive drivers there.  We found that it was best to just hold on for dear life and hope for the best.

Our first stop on this island tour was St. James, an Anglican church established in Montego Bay in 1775.  I thought it would be pretty cool to attend a church service here if for no other reason than to listen to hymns on steel drums - very island.  We stayed for a little while and took in some of the history and architecture, and I even climbed up a rickety little staircase to check out the bells.  Cool.

After whipping past fields of sugarcane and limestone quarries, we made our way past a burnt-out van or two (yeah, a little sketchy on some of these roads) and arrived at Mount Olive basic school.  Yup, school over the holidays.  I was wondering just what exactly this part of the tour would include - I mean, it's kinda weird to drag the kids in on Christmas Eve so they can show us their latest projects and sing to us.  We came to the conclusion that it was basically a ploy to suck money and sympathy out of us.  Interesting.  The kids were kinda cute, though.

Looking both scholarly AND a tad confused by our setting.

Nice colouring of the flag, kids!

Dad gets a chance to show off his social graces.

Sing it, kids!

After this...interesting...stop, we continued on our way to Johns Hall for our "plantation tour."  Yes, I'm throwing that one into quotation marks because...well, it just wasn't quite what we were expecting.  We did watch some fresh coconuts get whacked by a machete and then share their delicious freshness with us...

And we got to see some cool plantation-y things like tiny baby bananas...

...and coffee beans, which I think are exceptionally cute and kinda Christmasy before they get all roasted and delicious...

...and we got to chew on sugarcane, which was both tasty AND fun...

but the whole thing was very scripted and much less "oooh, wow, a way cool plantation!" than it could have been.  And for what we paid, I think everyone would have appreciated about three times the amount of food we got for lunch.  Although it was cool to try things like breadfruit (fruit!  that tastes like BREAD!  it was so cool) and salted codfish with ackee and real jerk chicken.  Of course, a certain Jamaican beer might make you care a little less about the whole thing.

And we did get some beautiful scenery out of the whole thing!

After one more life-on-the-edge driving experience to get us back to the pier, we headed back onto the big boat to get set for a couple of days at sea after some island time.  I chilled on the deck with my book for a while and captured yet more pictures of yet more sky and water and island.  I just couldn't help myself.

After dinner, some people were hanging out in our seats at the bar (yes, OUR seats!  we'd claimed a corner of the Aquarium Bar as our own to hang out and listen to good live music), but we waited them out and finally made it to a chill place.  The rest of the night?  Dad and I went to the crazy show in the main theater, we played a few rounds of Christmas Eve card games, and then we called it a night.  Santa's coming!  All the way out into the ocean!  At preciesely 8:30 am in Studio B!  Oh, the cruise.

Oh, the places you'll go

Back in my youth (yes, I'm going to consider "my youth" behind me now), I created a "vacation destinations" list of a dozen cool places I wanted to go.  I always wanted to be a traveler and just never had much of a chance, but that didn't mean I couldn't dream.  The high school choir trip to Boston was pretty great (and it really was!  They crammed in a lot of good stuff that us high schoolers didn't appreciate as much as we should have), and I loved our family vacations to Colorado, but I always wanted more.  I wanted to cross oceans and explore and discover.

One quick observation - the fact that I made a list for this...well, I still make lists for everything, so at least I was being true to myself.

I regret never doing Honors College London/Paris program because it didn't "fit into my accounting schedule" and "cost too much."  Must impress appropriate priorities and experiences on impressionable young minds whenever presented with such an opportunity.

You know what snagged spots on the old "vacation destinations" list?  Well, I live in one of them now, so that's saying something.  And I've been to NYC four times and am heading back next month.  And I've also managed to knock out Hawaii and San Fran/Napa/Sonoma:

 

And Las Vegas (family Christmas vacay 2004!) and New Orleans and Germany:

And places I didn't even know I wanted to go, like Chicago (what a great city!) and Provincetown and Prague:

And my dreams have only expanded.  I want to go to places I'd never considered before, like Chile and Hong Kong.  I want to soak up the world.  I find travel to be eye-opening and life-changing.  And also potentially hazardous to your health - picked up hepatitis A and typhoid shots today in preparation for Bryan Family Christmas Cruise.  Don't worry, we're not sailing anywhere super-scary.  Although this might prove to be scary. 

Go see the world, people!  It does a body (and soul) good!

If you're curious, the widely varied original "vacation destinations" list included D.C., NYC, San Fran/Napa/Sonoma, Hawaii, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Virgin Islands (what??  Something must have inspired me...), London, Ireland, Italy, Australia, and Germany.  Some very specific, some very vague (as in, you know, an entire country or even continent), and altogether remarkably random.  I can live my life without visiting the Virgin Islands, but you can bet I'm going to cross London, Ireland, Italy, and Australia off the list.