Barbados: Day 1

3/9/2025

Saturday, March 8, 2025: Our alarm went off at 2:30 a.m. (yes, that hurts ;-) ) and we were out the door at 3:45. I had been watching the weather forecast this week. If it was going to be icy, we would've stayed in a hotel near the airport. Thankfully the roads were perfect! The cars in the parking lot were covered in a layer of snow and ice and the roads were a little wet there but driving was perfectly dry!

We were stunned by the long line for international travel when we entered the airport. We stood in line for at least 30 minutes before we started getting nervous. Larry spotted a responsible looking employee and asked if we were in the right line. He sympathized with us that our flight time was getting close so he took us right up to the counter to check us in. He said, "This is your lucky day. I wasn't supposed to start work until 6:00 a.m. and I decided to come in early." He was so helpful and it freed up the line because he stayed at the counter to help other passengers. We arrived at our gate with a few minutes to spare.

Once the plane was de-iced, we were on our way to Atlanta. We had a one hour layover which was just the right amount of time to take the tram from gate A to E. We arrived in the very large airport in Barbados at 3:11 p.m. We deplaned onto the tarmack via stairs they rolled up to the plane and then were directed towards the shuttle to take us to Customs. After collecting our luggage, we went outside and searched for our names printed on a sign in a crowd of drivers all doing the same. Then we spotted Rodney, holding up our name. He took us over to the curb and said, "Wait here. I'm going to get my taxi and I'll pick you up." He drove us to a small local market to pick up a few groceries and soon we were at Inchcape, settling into our villa. This is the first island we've been to that didn't have ground coffee. They only had instant and seemed very surprised we'd like anything different. :-)

The views are breathtaking! We are closer to the water's edge than any place we've been. There's an enormous reef so the waves are continually breaking, making for stunning views and the most wonderful soundtrack. The villa has functional shutters on every door and window that need to be manually operated. This will be a pleasureable little chore while we're here as we have been instructed to close everything up when we leave and when it rains.

We walked for about 5 minutes over to Surfer's Bay for dinner. One of the worker's kindly waved us over to a table that was reserved. He smiled and said they randomly hold tables and this one was for us. There was a great band from Ontario and a lively crowd of people dancing to Jimmy Cliff, Reggae, Johnny Cash, and a mix of old and new rock. We had the best dinner; fresh mahi-mahi and king fish with cole slaw and fries. As we were sitting there, I kept seeing flashlights in the distance. There were people walking from the opposite direction from where we came so I'm very curious to walk around in the daylight tomorrow and see where all those people came from.

We walked back to the villa and sat in the adirondack chairs on our terrace...listening to the waves and catching up via text with some family and friends. It's 79 degrees with a gentle breeze. A couple of fishermen just walked past with poles, heading out to the cliff to see what they can catch.