Eat. Beach. Sleep. Repeat.
Wednesday day should have been renamed WindyDay. Back to the pool it was! I was able to read well into my book club’s February pick, Such a Fun Age. While I love being near the water and having my nose in a book, what I was really excited about was Date Night!
Jay and I ventured out to Rum Point for dinner. We had been to that part of the island for lunch the previous year, but this was our first time at night. We enjoyed some tasty seafood at the Rum Point Club Restaurant. As usual, he wished he would have ordered what I had. 😂
After dinner, we headed back to the resort to meet up with Liz and Laurie for our favorite island musician, the Coconut Cowboy. Native to the island, Dexter Bodden, aka the Coconut Cowboy, brings the sound of Nashville’s Broadway to Grand Cayman. He actually spent a few years in Nashville where he performed as the Calypso Cowboy.
As with all things country music, you can never stray too far from Nashville. Sure enough, the guest singer the Cowboy had up to sing a few songs turned out to be a bright young singer/songwriter from Nashville, Kaitlyn Barbee. You can find her on Instagram, and, of course, on Apple Music and Spotify. If you’re local to Nashville, you can go and listen to her live – you won’t regret it!
I am a super lucky girl because after enjoying another picture-perfect day by the ocean on Thursday, I got another date night! It can’t be date night without a little drama and ours came in the form of no cell service. We were heading back to the Seven Mile Beach area, relying on Google maps to guide us through the approximate 1,065 roundabouts on our route. That wasn’t in the cards.
Now, what you need to know is that maps, directions and I aren’t very good friends. I thought Iowa was next to Illinois and Indiana until I was an adult (I mean, aren’t all of the “I” states grouped together?). This makes the fact that I was not only able to follow our little blue dot without any direction as it moved along the road on Google Maps, but I was able to successfully guide us to our destination a huge victory!
Last year when we were on the island, my good friend Pam said we had to visit the Ritz Carlton hotel on our trip. Pam has superior taste and we did exactly as she said. We were not disappointed. Jay was adamant we had to go back to the Ritz for our date and I couldn’t say no, right?
We enjoyed happy hour at the hotel’s bar then noshed on some Italian favorites at Andiamo. Afterward, we needed to walk off some of those carbs and took a stroll through the hotel’s art gallery. Of course there were several prints I wanted to take home!
Jay was super stoked for Friday because this was the day we were heading into town with Liz and Laurie to do some shopping and have breakfast. On our way into town, we stopped to check out the blowholes. The water was gorgeous this day and the blowholes were ready to perform.
Our first priority was breakfast at Coconut Joe’s. I had a breakfast quesadilla and Jay had his beloved banana pecan pancakes. One thing that contributes to an enjoyable breakfast there is being able to sit outside on the patio. This often means sharing space with the birds who fly by and the roosters and chickens who roam freely about the island. This also means sometimes sharing your breakfast with our flying friends. A blackbird swooped into a neighboring table, stealing a piece of bacon. Unfortunately, the bacon was too heavy and he had to relinquish it to a nearby rooster. Talk about being in the right place at the right time!
After breakfast, we did some shopping in downtown Georgetown. From there we ventured to a shopping district called Camana Bay. The bookstore there, Books & Books, is one of my favorites. Jay’s favorite place there is Gelato & Co. Last year he had a pistachio gelato that was so good he talked about it for a full year. He was basically running not walking to get there.
We returned to the resort with a couple of hours left in the afternoon. Since this was our last day on the island we were glad to have another hour or two to spend on the beach.
That night we had dinner with Jay’s parents and a group of their friends. Jay’s parents have been coming to the island with this group for nearly 20 years. Some are friends from their time in Michigan and Ohio, while others are friends they have made during trips to the island. I have much to say about this group of friends, but I’ll save that for another post. For now, I’ll just say this group just upped my #goals for when I am 70 and older.
After an amazing pasta dinner cooked by Pat from Long Island, Jay and I headed back to Mimi’s Dock Bar to hear the Coconut Cowboy again with Liz and Laurie. It was a lighter crowd for a Friday night, but fun all the same. The Cowboy even obliged me by singing “Dixieland Delight.”
Saturday morning began the long day of travel home. The flights themselves are less than two hours and uneventful, but the layover drains all the energy out of you. By the time we arrived back, it was nightfall in Nashville and I was ready to sleep in my own bed. Even still, the beauty, rest and peace offered by the island made it all worth it.