Day 1 - Arrival

Day 1:

After a classically exhausting wedding weekend, we were barely ready to wake up at 3:30am to hop in a taxi to head to the airport.  But the promise of the longest-vacation-to-date for the both of us was motivation enough to get us up (and keep me up half the night, nervous that I'd sleep through the alarm.  We had been bit before by taxis that, for whatever reason, didn't make it to Jamaica Plain to pick us up even thought we had called and confirmed one, so we decided to go the safe, albeit expensive, route of Uber.  Yes, it's a little pricier than a taxi, but is very reliable, and still loads cheaper than driving and dumping the car at long-term parking for 13 days.  I pressed the Confirm button, and the little black car icon started heading in our direction on the map.  15 minutes later, a giant Lincoln Navigator pulled up, driven by Pierre, a large, but soft-spoken (or maybe he was just tired as hell) black man with a French (Creole?) accent.  He was playing Frank Sinatra, undoubtedly a passenger favorite.  And while it was playing a little too loudly for 4:00am, we went with it.  He skipped a few tracks to play "Fly Me to the Moon", which I'm guessing is his go-to track for anyone headed to the airport.  After that track was over, he switched CDs and started playing us "Beethoven in the Ghetto", which he said was originally a tape (cassette!!) he received from a friend in 1992.  He had liked it so much that he burned the tape to a CD, and has been holding onto it ever since.  It sounded just like you'd expect with that title: Classical music samples with some solid hip-hop beats behind them.  In 1992, it was probably pretty imaginative and inventive.  But 21 years later, it seemed pretty mundane.  Still, It was new to our ears, and interesting, even being half-asleep.

I shamelessly tried to get us upgraded on our flight, throwing around the word 'honeymoon' to anyone who would listen.  I tweeted at JetBlue, figuring that would be a nice direct line to someone who could make things happen, if all else failed (read: if the ticket counter folks who had to start their shift at 3am didn't give enough of a shit to upgrade two exhausted-looking goofy people).  The ticket counter woman had, in fact, upgraded us not to first class (because JetBlue doesn't do first class; they just make all seats a little more comfortable), but to the "extra legroom" seats, which, for a tall person, is just as good, if not better than first class.  We didn't need free booze at 5am anyway.  

Our layover took us to JFK, and while it was only about 8:00am, my body was ready for lunch.  A nice in-the-airport-price-inflated sandwich will do nicely.  As I waited for my sandwich, which I ordered WaWa style through a touch-screen menu, a woman I can only imagine as the complete embodiment of a native Southern Californian turned NYC wannabe socialite approached one of the sandwich preparers:

"Do you have bacon?", she muttered, in an accent even Fred Armisen's character in The Californians would be proud of.

"Yes [of course we do, you idiot]".  (The menu showed bacon as a 'topping', so it was pretty obvious that they did, in fact, have bacon.  And their specialty was sandwiches, so bread was a safe bet as well.

"Can I get a roll with just bacon on it?" she asked, assuming it was going to be presented to her, magically.

"You need to order through the touch-screen".

And so she tried to order her roll with bacon on it.  Only to fail.  Without really trying.  I think she expected the touch-screen to greet her with a single question: "Why, Hello Audrey!  Would you like these working-class losers to personally make you your favoritest of favorites?  Press "Yes" or "No".

After not seeing a "Yes", button, she quickly grabbed the sandwich-maker again:

"I don't see a button for bacon"

"It's there, you have to scroll through the options"

"Can you just make it for me?"

"You have to order through the touch-screen"

"Can you help me, then?"

At this point, the sandwich-maker turned the touch-screen around only partially, so they could both see it (I'm assuming she wanted to let Audrey know that she was, in fact, an idiot and that there was no secret to getting a roll with bacon on it).  She zipped through the menu options to uncover the hiding place of the bacon, and completed the order for her.  A few minutes later, Audrey, barely grateful, grabbed her sandwich and was off, out of my life forever.  I rejoiced.

All was smooth for the next few hours: check-in, flight, mediocre movies, immigration/customs, car rental, etc.

One of the in-flight movie options was Warm Bodies - which we had both read - so we were excited to see it as one of the options...and then equally disappointed when the movie turned out to be a dulled, beaten down shell of the book. And so I silently apologized to a few friends who consistently pull out the "the book was so much better" card.  They weren't being snobby, they were just sad and needed to vent. (Maggie: HA! You've been getting half-baked movie versions of otherwise amazing books for our entire relationship and it makes me die a little inside each time. Now you know what it feels like. ::Does an 'I told you so' dance::)

Anyway, once we were through immigrations/customs, we headed down the only road leading out of the airport to our destination on the exact opposite side of the island: we were southeast, our place was northwest.  Only 30 miles or so, but mountains and rainforests stood between us.  We made it through the winding, deteriorating roads disoriented (they drive on the left), and came upon the only major city in St. Lucia, Castries.  I should now probably mention that there are essentially no street signs in St. Lucia, which makes life a little difficult when they close down a bunch of roads in Castries for a holiday celebration.  Having no GPS, and only a cartoon, tourist-caliber road map didn't help the situation either.  After some initial struggle and concern that we'd fall into one of the side drainage ditches, we regrouped with the help of Colonel Sanders, a familiar face in an otherwise foreign city full of local shops, and carefully found our way around the closed streets, following our own detour route.

Once through Castries, we made a quick stop at a local grocery store and had a brief panic attack at the prices, not realizing that the local currency is Eastern Caribbean Dollars, not US dollars ("$20 for cranberryjuice?!?"). Lesson quickly learned and then we were off to our place.

We were greeted by Lu, a short, sweet native St. Lucian with 4 children, who had prepared dinner for us and gave us the basic rundown of the house.  After some awkward standing around, she was off and we had the place to ourselves.  It was exactly as it looked in the pictures: Perfect.  Part of me was concerned that the glamour shots were really just that, and the actual place was some dulled, beaten down version of "The House in the Pictures".  

One thing that The House in the Pictures didn't reveal to us was the amount of locks and bars on the windows and doors.  All windows had bars over them, and all doors, in addition to locking in the normal, door-handle kind of way, also had vertical deadbolts at the top and bottom.  Which, though a little unnerving, was also refreshing.  We had been uneasy since landing at the airport, having fumbled our way through the shack-lined roads of the island, through the crowded, dirty streets of Castries, and up the somewhat remote hills of the Cap Estate to our villa.  St. Lucia is tropical paradise, as long as you look in the right directions.  But, like any country, the blind spots are rough parts.  And when rich white people build magnanimous houses and fill them with fancy things and have more money than you've ever seen in your life, theft and robbery are going to exist.  It's a feeling you can't shake off in 5 minutes.  And while the bars and locks ease your tension a little bit, they greet you every morning and night to make sure your tension doesn't fully go away.  The shining light in all of this, is that though there may be resentment of all of the extravagance, there is the knowledge (or hope) that this is all making St. Lucia a more economically stable place.  Hopefully roads have improved and there are more schools as well as new industries that the new generation can specialize in and make a good stable living for themselves and their families.

We reheated the dinner Lu had made us: boiled plantains and curry rice, fish with salsa, pumpkin soup, fish salad.  It felt like a family meal.  Though I can't recall the details because we devoured it so quickly, it was delicious.

A quick swim in our pool, and we were ready to call it a night.