The World A to Z

J is for Jamaica

When you’re looking for exciting, exotic locations to make your next travel destination, Jamaica probably doesn’t come to mind right away. But when money’s tight and you need a place that starts with “J,” Jamaica seems like the perfect choice.

J is for Jamaica 026

My Jamaica trip involved an all-inclusive resort, Couples San Souci. Let me start by offering a piece of advice: Do your online research before you commit to a week-long stay somewhere.

I started out in a room with a broken air conditioner located directly above the pool where a very loud local band played until 11pm EVERY night. J is for Jamaica 020

That lasted one night before, sweating profusely, I demanded a new room. It went downhill from there. I won’t bore you with the details, let’s just say on the third day, looking for a way to release some of the tension that was mounting exponentially, I made a list of all the things that had gone wrong to that point.

Complaints

It was FOUR PAGES long.

OK, if you’ve read my other blogs, you know I’m a “make the best of it” kind of traveler, so that’s what I did.

I tracked down the off-the-resort excursion desk and made arrangements to go horseback riding in the Caribbean Sea. What a blast! Exif_JPEG_422

There’s something exhilarating about feeling the power of a horse swimming beneath you!

I took the free shuttle to the shopping area in town and wandered some quaint little shops and booths packed with trinkets and souvenirs “handmade in Jamaica.”

IMG_0091 - Copy

I popped into a jeweler and found a really pretty necklace and earring set featuring a “Caribbean stone.”

I grabbed a book from the lending library at the resort and spent an afternoon in a hammock reading a delightfully tacky romance novel.

All this is to say, just because it seems like everything is going wrong, doesn’t mean you have to let it ruin your vacation, IMG_0102

even if your traveling companion insists on staying in the room, burying his face in the free wifi like a hermit.

Get out there! Have fun! One of my favorite sayings is, “Happiness is a choice. Choose it.”

The weather was perfect. The flowers around the resort were bright and aromatic.

J is for Jamaica 031

There were plenty of places to find a warm breeze and relax. J is for Jamaica 028

I won’t be going back to that resort anytime soon, but my excursion into town leaves me wondering what the rest of Jamaica is like, so I may go back. Notably, a few months after this trip, I made a permanent change to my traveling companion and we started planning K is for Krakow .. which takes us to when I first started writing about my “ABC” trips.

They started in 2002 … Greg and I checked off the “M” trip this fall, so I have a couple more blogs to catch everyone up-to-date.

© The World A to Z, LLC 2014

1 thought on “J is for Jamaica”

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s