We were able to get a decent night’s sleep despite the gentleman in the adjoining room waking up to the Star Wars Imperial march theme as an alarm at 5:40am and then spending the next two hours getting ready for his day. We could have sung along to his playlist, as it was so clearly reverberating through our room as if he was there with us. It’s going in Nicole’s review. We then went to a lackluster breakfast buffet where pastries that appeared to be chocolate were in fact fig. Unacceptable. Also . . .going in the review.
We sat in traffic heading back to Miami International, where we walked half a mile to get to the pre-check lanes only to head a mile in the opposite direction after entering the terminal. The flight just began boarding as we arrived. Feeling quite confident in our chances today, Nicole talked to Hilton to redeem her free nights in Anguilla. Chaos was going on in the gate area while she was trying to arrange all this as four flights were departing at the same time and announcements were being made without any breaks. Five minutes later, we were given seats and were the last to board the aircraft.
It is worth mentioning that in the three days that I have spent in the Miami airport, the number of people with a sickly cough seems disproportionately high compared to elsewhere. Everywhere we were, someone was hacking nearby. There’s something going around. Furthermore, is Miami on any sort of list for least friendly city in America/world? The dispositions of workers is rather irritable. I don’t expect service with a smile all the time, but everyone’s countenance is downright hostile looking — like ordering a Cubano is akin to picking a fight. “You want beef?!!!” “Oh, no just the ham please.” When we exited the skytrain at the end of the line, 10 people were pushing their way on before we were able to force our way off. Also nobody says excuse me — they just run you over with a luggage cart. These types of things happened so frequently, that you can’t call it a one-off and it was both in and out of the airport.
Luckily our Envoy (American Eagle) flight crew was friendly and it was an uneventful and comfortable flight in row 12 of the Embraer 175. We touched down in Anguilla and after going through customs and receiving a new stamp, we found that we had to take a taxi to get to the Thrifty rental car facility. This kind of negated the purpose of the rental car. Caribbean taxis are often expensive and we figured we would do better with a rental car, but when our driver, Evan, dropped us off at Thrifty, even he suspected something was up. There was no activity. Dark interior, locked doors. Luckily I hadn’t paid anything ahead of time, and just canceled the reservation and Evan kindly drove us the rest of the way to the Zemi Beach LXR resort for a nominal fee.
The LXR is a luxury brand of Hilton hotels and we were upgraded thanks to Nicole’s Hilton Honors diamond status. Our ocean-view room would normally go for $1099 per night. It’s that extra $99 that seems out of line. We had some chocolates and champagne welcoming us to the room.
After getting settled, we headed to the beach to lounge for a spell. I did a little bit of reading of The Quiet American. It put me to sleep after getting through just two pages. — probably not the kind of review its author Graham Greene was hoping for. In any event, it was relaxing just to sit for a bit and not have to worry about anything.
Our room is quite large and we have a balcony that is large enough to have two loungers and a separate table and chairs. It is very quiet here despite its appearance as a large resort. It has a 75 room capacity, but I think most are vacant. It makes sense since there is only one regularly scheduled commercial flight per day on a 76 seat Embraer 175. I enjoy quiet. We have yet to really explore much outside the hotel, but so far Anguilla has had a nice calming effect.
We watched the sun dip lower on the horizon from our large balcony before going down to dinner. Unlike the Conrad properties we stayed at on Bora Bora or the Maldives, we are not a captive audience and have options to eat elsewhere on the island. Thus, the prices at the hotel’s own restaurants were actually reasonable. I had a Caribbean red chicken curry and Nicole had an eggplant pizza. We washed our food down with a couple of Red Stripes.
After a more than filling dinner, we walked around the property a bit more before returning to our very large room to unwind from unwinding. I look forward to all the things we don’t have planned for tomorrow. At long last, and despite the Miami airport’s best efforts to ruin our week, we have arrived.
passports & pepto bismol 