Ae fond kiss and then we sever, ae fareweel and then for ever...

Or, in our case, one last day with new found friends and then we head home. Our last full day started and continued according to the usual formula. The sun woke me up, I got up and kissed The Goddess who grunted her usual morning benediction and then I left the house for our breakfast pastries. Coming back, The Goddess had finally resurrected and after breakfast we followed our new purification ritual. (I'm having way too much fun with this particular allusion to stop now.) The outdoor showers at Club Fantastico are too much fun. The whole poolside setup with the trough-shaped hot tub made me think of Roman baths, or at least what they might have been like if the Romans ever made it from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean. I never quite figured out why the British and American pronunciations of Caribbean are so different, with the emphases on different syllables. Since I'm British and it's our language anyway, my version must be the right one. Obviously.

OK, now the linguistic war has been settled to my satisfaction, back to our narrative. After breakfast we somehow found ourselves on the Club O beach again. I think it may have had something to do with our rental car. Either that or we finally managed to master the physics of teleportation and beamed ourselves down there. We hit our usual spot but it didn't seem to feel a thing. And so the morning progressed along to its normal pattern, a permutation of snoozing, bobbing and swimming. No drinking this morning, since I decided to clean up my act a little or at least deferring my alcohol intake until it was at least 12 o'clock where I was. That meant I did my morning swim without claiming my prize afterwards.

When lunchtime came round, we made our way down the beach to Ethnic, which had become our regular haunt, to have lunch and bid farewell to Marie, our usual waitress there. Marie is a strikingly good-looking Creole girl and a wonderful free spirit. At the end of this seaon, she is heading to an island in the Indian Ocean to continue her travels and see even more of the world. So, unless serendipity steps in, we're unlikely to ever meet again. That's life, huh? My last lunch was a pot of Moules Marinierre that should really have been enough for the two of us. It was a busy day on the beach and the place was buzzing with the usual French family lunchers plus a gaggle of cruise ship drones, with their permanently closed minds and narrow horizons.

Look... can we talk? Cruise ships have lots of passengers and so by the law of averages there will always be some among them that are just pathetically small minded and parochial. For the benefit of the group sitting beside us, French Fries are only called that in North  America, hamburgers originated in Germany and being topless is not the same as nudity and women can be topless anywhere on French beaches regardless of what the fussy, prematurely middle-aged mother of the group thinks is proper or respectable. I'm sorry, folks, but the more I run into cruise people the less I think of them and they just bring out the worst snob in me. To make matters worse, there was the case of the brain-dead lardass that was taking pics on Club O beach in the afternoon, including shots of a young family. Whe he realized he had been rumbled and security was heading down, he went into Papagayo and deleted the pics. Security challenged him and his buddies on his way back and the offending shots had gone. He then started shouting at the family, who had plainly seen what he had been doing and then wanted to fight with Security. Good luck on that one.

So, here's the thing. There is a sign o the beach right at the start of the Club O chairs that says, NO PHOTOS. Now, with this cretin, his remedial reading classes obviously weren't enough for him to be able to read it. But what about those that can read it and just choose to ignore it? Maybe the message should be expanded for extra emphasis. Some possible versions spring to mind:
SHOW SOME CLASS. NO PHOTOS
or
NO PHOTOS. YES, YOU TOO. YOU'RE NOT SPECIAL.
or my preference
DON'T BE A DOUCHEBAG. NO PHOTOS.
What about it folks? Any other ideas?

Having got that out of my system, I do feel better, I must admit. So, let's get back to the report. Aside from the educationally challenged, walking slop bucket, the afternoon was as great as all the others have been. (My tenses are all over the place  in this report, so I crave your indulgence on that.) Swim, bob and smooch with my baby in the shallows and then the final swim of the beach before the end of Happy Hour. The Goddess arose and walked down to meet me and we had our final BBC while taking our leave of Willie, Club O's own Goddess of Fun and Frolic. I left her my cap for the Perch collection. My cap came for a cheese maker in Providence, Rhode Island and it kept my head from burning during my beach swims and by this time had faded from navy blue to a dark grey and was stiff with salt. The salt water seems to have been responsible for a lot of stiffening this past fortnight.

By 4:30, we were back at Club Fantastico and preparing for our last night out, finishing the last of the Pelforth Blond and after a swim and a shower we shared some humus and white wine with Chloë and Thierry and two of our fellow guest, who had generously contributed the comestibles. Then we left for Spiga to meet our beach buddies for our final island meal. Spiga's menu is pretty good and the prices are not bad. The Goddess had ravioli with a bolognese sauce. I had Cioppino and pretty good it was, although a little meager in the size of the helping. We shared a carpaccio starter which was very good but again they seemed to scrimp on the amount of carpaccio itself. The discovery of the evening was a chocolate hazelnut grappa. I'm not a real fan of sweet liqueurs, apart from Glayva and Drambuie and I usually consider grappa just a step up from ethanol as far as palatability is concerned but this was great. At that point however, began the comedy errors. We had arranged separate checks for the bill and I was explaining to our friends -- maybe 'pontificating' would be a better word -- about  service compris and French-side tipping. So I asked the waiter if it was service compris and he thanked me for asking and said it wasn't. Then I turned to The Goddess and asked her for the cash so that I could pay our bill. The ensuing conversation went something like this: 

She: I don't have it.
Me: You must have. I don't have it.
She: I asked you if you had your wallet.
Me: I do have my wallet. I just don't have the cash in it. The cash was in the envelope on the dresser for you to pick up.
She: [No words, just a particularly withering look.]


So, I ended up paying with plastic and forgoing the €=$ opportunity. Then, when the CC slip arrived, the was no option to add a tip (hence the nice note with the bill suggesting tips be made in cash) so our waiter must have figured that I had stiffed him (there's that word again).  We made our goodbyes to our friends and hightailed it out of there to cover my embarrassment when the waiter picked up the tipless payment.

A final swim and lounge in the hot tub brought our last full day to an end with the prospect of our return home looming.

Which, brings me to where we are now, on a United flight about an hour out of Newark. After our breakfast, we lounged and enjoyed the outdoor shower for the last time and air-dried in the sun. I delayed putting on any clothes for as long as possible and didn't put on my shoes until getting into the car to leave. It was hard to go and was made even more so by having to leave our new friends, despite the knowledge that, all things being equal, we would see them again next year. For us, being at Club Fantastico wasn't like staying at a resort or a hotel. It felt more like staying with old friends that we've known for years.

Return the car to AAA was as smooth as it could be. Myra processed us out and we were taken to the airport for our United flight. We hadn't done an online check-in and ended up with seats far apart. Once on board, good fortune kicked in and we managed to get together and in Economy Plus seats to boot. Bonus!

And at this point,with the narrative up to date, I will leave you perhaps until tomorrow when I make a final report round-up and contribute some last thoughts about the wonderful place to which we can't wait to return.