Saturday, June 29th, 2002<br>Well, for a travel day this was probably one of our least painful to deal with to date! Yes, it was long, but not too stressful. I was up ahead of the alarm. Couldn't sleep. Guess I was excited about our trip! Last minute things to do last night so we didn’t get to bed until 10:30, so needless to say, I wasn’t too chipper at 3:30am. I was moving pretty slow at that hour, but had enough time to shower and be ready for our 4:45am pick-up to head into Logan airport. Since we didn’t have any checked baggage we went right through the security line without any wait and headed to the gate. No line, no search and David didn’t set the alarm off this time (this was a first). We were at our gate at 5:20am. Now we sit and wait. A bit after 6am they opened the counter. I was slightly worried about this part since we only had an e-ticket. Smooth sailing - all set and we still get to board first because David still has his AA Gold status. We only care about that because we need room in the overhead to put our carryons and sometimes when you board last, there’s no room left for your stuff! The flight is full from Boston to Puerto Rico. We taxi out on time, but don’t take off until almost 7:30am. Oh, oh, captain comes on and tells us that due to storms down south we have to go the long way and will arrive an hour later than our scheduled arrival time. This will be a problem for our connection. Wow! We somehow made up some time and got in only 10 minutes late. Just enough time to get to the next gate and take the bus out to our ATR connection to Beef Island. We arrive on time at 1:15pm. New airport was nicer than we thought it would be. BVI immigration was slowwwwww, almost purposely so. Oh well, we’re on island time now! The customs officer was sweet - he realized we’d been to Tortola before, chatted with us a minute and then we were on our way. Our ride to Lambert Beach was waiting for us. Off in no time and arrived at Lambert Beach in about 10 minutes. Sweet! Checked in, very easy, everything in order and off to our room. We are in the second row of buildings from the beach, but our room faced the water. I think that even though we requested a gardenview room, they may have upgraded us to the oceanview room. The room is a good size, with two twin beds pushed together to make a “king”, a desk, an armoire, a luggage rack, and a couple of chairs. Nice patio area, which is covered, with a coffee table, two chairs, small wet bar and a small fridge. Modest accommodations, but definitely worth the price we paid. Grounds are very nice, lovely trees and shrubs, all well maintained. The pool is something. HUGE! Nice little swim-up bar. We unpacked our stuff and then headed into Roadtown to Bobby’s. Picked up a few provisions for the fridge and headed back to put everything away. Had our first rum punch (woo hoo)! I put in some 151 for good measure - boy, that stuff’ll put zip in your zipper! Then we headed to Fat Hog Bob’s for dinner. Nice deck seating and a lovely view. Very good food and service - we’d definitely recommend this restaurant. They were out of the bloomin’ onion, so I had the seafood chowder instead. No regrets there - it was delicious. Very similar to how we make fish chowder (chowdah) here in New England. David had the pumpkin soup - very tasty. I had the ribs and David had the roast pork for entrees. Both very enjoyable. No room for dessert. We chatted with four gentlemen who were on their last dinner out before heading home the next day. I don’t remember the name of the boat they were on, but it sounded like they had a great time. They offered to take our photo and I did the same for them. Headed back and tried to stay awake to digest a bit, but no such luck. So we took a peaceful swim in the pool - had it all to ourselves. How wonderful was that - just floating and staring up a sky full of stars. Wonderful end to the day! It had been a long one and we both crashed as soon as our heads hit the pillow.<br><br>Sunday, June 30th, 2002<br>Started waking up at 7:00am and said, oh, I’ll just rest a few minutes more. Woke up at 9:00am. Geez, guess we were really making up for being tired - we slept 11 hours. What a luxury!! No roosters in site or ear shot either - double woo hoo! Threw on our suits and went down to the beach. Walked and took pictures. It’s so beautiful here! We were also the only ones on the beach. Back at our room we made mimosas and sipped them while relaxing out on our patio. Had a breakfast snack and finished off the bottle of champagne. Decided to hang here at Lambert for a while. We loaded our collapsible cooler that we brought with us with some cold red stripes and headed down to the beach for some serious limin’. Spent a lot of time in the water. The seas were perfectly calm. I swam around the rocky outcropping on the east side of the beach as I was curious about the beach next to us which we saw from the plane upon arrival. There were a couple of boats anchored there and it looked gorgeous and pristine from the water. I didn’t swim all the way in as I was to tired and needed the energy to get back to Lambert. One of the locals told me it was called Lava Beach, but I don’t recall seeing that name on any map. Back sitting under the seagrapes - it just doesn’t get any better than this. Just a couple of other guests and a few locals here today. Mostly sunny. I sure hope this weather holds for us. It’s sooooo beautiful here. Biggest decision will be where to we want to have dinner tonight. As it’s Sunday, several of the places on our list are closed on Sundays. Figured we’d head to the West End and possibly the Jolly Roger. By the time we had our rum punches and cleaned up it was getting late. Headed out onto Ridge Rd. Rental car #2 isn’t much better than rental car #1. Yesterday’s had no side mirror and bald tires. Today’s has the engine light on and sounds like it’s gonna blow at any moment. We pulled into Sky World and enjoyed the view. As it was getting dark out we decided to stay for dinner. Big mistake. David had steak, I had lamb. Both meals were poor to terrible and the service was even worse. Yes, I know we’re on island time, but this was ridiculous. And, to top it off, it was outrageously expensive for the value received. We cannot recommend this restaurant and will never return - maybe not even for the view from their look-out spot on the roof. Got back to our room and I had tea and cookies, David had a bowl of cereal. Felt badly about dinner, but that’s in the past now. We easily fell asleep.<br><br>Monday, July 1st, 2002<br>Today is a public holiday - most businesses and shops are closed. Somehow I’ve already managed to lose my sunglasses. That’ll teach me for not buying one of those eyeglass holder string thingies before leaving for the trip! Went down to the beach for a while this morning. Made of couple of mini-movies with our new digital camera we just got a couple of days before the trip. Instant gratification being able to play it back. Went into Roadtown in search in search of a pair of sunglasses - quite the feat on a public holiday. Went to Riteway, Kmark, pharmacy, Bobby’s and then finally found a pair at the other Riteway in town. Had lunch at Pusser’s. I had a burger and David had the chicken quesadilla - very good and reasonably priced. Roadtown is deserted as it’s a holiday, so we head to Brewer’s Bay. It was very busy with local celebrations so we continued onto Cane Garden Bay. Cane Garden was pretty quiet - lots of music and partying going on at Stanley’s. Spent a lot of time in the water. Not a lot of shade available for me so we head back to Lambert. Oh, yeah, vehicle #3 on day number 3 is a Mitsubishi Montero - no extra charge for the upgrade - wouldn’t have expected one for the aggravation with car’s #1 and #2. Spoiled now though with a V6 loaded Montero vs. those crappy Geo Trackers we had. The roads don’t seem so bad now! We made some rum punches and headed to the pool. Wow! Four other people are at the pool, oh darn, we don’t have it all to ourselves. Hee hee. Gotta remember to take a couple of pictures of this pool, it’s pretty darn big. We then went down to the beach to watch the sun set. There was a single cat anchored off shore to enjoy the spectacle along with us. I got in the water and David ran to get the camera. David took some awesome shots. It was joyous and I am so lucky to be here with my honey. We stopped by the restaurant to check out their menu. We got cleaned up and decided to stay here for dinner as most of the restaurants on our list are once again closed due to the holiday. Plus it was getting pretty late and we didn’t feel like driving anywhere. The restaurant atmosphere is very nice. There were five other tables with diners. David had a chicken basil pasta, I had alfredo with vegetables. We both had house salads and they were very good. Also the pina colada’s were very good. Service wasn’t bad. Went back to our room and had a cup of tea. Oh-oh - I wake up at 2:00am and feel very sick. In and out of the bathroom - ouch. I get back to sleep around 3:30am. Then the phone rings at 7:30am - scared the hell out of us.<br><br>To be continued........
