Day 193 - Tuesday, July 12th, 2011

The day began with an emotional final smoothie before a few hours' work in the Montreal office. At 11am, via a quick dash back to the hotel for luggage, it was off by taxi to the airport and a very pleasant 4 hour flight to Miami with American Airlines. Very pleasant because it was equipped with Wi-fi, so cue lots of amusing messages and interactions on FaceBook from 34,000 feet up. They were showing just one film - Rango, which I had seen before but watched some of it again as it was quite the hoot.

There was a 3-hour stopover in Miami Airport, which seemed very pleasant, apart from the plethora of affected pre-teen girls that were wandering around in their high heels and screeching the words "like" and "super-nice" repeatedly into their mobile phones. Is it wrong to wish to impale such creatures on iron spikes? Yes, you're right, it possibly might be.

A Caribbean restaurant was visited for dinner, with my first taste of Conch in the form of Conch Fritters, which weren't fantastic - maybe it was just that particular place, but conch appears to have the consistency of vulcanized calamari. The Jerk Chicken burger and fries were tasty though.

The AA (American Airlines as opposed to Alcoholics Anonymous or Automobile Association) flight to Grand Cayman boarded on time, but was delayed for 20 minutes whilst the doors were re-opened for an extended family who forgot to board the first time. The short 70 minute flight afforded fine sunset views over Cuba before landing in Cayman at 7.30pm.

Immigration and customs, notoriously slow in Cayman, took just about 20 minutes, which could have been worse. My boss Karen very kindly came to collect me, even though I was due to pick up a rental car - she must have foreseen that the rental office had already closed. After an hour in the office, we arrived at my apartment for the month, only to discover high heel shoes and drapery-loads of clothing all over the place upon entry - Leah from the Dublin office had been there for a few days and was due to stay until Saturday and neither of us had any idea that the other would be there, especially Leah, given the cucumber face-mask that she was wearing! Add the fact that the air con was not working, making it a boilingly humid 90 degrees inside, and one has a pretty disastrous introduction to the island on one's hands!

At least the apartment has 2 bedrooms, so Leah cleared her things from one of them, allowing the unpacking process to occur, although it was a tentative one, given the lack of desire to stay there much longer.

 
A verdant palmy walkway from the plane to immigration

Contentment : 12 / 25
Excitement :    2.5 / 10
Memorability : 5.5 / 15

Overall Score : 40% (83rd out of 193)