What better way to start this blog than with the Present! We have plenty of stories from the past, but let me just start with our trip to Atlantis Paradise Island Bahamas. We just return home yesterday from 5 wonderful days in beach paradise.

Day 1:

We had a 5:50 flight out of Atlanta so we decided to head down right after church Sunday. Jon's mom, Deborah, kindly dropped us off so that we would not have to pay the parking fee to store our car for the week. When we arrived, things went so smoothly. Normally at the Atlanta Airport going through check in and then security takes a really long time, but miraculously we made it through both within 10 minutes. Just our luck, no lines!

When we landed in Nassau, we grabbed our one pice of luggage and took a taxi over to the hotel. The Taxi driver was nice, but my oh my was it expensive! $35 for just a few miles. When we arrived at the Comfort Suites, we were so excited! The place looked fantastic and lucky us, we had a bargain on the rate which included complementary passes to Atlantis every day.  So Jon and I went inside to check in and found out that the hotel overbooked. There was no room available for us.

We immediately called our Travel Agent (AKA CheapCaribbean.com) hoping that they could get us set up at another hotel, after all they sold us the trip, right. But, turns out that Cheap Caribbean has bankers hours and if its after 9 pm they cannot help. Are they serious? Yes, apparently so.

At this point we turn back to the hotel manager and they agree to set us up at a nearby hotel. 5 minutes away, they say. We grab another taxi to this new hotel and arrive there around 9:45 pm. This hotel is suppose to be all inclusive, so that should be a plus, right? By now, we were really hungry too, so a free dinner may make up for things.

We check in only to find out that the free food closes up at 10 pm and it is 9:50 already. So we both run (literally) with luggage in hand to the restaurant and grab what little food is left on the buffet. We stuff our faces as quickly as possible since we now have less than 5 minutes to eat and get out. The food was awful. I don't know whether to attribute that to us getting there at closing or if the food really was awful, but either way it was just nasty. It definitely did not make up for us not having a room.

Still hungry and very tired, we finally made our way to our room. Although not exactly the type of room I had planned to spend our night in paradise in, it worked. We really didn't want to complain anyway - what good would it do now. I guess I won't go into detail about the room, but just for everyone's future reference I do not recommend the Paradise Island Harborside Resort.


Day 2:

Monday morning we both decided to make the best of the day even though things had already went sour last night. We had breakfast at the Free Buffet, the same one as the night before. Breakfast was okay. Bacon, Eggs, fruit, the usual. It was good enough to get us going. After breakfast, Jon and I had to journey back to the Comfort Suites to get our Atlantis passes. This was awfully inconvenient especially since we had to walk there. It wasn't too far, but it was a good hike and in 90 degrees a short hike seems even longer. We got our passes from the manager and proceeded to enjoy our fun day. Before getting into the water, we decided to ask about the Dolphin and Sea Lion encounters. These were not included in the price and would cost us additionally. That was okay though because we had planned for this. The desk clerk told us all about the excursions and so us on the Trainer for a Day one. We would come back first thing tomorrow and get passes.

Right as we rented our locker, Jon received a call from Cheap Caribbean. Yeah! They should have some good new for us finally. He was on the phone with them for some time when we both realized that they were not doing anything for us except finding us another room and charging us for it. She told Jon that she found a few rooms at a few other hotels (None in Atlantis) but she would be charging our credit card $600 for the increase cost for the room. Please tell me how this is helping us out in anyway. We could of called around and paid the difference ourselves. Finally after what amounted to about an hour of arguing, we told them that we were not paying more and that we were done with talking with them about it. It was at this point that I decided I would make it known to everyone I knew how worthless Cheap Caribbean was. We would not ever use them again since they cannot help us out in any significant way.

The rest of the day seem to go as planned. We slathered on sunscreen. We rode the slides over and over and over. We slathered on more sunscreen. We had lunch by the pool. We explored the aquarium. We swam in the pool a while. We slathered on sunscreen again. We rode the slides again and the lazy river. It was a great day!

Lunch = $30.00

It was a BIG burger though.

That evening we wanted to eat at the Steak House restaurant. It looked so good. But just our luck, they were all booked up for reservations and did not take walk ins. We settled for a different place and it was not good. $100 for just so, so food, puts a really bad taste in your mouth. After dinner we enjoyed some Ben & Jerry's ice cream, marveled at the million dollar boats we can't afford, and headed back to our hotel. We didn't walk because it was dark and we didn't feel safe enough walking that far. If we had been in the original hotel it would have been just across the street, but instead we paid $9 + $1 tip for a taxi to take us about a 1/2 mile. Day 2 and I can already tell our budget is going to be blown!

Day three to be continued....