Anyways, back to the blog about Jamaica. We left Houston on Thursday, August 9th. After dropping our
Getting ready to be out of town is a lot of work, so we felt good once we checked our bags and made it through security. We had lunch at Chili's near our terminal and were excited to be on vacation. Our flight left Houston at 11:40 a.m. and with one stop in Miami, we were scheduled to be in Jamaica by 7:30 that night. Only, that's not what happened... We made it to Miami fine, had time to grab a quick sandwich to eat for dinner on the plane, and boarded our flight. But, then we sat on the runway for an hour. The captain reported that in the pre-flight check by the engineers, hydraulic fluid had been found leaking from the landing gear. We were thankful they found the problem before we needed the landing gear and waited as they figured out what they were going to do. Finally, they told us we were getting off the plane and the problem would be fixed in 2-3 hours. Go have dinner they encouraged us, and we'll be off in no time. Only after JW and I got back to the gate after another airport meal no one was there except the gate staff who told us the flight had been cancelled. We were to head to another gate where they would re-book our flight for in the morning and give us vouchers for meals and a hotel. Apparently a few other flights had been canceled as well and we were one of the last to the re-booking line where only one attendant was helping hundreds of the unhappy people.
Long story short, after 2 hours of waiting in line, we will never fly American Airlines again! We finally made it to the counter which now had 3 people working, to be given a dinner voucher, at midnight after we had already eaten, a voucher for what we would find to be a terribly dumpy hotel, a breakfast voucher, and our boarding pass for our flight to Jamaica at 6 a.m. the next morning. By then, we had called our resort in Jamaica and let them know we wouldn't be checking in until tomorrow and they were happy to extend our stay until the following Friday, allowing us the full seven nights we had purchased. The airline was unable to reschedule our flight for the following Friday at that time because their flights were all booked. They put us on a waiting list with instructions that we would have to call and check throughout the week to see if we could move our returning flight. So, now at midnight on the first night of our vacation we were off to find the shuttle to our hotel without our checked bags that contain toiletries and fresh clothes for a few hours of sleep since we had to be back at the airport by 4:00 a.m. the next morning.
I have never in my life been to a more disgusting hotel... the room numbers were pieces of paper taped on the doors. We were so tired though. After updating our parents and calling the airline one last time, our heads finally hit the pillow after 1 a.m. We woke up the next morning at 3:30, brushed our teeth with one of our complimentary toothbrushes- the other one was dirty, and caught the shuttle back to the airport.
Happy to leave this dump behind us.
I was more than ready to use my breakfast voucher for my morning tea after we went through security, only the restaurants weren't open yet! We finally found one coffee bar at the other end of the airport and spent every bit of both our dinner vouchers from the night before and breakfast ones, just so the airline would have to spend that money. We left with fruit, water bottles, and juice to spare. :) We boarded our flight and landed in Jamaica before 7 a.m. their time, finally!
We went through customs, and had to find transportation to our hotel, since the transportation we had arranged for was not there by the time we landed. We arrived at our resort, checked in, had a wonderful breakfast, took a much needed shower, and headed to the beach. Our first day was filled with a lot of napping and relaxing. We were very thankful to finally be there! Here are a few pictures of our room and the resort.
Ocean view from our balcony
Picture of our second floor balcony
Our resort was large and spread out like a village, so it was a little difficult to capture in a picture, but we loved it.
This is the front of our building. Our room was on the far left on the second floor.
Don't worry. The vacation definitely gets better from here! :)
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