Hot Tub and Soirée on the Beach

Grand Cayman Travelog #12
Westin, Grand Cayman - Wed, 17 May 2023, 9pm

After a nap of a few hours this afternoon I was feeling... well, if not better at least less bad. I frittered around the room doing quiet things for a while (like catching up part-way on blogging) then changed into my swim trunks to go downstairs for the hot tub. En route to the hot tub we stopped at the pool bar for a pair of piña coladas, Hawk's a virgin (no alcohol) and mine... experienced. 😅🍹😋

After a pleasant soak we headed back upstairs to shower and change for our evening soirée. The company had another catered group dinner this evening, this one on the beach.



We all arrived as the sun was setting over the Caribbean Sea next to us. The food wasn't quite ready (servers were still setting things up) so a bunch of us took turns making photographs with the sunset.

Dinner began as the sun dropped below the horizon. Food-wise it was quite a big spread of various meats, virtually all of them overcooked and dried out. I give them an A for effort and D for execution. But there was an open bar. That can make up for a lot of culinary shortcomings. 😂

As dinner wound down our head of sales and CEO spoke. The head of sales recognized each person who joined Club this year and said something nice personally about each of us. The CEO spoke, too, and kept his part brief, mostly just "Rah, rah, let's go out after this and have even more success this year!" It was kind of a wrap-up dinner as club ends officially tomorrow morning. A few of us are staying on, though, on our own dimes.

After dinner there was dancing with a DJ playing music. I noted with some amusement that the music was all "Greatest hits from the late 1980s". It's almost like most people here are as old as me. 🤣 I didn't dance, though, as I wasn't really feeling it. We left the party somewhat early, just before 9, and headed up to the room to wind down.

Tonight I'm going to get to bed early again— I'm still a bit tired— and hopefully this time sleep the whole night through. Tomorrow we aim to get up early and fill the day with activities on our own.

Up Early for Breakfast

Grand Cayman Travelog #13
Westin, Grand Cayman - Thu, 18 May 2023, 7:45am

Today we got up early— reasonably early, like at 6:30am rather than struggling to fall asleep most of the night like Tuesday night— to walk on the beach in the morning. But first, breakfast!

One of the perks of my lifetime titanium status with Marriott at this hotel is a breakfast coupon for two each day. Hawk and I normally aren't big breakfast people. We're fine with a protein bar and a bottle of water or soda in the room. But as long as the breakfast is comped it seems a shame not to at least consider eating it.



I'm glad we chose to check out the breakfast spread our first day here. Unlike the sad assortment of prepackaged sugary crap cheaper hotels offer everyone for free, this breakfast buffet is quite good. There are boxed cereals and a bucket of oatmeal for people who really want them, but there are also freshly made pancakes, french toast, and omelets. There are sugary muffins and sweets like banana bread, but they're all freshly made, not delivered in plastic wrap from the factory. And there are also European style cold cuts of meat and cheese in addition to American breakfast meats like sausage and bacon.

Oh, and there are great view of the ocean. The pic above is a photo of our breakfast table after we set our plates down on it.

This comped breakfast turns out to save us a bundle... depending on how we calculate it. One of my colleagues told me the normal price is 50 USD. So on the one hand we're saving $100/day— an epic benefit for elite status!

But on the other hand, we'd virtually never choose to pay $50 apiece for this food. We'd instead have breakfast in our room with protein bars we've already brought from home, supplemented by odds and ends we'd pick up from a local convenience store or grocery store. That breakfast would cost us about $5 apiece, not $50.

So, how much is free breakfast worth to us, $10 or $100? The answer is somewhere between those two figures. Filling up on a high quality, satisfying breakfast means we can go lighter/simpler on lunch. Maybe we'll even eat those protein bars instead of spending, say, $40 on a lunch tab for two.

Morning Walk on Seven Mile Beach. This Conch Shell is Occupied!

Grand Cayman Travelog #14
Westin, Grand Cayman - Thu, 18 May 2023, 9:45am

Our choice to get up early this morning wasn't just so we could enjoy a fantastic breakfast at the restaurant's 7am opening, it was so that we could enjoy a fantastic breakfast and then go walking on the beach and be back by 9:30.

Our hotel is on Grand Cayman's famed Seven Mile Beach. It's full of soft, almost white sand in both directions. Waves are very gentle, and the water is warm enough to walk right in. Seven Mile Beach is an amazing beach, likely one of the best in the world. One of our tour guides yesterday let us in on a little secret, though. It's not really seven miles long. 😱 It's not even close. Maybe it used to be 7 miles, but a hurricane several years ago tore away part of it. The guide says it's less than 4 miles long now. 😕



We decided to walk south from our hotel this morning, get as far as the (now truncated) end of the beach, and turn around back to the hotel. We'll walk north from our hotel another time, perhaps tomorrow morning.

Off in the distance we could see 3 cruise ships moored the port in George Town. "Uh-oh," we thought, "Stuff's going to be crowded later today when we go out." We were glad we were getting an early start on the day.

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One thing that made this walk on the beach special was finding a conch. Well, we didn't find the conch; a family wading in the water found it. They were talking excitedly about it as we passed and shared their find with us. To date I've only ever seen a conch shell, a dried and empty shell. This conch shell still has the conch in it!