Bahahahamas with a splash of Frisco!

When you are forced to rethink your muchly publicised holiday plans of spending more than a week of sun, sand, and summery cocktails in Mexico because someone decides to declare a Swine Flu pandemic, you are swiftly required to make some important decisions in ones life. Do I still go beachy? Do I want to go tropical? Do I still want to go somewhere warm where I can continue to work on the tan that I have been slowly building over the last month? Yes. Important decisions to make.

So the decision was made, quite unintelligently I have to admit! It was a case of opening up JetBlue's routemap on their website (remembering the wonderful staff travel deal they provide us with) finding somewhere we could fly to from New York (where we were easily able to get to from Dubai), and then seeing which destination best suited our schedule. Nantucket? No, just sounds wrong. Charlotte? Jumping to stereotypical conclusions, sounded a little redneck for us. Nassau? Where? The Bahamas. Satisfying our beachal, tropical, and temperatural requirements, and also having a slight novelty factor of being out-of-the-way for a traditional New Zealand tourist, it was chosen. Five days in The Bahamas, followed by four days in San Francisco.

Our trip was planned so Adrian would return from a six-day work trip from Sydney and Auckland at 6am, we would spend all that day repacking his suitcase, relaxing and preparing for the holiday before flying out at 2am that night on an Emirates flight to New York. As things tend to not always go to plan, especially with this holiday, a instinctively checked the booked load on the JFK flight we were planning to go on, the night before Adrian was to depart on his long work trip. Uh oh... EK203 had been downsized, and what was meant to be a 354 seat B777-300ER with 250 passengers booked on it, was now planned to be operated by a 262 seat B777-200ER. It was too risky to try and 'hope' we would get on, when we had paid a substantial amount of money on hotel accommodation for when we arrived. Another important decision had to be made, Adrian was going to have to try and pack for his work trip, AND a two week holiday in the one suitcase as he would be landing from Sydney, and then running straight back to the airport again for the Emirates A380 flight to New York 2 hours later. No rest for the wicked!


Arriving 14hrs later, we had a night booked at a daggy JFK airport hotel so we could catch an early flight to Nassau the next morning at 7am. JetBlue came up trumps, we were checked in for our Carribean island getaway and took off with no worries on our minds.


The Sheraton Cable Beach Resort was to be our home for the next four nights, nestled on the shores of the most stunningly bright blue water I could ever have imagined. Our room wasnt quite ready when we arrived (we were there by 10:30am...) so we were able to use the resort in the meantime while it was spruced up by housekeeping. We had booked ourselves a 'resort-view' room, so upon exploring, we had decided that our room was probably going to overlook the kids-club or restaurant rooftop. We were finally allowed to checkin, and as we were taken further and further away from the reception, our room finally appeared on what was facing the opposite side to the resort grounds. Great. We were going to overlook the carpark or something equally as unpleasant. We swung the door open to a huge room, with a GIANT bed, sliding door onto a little balcony, and a view that was completely unobstructed of the Carribean Sea. The sun was shining bright, reflecting off the water, we knew we were in paradise.

Nassau itself was originally a pirate-town, now though, it is a tourist playground for the rich and famous. Cruise ships arrive daily, dropping hoards of Americans on the wharves for a day. The original (since copied by Dubai) Atlantis Resort is here. The sun-seekers head to the beaches, the adventurous head out on boats to go diving and snorkelling, the gamblers head to the pokies to spend their life savings, the kiwi-boys head on a self-drive mission. Hiring the scariest rental car we have ever driven for a day, the Hairy Canary circumnavigated New Providence Island, the main island where Nassau is and over 80% of the population. Whenever we found a beach worth stopping at (we literally could have stopped every 5 minutes) we would take the stolen hotel beach towels out and laze about before driving on to the next gorgeous location. Snorkelling one day, we were buzzing about over some coral when I looked down to the seafloor (only about a metre deep) to find a huge stingray floating along the bottom. As I saw it, Adrian did too and before you could have time to let out a little pee in fright, we both swam away as fast as we could! I am sure it was harmless, but we weren't eager to find out!

Foodwise, the Bahamas could have perhaps done a little better. But this is a colony of islands, and anything has to be imported. With that said, the sealife becomes dinner, especially Conch, which is the meat from inside the most beautiful shells. Not really ready to munch on the guts of a shell (it is apparently nice), we were more happy to sip dacquiris and eat the culinary fare that we knew. San Francisco (Frisco, to me and Adrian - we like to think we are now locals) was next, and there would be plenty of gourmet food to chow down on there!

Flying back up to New York and then straight over to Frisco, transcontinental for 6hours, we met up with our friends Amy and Neil, from Dubai. We had left Neil in charge of organising some transport the following day, as we were all very keen to go up into the Napa Valley, home of California's wine region. In true American style, the 8 seater stretch limosuine turned up at 11am to begin 7 hours of winetasting. Our own driver, tinted windows, glam-factor aplenty, we will no longer settle for anything less! We saw five different wineries across the day, ate the most amazing lunch at a rustic cafe in Napa, drunk enough wine to make even the hardened boozehags proud, and fell asleep about 20mins before arriving back at the hotel!

Days spent wandering the streets, soaking up the springtime sun, eating our way from restaurant to restaurant, it is no wonder I was able to put on a bit of the weight I had lost through the stress of replanning the Mexican extravanza that never happened! Flying home, we decided to go back to Dubai with Air New Zealand to London and then on the EmiRAT to DXB. It was over too fast, but memories that will never be forgotten!