Friday 13th...

Friday 13th, an ominous day to return home to Ireland to get married! I’m sitting in Heathrow awaiting the last of my three flights, and will soon be back in Dublin. The wedding is tomorrow week. I cant believe how fast the time has gone. Jill arrived home last Sunday and has been running around all week making some last minute arrangements, which will continue well into next week. I cant wait until next Saturday. What was started five and a half years ago will take a big step, one I think we both knew would come from the moment we met (well, in all seriously maybe two days later when we were both a lot more sober and we actually got to chat properly!).
Anyway, to recap on the last month or so first…..
Johnny and Andrea arrived in Cayman in mid June to some of the worst weather we have had since last Autumn! It had rained nearly every day since Simon and Noreen’s departure, not the Irish kind of rain, but short, heavy showers at least once a day. The week Johnny and Andrea arrived though was dull and rainy, and unusual combination in Cayman. To make matters much worse, their baggage did not arrive with them, and in fact would not turn up for ten more days!
By Friday of that week there were fierce thunderstorms that shook the restaurant that we were eating in that night! On their first night we went out to Coconut Joes and met up with Cara and Justin who’s friends Michael and Claire had also arrived on the same flight to stay for a few weeks. We went out a couple of times that week, saving ourselves for Friday night when we went for a meal, and then out to the Ritz for cocktails. Jill had a work dinner but joined us afterwards, around the same time as the rest of the gang joined us after having to leave Hammerheads, a primarily outdoors bar that had been washed out of it with the heavy rain! It certainly was a gloomy start for the guys, with not an ounce of sunshine since their arrival, and no clothes or any sign of them arriving! So, in true supportive fashion, Jill and I left “the rock” the next day and flew to Orlando with Dec, Jimmy, Murph, Mairead and her daughter Caoimhlionn!
The rest of the guys had arrived on the Friday, so we were playing catch up. We flew into Tampa, which is on the West Coast of Florida, about an hour’s drive to Orlando in the East. Jill was pushing me to upgrade our car rental to a convertible, and disappeared off to the bathroom while I negotiated with the car rental lady. By the time she came back we had the keys to a shiny, black Hummer with Sat Nav and all the bells and whistles. When in Rome…
Disneyworld is hard to explain. It is vast, bigger and better than I could ever have imagined. The actual acreage of Disneyworld (not including the rest of Orlando where the other parks are) is twice the size of Manhattan. They employ 80,000 staff to run the place!! We had booked into the cheapest Disney hotel, “World of Movies” or something like that. I didn’t expect much, but it was still class. The check in building has a little cinema where kids can watch cartoons whilst the parents check in. They really think of everything! We got on the road and agreed to meet with Dec and Jimmy who were on their way to the Magic Kingdom after having visited three parks already that day (it was 6:30 at night by the time we got in). I wasn’t that pushed, thinking it was all for kids and not as good as some of the other adventure parks, but I was very wrong. The Magic Kingdom is what Disneyworld is all about. Yes, its great for kids, but equally brilliant for adults. The sheer look of the place is amazing, like being in a fairytale story, but full of Americans! It is also the most efficient place in the world, where everything works smoothly, is controlled fantastically, and with a huge amount of thought, such as people employed to skip ropes for passing children, or to hand out hula hoops!! Apparently the repair crew work tirelessly to ensure that every bulb is working, and no screw is loose in the park, and it shows!
The rides are great fun (especially Space Mountain which is well worth waiting for, an indoor roller coaster in the dark!), plenty of which soaked us, but the really great parts were the parade and the fireworks that follow. The parade passes through the whole park and is a feast of colour. Lights, music, and dancing. The photos didn’t come out well, but its probably for the best as you really have to see this thing to appreciate it. The fireworks afterwards were equally spectacular. Is unbelievable to think that this happens every night of the week, all year round! By the time it was all over, it was 12:30 and we wee shattered! We took a steamboat back across lake Buena Vista to the car park (the boat trip is cool enough in its own right), and headed home for the night, with not a drop of alcohol in our systems, an unusual Saturday night for us all!
The next day I had to drop the Hummer back to the airport. We met up with Murph and Mairead for breakfast, and then begun the disaster that was the return of the car. The less said about it better, but we wasted nearly two hours of our morning!
Our plan for the day was to visit Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure, adjoining theme parks on the other side of Orlando. I had been advised that Islands was the best in Orlando, and it lived up to expectations! It isn’t as well run or clean and efficient as Magic Kingdom, but I’m nit picking now!
The Spiderman 3-D ride is great, as is the Hulk roller coaster, both Dueling Dragon rollercoasters, the water rides, and everything else we went on. There is just so much to do! We thankfully bought the Express passes, which saved us hours. The normal queue for Spiderman was 90 minutes. It took us 5!
Jill nearly braved the Dueling Dragons rollercoaster, and was even strapped in, ready to go at one stage, but she saw red and asked to be left off before it got going. She was probably right, as we were three seconds short of getting sick by the end of it!
After going on all the main rides, we headed next door to Universal Studios, the original theme park on the site, to get as much in as we could in the remaining two hours (it closes at 10pm). Universal’s rides aren’t quite as good, but Shrek 4D is good fun (basically a cinema where you watch a 20 minute Shrek min-film with wind, heat, and water spraying you at key moments), as is Twister and Jaws to a lesser degree. The Mummy was great, similar to Spiderman in some ways, but a mini roller coaster also. Definitely recommended.
After the park closed, the original plan was to walk back through the bars/ clubs area in Universal, and stay out, but we were all wrecked so we jus got some food in Bubba Shrimp restaurant and hit the hay!
The next morning was meant to spent in a Water Park, but we all kind of slept in, and as our flight was at 2pm from Tampa, we just had time to spend an hour in the malls before heading home.
By the time we got back to Cayman, the weather had much improved, and thankfully Johnny and Andrea had seen the sun for a few days. They had gone out on the Sunday night (it was a bank holiday weekend) with all of our normal gang, and had a great night by all accounts.
The rest of the week was spent chilling out, with a few dinners and drinks thrown in, building up to a weekend of Hens and Stags! It all kicked off on the Friday night, with Jill’s hen. 30-40 women got dressed up to the nines, met up for cocktails and then were escorted in Limos to the Ritz for more drinks, before finally arriving in the Wharf restaurant where the monthly Boogie Nights was taking place. Jill arrived back at 1:30 in the morning, completely hammered but surprisingly awake and still standing. I think adrenaline kept her going, but she had a great night! We on the other hand all bailed over to Murph’s, where we played cards, drank beer, and basically lost money (well at least I did…). Saturday morning, myself and Johnny headed up to the golf course to get nine holes in before the stag kicked off at 1pm. Myself and a mate of mine, Micheail, and another guy we know, Paul Fitz, had agred to a shared stag, as there are only so many weekends to organize these things, and our mates are broadly similar, what with us all being Paddys and all that! It kicked off around 1pm in the Triple Crown, with breakfast and Guinness for 30-40 lads. Just before the bus arrived at 3pm, the “Committee” who had organized the stag (represented for me by Gav Tobin) handed out our costumes for the day. First up was Micheail, who donned a full dress, wig (he is bald as a coot) and handbag. Next was Paul who claimed his sore back prohibited him from wearing his skirt and handbag (I still haven’t figured out how sore back equals no dress, but nevermind). The last handed out was to me. There I was thinking: “a dress, no problem, wore them in college singing in drag in front of 400 people, this is no hassle”. I was handed an adult sized nappy, a pin to keep it on, and a soother! Ah well, you have to be a sport in these type of things!
The day’s plan was to take a bus tour of all the local Caymanian bars around George Town. We started in a place called “Country & Western”, but myself and Micheail decided to go in together, ahead of the lads, to see what reaction we would get. We strolled in, me in a nappy, Micheail in a dress and wig, took a seat at the bar, and ordered two beers, not a smile or grin on our faces. To say you could hear a pin drop is an understatement! The silence was soon shattered by the two bus loads of ex-pats storming in behind us, everyone wearing the required Hawaiian shirts! The photos of me playing pool wearing a nappy are genuine. I beat one of the locals who kind of fancied himself as a Paul Newman type. Pretty embarrassing for me to beat someone, more embarrassing when I’m wearing a nappy and nursing my Miller Light like it’s mother’s milk! We marched on after a couple of beers, and made our way around countless bars, as I downed countless more shots and slowly but surely became more and more intoxicated. One of the last bars I can really remember was at around 8pm, where we were all dancing to cheesy 90s dance tunes, and I was up on the bar boogying with Micheail and Dave, one of my clients from work. Needless to say, crowd surfing soon followed, as the locals and staff all joined in with us. A few days later, one of the lads was telling me that the only thing that kept him going were the “Bud E’s” (a canned drink of Budweiser and Red Bull). I commented that I should have had a few to keep me going aswell. He “reminded” me that I had many! Ah well, small details. Anyway, the stag ended up in Fidels Irish Bar, a bad idea from the start. The crowd of lads dispersed, after arriving to a cold reception from various Brits and Irish who were enjoying a quiet Saturday night pint whilst watching the boxing. I bailed with Johnny at around 10:30pm, apparently changing out of my nappy in the middle of the street before Johnny put me wide! I fell out of the cab, stumbled to the pool where Jill and a few of the girls had been drinking the hair of the dog for around 6 hours, and was promptly thrown into the pool. I apparently went straight to bed afterwards, although Jill partied on until 2am!! I admit, she is a much better drinker than me when it comes to the crunch!
At around 6am I woke with a blinding headache, proceeded to go downstairs to get some Aspirin, and decided to let the dogs out. Toby ran off, so I had to chase after him, realizing minutes later that I was only wearing my boxers, before going back to get a towel to wrap around me so that I could continue my search! I sobered up much later after another little sleep!
After a weekend of madness, we wound down Johnny & Andrea’s holiday, sorry to see them go, but sorrier that we hadn’t been able to spend more time with them. The rest of the week was spent working, sleeping, and recovering, and then out for a quiet dinner with Cara and Justin and their friends Michael and Claire, who were going home the next day. We all went for an early meal up in Pappagallos, where plenty of wine was consumed, before heading to the Ritz for some champagne Mojitos, and then on to the nightclub (O Bar) for good measure. The heads were hanging again the next day, so we took it easy, and then went on a boat trip on the Sunday with some friends, wisely not going out afterwards! It was another bank holiday weekend, so we still had the Monday off. Rather than waste it, we went out on a one tank boat dive with our new deep diving underwater camera case. After descending we had the lucky opportunity to follow a turtle for a while, which was great. The photos may bore the rest of you, but unless you’ve ever dived, it’s just hard to appreciate!
Over all this time we had to start the wedding table plans, begin tying up loose ends for the wedding, and start confirming missing RSVPs. Jill had finished work the day of her hen, and spent the next two weeks lying in the sun, working on her tan! Her flight home was last Saturday, and the previous night she went out on Sarah’s Hen night, the fiancée of Micheail, whom I had a joint stag with. I went out with the boys to play pool, and Jill promised to be home early to be fresh for her flight. Sure enough, her mates all made sure she enjoyed her last night in Cayman as a single woman, and she came home in a “merry” fashion. My heart went out for her the next morning when she got up with me, and headed over to the pool for a last few hours in the sun, still quiet drunk! I had arranged to fly to Miami that same afternoon, to meet with Niall and Alex who were in Florida for two weeks. Jill headed home to dull Ireland, I headed off to stay in one of the best hotels on Miami Beach with great friends, to relax and enjoy myself! Miami was great. We stayed in Loews on Miami Beach, which I cannot recommend enough. It is literally on the beach, and full of fabulous people (note: fake boobs and face lifts all over the place!). We went out for dinner on Espagnolla Way, dining in an Italian restaurant right beside where they were having a free outdoor street concert with authentic Cuban musicians. They danced beside our table, and the music was great. We hit the hay early, with wake up calls the next morning at 8am to get us up for our Everglades Trip.
The Everglades is great, but not as good as I expected. We had booked an airboat ride, but it is very touristy (as one can expect being a tourist), but we go to see 5/6 alligators, and the animal show afterwards was great, allowing us to hold an alligator (cue photo opp!). After some shopping in the avo, and dinner, I headed home to Cayman, leaving the guys to enjoy the rest of their week.
This week has been madness, with me having to work late every night to get things done before I leave, with loads of errands to run for the wedding etc. Our lease on our condo is up at the end of this month, so whilst Johnny and Andrea were over, we viewed a beautiful 3 bed house on the beach in South Sound (the other side of town), with rap around balcony where the dogs can lie out, and decided to move in next month, the day after we arrive back from our Honeymoon!! Our house is now packed up and ready to go for when we arrive back at 10pm on the 31st. We cant wait, as we have always wanted to live on the beach, and this place is perfect. For anyone left who is thinking of visiting this year, we now have 2 spare rooms, but note that my mum and her aunt are coming in early October for 2 weeks, followed straight away by Joyce and her friend Sandra, for their second visit!
It will be great moving into a beautiful house on the beach straight off our honeymoon, as a newly married couple!
The next week will be madness, I am sure, but were really looking forward to it. I cant wait to catch up with everyone, beginning tomorrow with my “proper” stag in Waterford. Looking forward to next Saturday more than I can put into words. I will be a married man in 8 days, and I cant wait!
Esta la vista!