Photos from the sunny Island of Barbados

These are going to be a bit randomly ordered as blogger is being a bit challenging, but bear with me.....

Kerry, aged 40 with her Happy Birthday choccies

The very beautiful St John' s Church

The view of the east coast from Cherry Tree Hill

What a monkey!

The spectacular puffy cloud sunset

And again...

Just like a travel magazine....on the beach at The House

Here's the pool

The bar formerly known as Cocomo's

The view from our table at the Round House in Bathsheba

The beaches of the rugged and wild East Coast

For makin' da rum....

St Nicholas Abbey - an old plantation house

Me, at North Point

North Point WITH the sun in the right place

Told you this was a random order! My cards on display in Barbados.

Another lovely sunset

And me opening my cards at Gatwick

In the bar at Cariba enjoying a superb rum punch

Stephen sailing off to Sandy Lane

Me typing up the blog on the deck

In Scarlett's with the funky decor

Look! Its raining inside!!! Tipping the water off the awning at Spago's

Swimsuits

As soon as we booked the holiday (August? September?) I rushed out to buy a couple of new swimsuits before they disappeared from the shops. There wasn't a lot of choice so I'm here with:

1: The Special K swimsuit. Its red, its cross over and plunging and when you lie down the hidden bra bit is no longer hidden as it stays in place and the outer fabric moves. Not a terrifically attractive look! So, obviously designed for poncing about in and swaggering about the beach which (not having the Special K body to match the swimsuit) I don't do...

2. The Speed Bump swimsuit. It stays in place, but forces the Twins together so they become conjoined twins. Who on earth thinks a woman wants her boobs to resemble a speed bump????

Thankfully both are an improvement on the knitted cozzie that I took to Florida a few years ago. I began to emerge from the pool and began to realise that I was pouring water from my costume and the gusset was hanging down to my knees! This thing had absorbed half the pool and was now depositing it back in the most humiliating way!! It was not worn twice I can tell you!!!

Bajan Tours

A little more Island touring was planned for yesterday, so we were up, showered, dressed and breakfasted for the crack of 10 o’clock…. Early starts on holiday were never really a strong point! Besides we are both sleeping like babies here. I can barely keep my eyes open past 10pm and we’re sleeping right through to 7:30. I guess that we need to catch up and, more importantly, r.e.l.a.x....something that Stephen is having difficulty with (as ever!).

We headed up to North Point (again) for some more photos of the rugged splendour. Its where the calm Caribbean Sea meets the Atlantic and there are usually some thundering breakers pounding the cliffs. Even on pretty calm days its something special. We had gone a slightly different route than the previous day (in other words we didn't get lost going!) and were treated to the spectacle of Bajan car collision. Everyone was standing about laughing and chatting, waiting for the police to arrive. Its a law that you have to leave your vehicles in position until they do, which gave us time to wonder as we squeezed our baby jeep past, how a car managed to have a low speed (there was no damage), head on collision with a BUS!

On the way from North Point to our next destination Stephen schreeched to a halt yelling "quick get the camera". I hastened to obey, wondering what he was so excited about...there were 3 Green Monkeys darting across the road into the trees. I was fully expecting them to scamper off when I rolled down the window, but they quite happily sat on the branches and posed for me!

From there we did a tour of the East coast: St Nicholas Abbey, Cherry Tree Hill (where you get a fantastic view of miles of coast line), Bathsheba and St Johns Church (truly a place where you feel it might be possible to believe in the whole closer to God thing. It is the most beautiful setting - on a hill with a commanding view of the coastline, with palm trees and tropical gardens. Stunning!

From there we got slightly lost coming back. They don't have meaningful road signs in the more rural areas, and although the roads on the map might be graded A, B or C its difficult to tel the difference when you're actually driving on them! They go from decent tarmac to bouncing along broken up tarmac in the blink of an eye. It makes navigating quite challenging!! We were actually navigating by the sun at one point!!!!

We stopped by Cocomo's for sundowners, although the sunsets haven't been that spectacular (aside from one or two nights). Its so hot and humid at the moment that we tend t get showers popping up just about the time the sun goes down. Saying that, it rained about 30 minutes ago and I'm sitting here on the deck watching the clouds light up in the most fantastic colours - even if the beautiful lit up clouds are obscuring the sun setting...

Dinner was in a little place right across the road from the hotel, called Scarlett's. Very funky! Its entirely red (who'd have guessed that from the name!) and has Warhol prints of Marilyn Monroe down one wall and Jackie Kennedy down the other. Very Funky! And OMG! the food was divine! I had a noodle and chicken salad and the flavours....wow!!

Today we drove down to Crane Beach and the Gap, then up to Earthworks Pottery for a look around and some lunch, before heading to Holetown to buys hats (we forgot to pack any and it has been so hot that I've been known to stick ice cubes into my hair to cool my head down!). We spent the afternoon on the beach (not the pool - a first!) and quickly realised why I prefer a deck to lay upon.... SAND! It gets everywhere!!! Still, I suppose its a good exfoliator....

Touring the Island

We hired a car for 3 days (S has ants in his pants and can't sit still!), so on Tuesday we headed off around lunchtime and headed off to Holetown for a quick bite to eat before setting off to tour the east coast. Of course, there were shops with beautiful shiny things in them...so it took us a couple of hours to have something to eat in between trying on watches (him) and necklaces (me). My birthday present was procured too. I love the necklace and Stephen is thanking his lucky stars that I didn't pick something more expensive!!

We got to North Point fairly late in the afternoon, so "the sun was in the wrong place" as usually happens with us! We got some okay shots, but decided to call it a day and come back in the morning. As usual we had a petite difficulty with the extensive road network.... "which way? Left or right?" "I don't know where we are! Was that single track road an A road??" (Thankfully its not a big island and sooner or later you hit a coast!). We were involved in a minor Road Traffic Accident though... we'd stopped behind a car behind a bus and the car behind us decided to overtake us all, and knocked our wing mirror with an almighty thunk as he did so! He stopped and apologised profusely, but actually no damage was done. These little Suzuki Jimny's are made of solid stuff!!

On the way home we stopped in at a bar/restaurant called Zuccio's in Holetown for a few drinks. As mentioned before we had seen Martin Taylor in concert on Friday and he'd played a tune that (as he explained) was a calypso song inspired by his nights drinking in a bar called Cocomo's on Barbados. Of course, we had to go there! It was under new ownership...and called Zuccio's, but still a fun place to hang out for a while.

Being indulged and indulgent at The House

We spent Monday lounging. The staff at The House are absolutely fantastic and we're feeling very pampered. After a champagne breakfast we headed to the pool deck where over the course of the day we had an ice bucket of bottled water, cold towels and ice cream delivered to us. After a spot of afternoon tea we asked for dinner recommendations and were booked into Spago's and packed into a taxi at the appropriate hour.

Spago's was fantastic! It had a tiny deck and a fairly intimate inside space. S was huffing a little as we'd been seated inside, but I was happy. We were by the shutters and by the window which meant a cross-breeze...perfect as it was about 30-odd degrees and 90% humidity. Even more perfect when, a few minutes later, it began to rain. And I don't mean pitty-patty rain... This was monsoon-like rain and had everyone on the deck charging inside as it was raining somewhat sideways (Scottish rain!) and the awning was sagging under the volume of water.... Even we were getting rained on and we were INSIDE the restaurant!!

Happy birthday to me. The big 40 dawns...

After frantic, rather disorganised packing, we drove to Gatwick on Saturday evening. We dumped the bags and the car and had a surprisingly nice buffet dinner, then a couple of drinks before hitting the hay.

We were up at 6am (yuk!) on Sunday and got checked in before heading to the V-lounge (as the Upper Class lounge was closed). We had a spot of breakfast and a glass of champagne whilst I opened my cards (thanks everyone!). Of course, it goes without saying that Stephen was too disorganised to actually buy me one, and his frantic searches at Gatwick airport came to nothing. It also goes without saying that his lapse will cost him dear when it comes to the present.....! I was well looked after when he was off searching (for that read "topped up by the bar staff")

The flight was fine. Apart from the minor problem of them running out of (edible) food when they got to Stephen... I had chosen a macaroni mornay and he was left with seafood linguine...he had a mild "I'm a gold card holder doncha know" tantrum which resulted in him getting one of the staff meals...which looked a whole lot tastier than the flaccid pasta and spinach thing that i had!!

The poor stewardess was having a mare...aside from Sparky and the no-food thing, she managed to knock a glass of red wine all over the guy in front of us, then about half an hour later knocked a glass of white wine over his wife. Oopsie!!

The House is just as fabulous as I remember it. There is even one member of staff from last time we were here, and it was he who greeted us as we arrived. We got unpacked and freshened up and headed next door for my birthday dinner at Daphnes restaurant. It was delicious food, although we were both a bit too knackered to fully enjoy it! I think we'd gone past the being hungry stage! I got a really lovely "Happy Birthday" piped in chocolate onto a plate of chocolates and strawberries after dessert. And it really was a happy birthday!

Kerry - the Cowell connection

I found out yesterday that I am almost exactly 10 years younger than Simon Cowell (there are 3 days between our birthdays). So that set me to wondering if there are any similarities between us... Obviously we both have a fine pair of boobs and slightly dodgy hair cuts (but thank goodness mine isn't square!), we both have Scottish ancestry and we both like Barbados (did I mention we're going there tomorrow?!), but I'm now wondering if there isn't something in the nasty/nice thing.

I seem to have a "tough" reputation (my boss has been telling his training sessions that they need to obey the rules or risk getting a severe tongue-lashing from me!!). I don't know why as I'm a big softy really....although pre-coffee I might be a bit fierce I suppose!! And we all know that Simon is a big softie really! Maybe we bring a no-nonsense approach to work...so we CAN be grizzly bears but scratch the surface and we're just fluffy teddy-bears underneath!!