Day 176 – Bob Marley lives
Today was our final day at the Somerset. J woke up early to pack. The Somerset gave us late checkout so we had time to go to the beach. Unfortunately it was a red flag day again, so S stayed at the pool. J checked out the beach and immediately returned to the pool. J splurged as this was our last day in the Turks and had 2 pina coladas. We decided we had to do one last walk on the beach before we left beautiful Grace Bay. We had a nice walk all the way down to a pier and decided that was the place to head back. On our way back, we finally heard it, Bob Marley being played by one of the beach DJs at a neighbouring resort. After much concern, this finally proved our theory, that every cool holiday destination from Africa to the Indian Ocean to the Caribbean has to play Bob Marley. We went 17 days without hearing any, including being denied a Bob Marley request, but our faith in humanity was restored.
Checkout was pretty straightforward and S blagged himself into getting 2 rum punches at checkout. He mentioned that the hotel should serve rum punches at checkout so people can be reminded about how nice it is to be on holiday and be more likely to return. Everyone is always happy to arrive on holiday, no one is happy to leave, so a farewell rum punch is a nice touch.
We were collected by the regular driver, Adrian. Our check-in at the airport was pretty poor. We were in economy as First Class was sold out. Despite the fact that our total luggage was within the weight limit, the check-in desk ladies actually made us move around our luggage to redistribute 12 pounds of luggage from the ‘Beast’, J’s large bag. This was even though S has platinum status and has flown around 2 million miles with American. This redistribution also unfortunately caught the eye of an airport security guy, who decided to pull J into a small, windowless room and go through every item in the Beast. When S tried to comment, the security guy made J shut the door so S couldn’t see what was going on. To be fair, other hapless tourists were also subjected to this ‘random screening’, including a lady who had been at the airport gate and had to return to this windowless room for screening. It was a very unpleasant experience, even though the security guy ended up closing up all of J’s packing cubes and repacking J’s bag better than she had packed it.
We got through security fairly quickly and headed to the only bar in the airport. On the way to the bar, we decided to stop at a gift shop which was selling Hawaiian shirts. S ended up finding a great shirt. It was made of light cotton, red, had parrots on it and was 50% off. The 50% off was the clincher, so S bought it.
After a short wait on the tarmac, we boarded our 39th flight of this trip.
When we arrived in passport control in Miami, we tried to hand over our passports. The passport control guy told us not to and just told us to look in the camera. The facial recognition identified us and we were waved through. This would be a sobering experience for anyone who is weary of Big Brother as they knew who we were and didn’t even need our passport to let us into the country.
It took ages for our baggage to arrive in baggage claim. S’ sister M and JT picked us up and took us to M’s house. S’ brother, D, D’s girlfriend and S’ parents were waiting for us at M’s house. They had grilled up some nice dogs for dinner. After dinner, we headed to the hot tub and had a nice chat. It was a fun evening.