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09 Jan '07 - 760 W, 27 I Bahamian Break

Christmas is a time for us to take a break. Get away from real life. Leave work behind and relax. Last year, we flew out to San Francisco and took a road trip up the coast north of San Francisco. This year, since we’d just done the road trip through the South West (it was 2030 driving miles total) so we decided we wanted to just go someplace warm and veg out.

So we went to the Bahamas! Wheeeeee! We were away for 8 days, staying at the Paradise Island Harbor Resort

We arrived in Nassau and took a bus to the Harbor Resort on Paradise Island. The Bahamas is made up of hundreds of islands and Nassau is on New Providence. The bus took us across a bridge to Paradise Island. Here are some pictures of the Harbor Resort on Paradise Island:

It was sunny the first 2-3 days we were there, and then it got all cloudy and rainy. Unfortunately one of the cloudy days was the day we went snorkeling. The water was a bit cold, but it was still worth it. Pretty corals, lots of fish, and best of all, we went to an area where we could swim with Caribbean Reef Sharks. I did that! However, we didn't bring the camera so no pictures of the sharks. It was cool, but still freaky. And then the last two days or so turned out beautiful and sunny again. Poor Vin ended up getting sunburnt the day before we flew home.

We tried to keep active, considering that we could eat until we exploded at every meal. So we played tennis 4 times in the 8 days we were there. We took a walk from Paradise Island to downtown Nassau. It was really a nice walk:

On the day before we left, we spent the morning reading on the beach (where Vin got sunburnt) and in the afternoon we rented the last 2 bicycles at the bike rental place and biked around Paradise Island. The bikes were old. But Paradise Island is a pretty cool place. We even did silly things like cycle down through an underpass, screaming as we sped downhill like maniacs.

OK lah, maybe I should call the bikes "retro" instead of ancient?

They called the area a "lake" but it looked like a mangrove swamp to me. But there were fish in a section of it and plenty of ducks.

Here I am, riding my "retro" rented bike:

We thoroughly enjoyed our time in the Bahamas where we read 8 books (between the two of us), swam, snorkeled, played tennis, walked, and bicycled. We napped when we felt like it, relaxed on the beach when we felt like it, and because I didn't feel like it, I didn't even turn on my laptop so I did not check email the whole time we were there! Woohoooo!

We liked it enough that we might decide to go back there. Maybe even stay at one of the ritzier places there? Who knows! All I know is I'd like to be back on a warm beach again.