St. Lucia: Day 2

It was great waking up this morning, and not having to study anything - I mean, sure - that's what I've done the past few days in Dominica, but this is vacation. Above is the wall just in front of the hotel where I'm staying tonight (and leaving tomorrow), and I figured I'd get a more memorable impression.

So we got up this morning and had breakfast at the hotel, which (1) wasn't that great anyway and (2) certainly wasn't worth what we paid for, but oh well. The coffee was so-so, the sausages were a little too pink for my tastes, the pancackes weren't nearly as good as the ones I make, but at least the fruit was ok. See those smiling faces? Those are before we received the bill - believe you me. So we struck out on the town.

First things first - we left our little hotel, hung a left, and found ourselves at the closest thing to an American mall I've seen since leaving the US. I can guarantee you that all of these tourists here don't know how lucky they are to be browsing through something like this. If only they knew what it was like back on Dominica - where we don't even have this. The first thing we looked through was a very American-looking grocery store. Didn't really pick up anything, but it was so nice just being in some place that I felt recognized my purchasing, consumerist culture. We walked around a bit, and I ended up grabbing a new pair of flip-flops - Lord knows I needed em. What I didn't know, however, was that in order to qualify for the duty-free prices, I needed to have my passport and proof that I was leaving the country, so I paid a bit more for them. But you know what? I don't care - I'm wearing them right now and they're great.


The most exciting thing I saw walking around this mall, though was the bookstore! I don't know if I've blogged about my fiction withdrawal, but it's really something clearly diagnosable - I mean, it's gotta be, right? However, even though this was like a happy reunion of long-lost brethren, I didn't buy anything - for one, I don't want to have anything to read this semester, because it helps me concentrate. Also, I'm still working through Accelerando, and, the day before we left, Nicole and I picked up some used books in the student government loung - I was lucky enough to get David Eggers' They Shall Know Our Velocity.



So we continued walking down the streets of St. Lucia....


















And finally wound up back home, where we retired to the pool, to catch up on some of that reading.




Nicole got into it with a customer service person with B-Mobile, our cell-phone provider, because, apparently they charge something like $8.59 ECD per roaming minute, only the phones didn't let us know we were roaming, and it wasn't anywhere on the literature we received when we signed up. However, I got on the phone and was decidedly not pleasant - so they gave her a partial refund. Thus, when I got my bill for the room with lots of bogus-looking charges, I was ready to go for another confrontation - but, one catches more flies with honey than vinegar, so I was polite; it was all just a misunderstanding (let me say that http://www.hotels.com/ absolutely rocks).

Now it's time for me to go downstairs, cash in my free drink card, and listen to the band rehearse (I don't know if they actually play, but there's a big jazz festival coming up, and they're trying to get ready).