Clocks

One of the features of our trip on Saturday was the need to be "up an' at 'em" quite early.  The closest restaurant wasn't open for breakfast until 7:30, and we wanted breakfast, not knowing when or where we would be having lunch.  ( On a previous trip, the "Lunch in a Cuban restaurant" turned out to be a slice of weak cheese pizza and a canned cola).  But all we had for time was David's unreliable wrist watch.  I mentioned that our Butlers were one day on , one day off.  We had reason to speak to the alternative butler and asked about a wake up call. The discussion revealed that we had no clock in the room, so when the dust settled, his solution to the problem was to ask the maid to provide us with a clock.  It was a huge thing, with a very well big dial, that lit up the whole room.  I have never before seen a 24 hour clock outside of specialty areas where they are required.  It had more buttons than a shirt, and no way of knowing how to do anything. So David approached the reception desk and requested a wake-up call.  We were very anxious to find out if it actually happened, as we knew we had to be up by 6:00 Sunday morning to catch our bus to the airport.  It worked.

The other thing I left out about our trip, was that we were each gifted with a 700 ml bottle of dark rum at the sugar mill.  It was enclosed in a tubular container, and we didn't really look at it until we were back to our resort.  Neither of us has any use for dark rum, and David got the idea of seeing if we could trade it for white rum at the resort.  So he approached our more familiar butler.  I was in the upper infinity  pool as soon as possible after getting back,  So I could watch the movement back and forth between our room and the Lobby Bar. ( Check the map)Success!  They gave us 2X 1litre bottles of white rum of a lesser brand than the dark.

Both of out butlers gave us a bottle of wine.  The more familiar butler gave us a bottle of white, which we drank Friday evening.  The other gave us a bottle of Merlot, late Friday, which we ended up bringing home with us.  Neither of us wanted it, so we gave it to Loren to use in cooking.

We discovered that buying our "Elite Plus"service for the trip, covered only assigned seating, no waiting in line, and extra baggage.  So after thought and discussion, we purchased a VIP service at the Cuban airport.  I cost us $25.00/person, but meant that we could use a special air conditioned area at the airport complete with seating other than stacking chairs, and food service.  Since our wait was several hours. it was worth it.  We got breakfast, snacks, unlimited drinks ( we chose cola, but there was a full bar), and news tv--in Spanish, and French.  There were a couple of different areas, but I noticed that the one with a large window into the airport waiting area was quite lavishly furnished.

Thank Goodness our plane for the return trip was larger, not by much, but enough that I was fairly comfortable.  We had a young man sitting in the window seat who spent the whole trip playing Candy Crush on his phone.  When we arrived home and were taxi-ing to the terminal. David asked him what level he was at.  Answer- 1281.  He told us that he was only aware of 3-4 people who had gone further than he had, and that he once spent 3 months trying to get past one very bad level.  When I looked at him again, I realized that he had more grey hair than I did--so maybe not so young.

Taking off in Cuba and seeing palm trees and military helicopters out of the window and then seeing blowing snow and blizzard conditions through the window as we landed was a bit of a shock.  But Loren met us, and got us safely home.