Jamaican Me Cray

At the beginning of the year, Matthew asked me where we should go for the next three day weekend.
Around the same time, Mom requested to be invited to the next trip out of the country so she could get a passport stamp.

As Matthew's luck would have it, the next three day weekend and next trip out of the country happened to fall on Valentine's Day Weekend.
Pretty sure this is how sitcoms get written.

Also, remember that one time I lost my passport in Amsterdam?....well, this trip put me under the gun to get my emergency issued temporary passport renewed in time for our 2/14 departure.  Of course, being me, I'd put it off thinking it didn't expire until the end of February.....so imagine the look on my face when, on 1/27, I finally looked at my temporary passport and noticed the 2/14 expiration date.  By about noon, I'd had all my paperwork filled out and new picture taken and everything off to be overnighted to a Philly address on a hope and a prayer.  The paperwork all said that the expedited process would take 2-3 weeks. It showed up in my mailbox a week later.
The sense of relief that washed over me as I opened the envelope that day was indeed a glorious one.

The idea of Matt going alone with my mother for a long weekend in what ended up being Negril, Jamaica provided about an hour's worth of jokes and laughter with Pannacakes.  Good thing I didn't tell her about it until after the passport arrived.

Before we'd booked the trip, I'd done some research on Jamaica vs DR and knew we'd be good for an all-inclusive. Most of the articles found pointed towards Jamaica and then after reading some resort reviews, we determined that Negril was the place to go and the RIU Tropical Palace was the place to stay (mainly because it wasn't already sold out).

The trip looked a little like this:


We got some nice sunburns.
We drank a lot of rum, pina coladas, mimosas, Red Stripes.
We ate some really nice curries and jerks. (heh)
We met some really nice people.
We steered clear of some slightly questionable things and we didn't drink the water.

Jamaica was fantastic and I wouldn't be upset if we had to go back.
With more friends.
Mom's invited again, too, although she was makin' some noise about Costa Rica for Christmas.