Cayman Islands post #2 (July 17-18)

After getting settled in Cayman on Saturday, we were ready to indulge for our week-long vacation.  The big debate for Sunday was regarding breakfast / brunch.  Ferdinand's the restaurant located on the hotel grounds, has a highly-recommended (but highly expensive) brunch buffet.  Considering most of our dinners cost about $125 American (or more), spending $60 American on a mid-day meal was a bit much to ask.  John and Charlie were the only 2 who decided to go for it - and they decided to make the most of it by wrapping breakfast, lunch and some extras all into an hour-and-a-half sit-down.  Charlie's two plates below didn't count his middle plate - or his dessert!  If you're ever in Cayman - we'd recommend this (or at least Charlie would).  You may not be hungry the rest of the day - and they have free champagne/mimosas to add to the fun.

Afterwards, it was time for some relaxation in the pool because that's what vacation is for right?  John and Sarah went scuba diving that day.  When they got back we all headed to Coconut Joe's, a local restaurant/bar, for a cheaper dinner and drinks than the night before.

We also got a visit from some pirates - not sure what their deal was, but they walked into the bar and would talk to the patrons.

The bar had a special on some "jungle punch" that was a lot more punch than jungle, but we did go on a little bar crawl on the way home to get our daily dose of booze.  Sunday was in the books!

Monday was more R&R at the pool during the day.  We took a long walk down 7-mile beach to explore the area, and had lunch at the swim-up bar again.  The plan was to go visit Georgetown - which is south of 7-mile beach and is the capital of the island.  It's the tourist hub of the island where the cruise ships stop each day.  We thought would walk around some of the many shops and then stop and have dinner.  So we hopped one of the cayman "buses" which are basically large passenger vans that you can hop on and off of for only 2 cayman dollars - they'll take you anywhere on 7-mile beach.  The bus dropped us off right in the middle of Georgetown around 5pm.  As we started to walk around we noticed that every shop was closed - Georgetown was more like "Ghost-town".  We found out later that all of the shops close when the cruise ships leave.  The cruise ships dock in the Georgetown harbor during the day but all the passengers get back on their ship for dinner.

After walking a few blocks, we found a restaurant called "Paradise".  It was right on the water and had excellent views of the sunset.  It was quite a leisurely dinner - though it might be the one restaurant we wouldn't recommend.  It took a really long time even though it was far from crowded.  Most "sit-down" restaurants in Cayman are pretty expensive, and this one fit the bill - but it just wasn't worth it as much as others.   It did offer some great photo ops, though, with the sunset.

(Yep, this is a stick-your head in picture of Prince William and Kate...with Gary and Charlie as the new royal couple)

After dinner we walked through the empty streets to Jimmy Buffet's Margarita-ville.  Unfortunately it was getting ready to close (at 10pm...again because of the cruise ships) so we grabbed a road-soda and some of took a quick dip down the water slide and made a note to come back when it is open for longer.

We finally found a bar that wasn't closing, called Rackam's.  Apparently it is a right of passage to jump off the deck at Rackham's.  Charlie, John and Gary decided to take the plunge into the Bay and Heidi decided to represent for the girls.  There is a whole school of really large Tarpon fish, but they swim away at the first sight of someone jumping into their bay.  The only hard thing about the jump was the getting back up to the bar, because they basically had to climb up these rocks which wasn't easy...but that didn't stop them from jumping off the deck multiple times.