Day of rest

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Our first day was set aside to rest and recover. We got up about 9 o’clock local time and got ready to go downstairs for breakfast. The restaurant was very “cruise ship like” in that there was a wide array of offerings already to go as well as a station where you could order omelettes with any number of fillings. There was a wide range of fruits, breads, rice dishes, sliced meats and cheeses, pastries (the chocolate croissants were especially tasty), juice, coffee, etc. There were lots of things that were traditional dishes as well but we decided to leave the experimentation until tomorrow. The restaurant was open to the outdoors and there was a good stiff breeze blowing this morning. The temperature was 30 degrees with clear blue skies.

After breakfast we met with the tour representative to set up our tour dates. She was a friendly gal named Ugi. She gave us some good ideas for our off days and booked us a full day with a car and driver on one of them. Cost was very reasonable.....the equivalent of about $80 for the car and driver for 9 hours for the 4 of us.

Dianne and I then went down to the beach area which was right out the back of the hotel. We sat in one of the beach bars and enjoyed a fruit smoothie and watched the water activity. I got caught up on some news and saw the Winnipeg Jets won their game 7....sorry to have missed that one!

After a brief rest we strolled out in the neighbourhood for a half hour or so to take a few local pictures. Getting across the street was our first challenge as the cars and scooters were everywhere. In fact the hotel concierge ended up coming out with his whistle and bravely walked out into the traffic to stop it so we could cross. Vehicles are supposed to drive on the right side of the street and cars are right hand drive. That didn’t seem to bother the scooter crowd as a few who were in a hurry to get by some slow cars just pulled up onto the sidewalk to get by. Within 3 blocks we had dodged a scooter on the sidewalk with a woman passenger who was balancing her laundry, had requests to rent a car, rent a scooter and to sit down in a local restaurant for some suckling pig! Interesting experience.

Just finishing our afternoon with a visit to the swim up bar before going for dinner. Our first tour is tomorrow, a full day outing. Looking forward to it.

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