Atlantis - October 2004

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Day 1!

We were supposed to be at the airport at about 6:00am for a 7:00am flight, but our flight was postponed until 10:00 am. A few extra hours of sleep, but that meant reaching the island later. Oh well. We decided to leave for the airport at about 8:00am instead. We reached a rental car place and dropped the car we had been driving in off there. Then we waited for a while and took a bus to our terminal where we grabbed coffee and muffins at Starbucks and a bagel from Au Bon Pan for lunch on the plane later.

The plane took off at about 10:10am, pretty much on time, and the ride was about 3 and a half hours overall, which seemed like forever considering the adventures we were anticipating. My aunt and uncle fell asleep and I was kind of bored, but occupied myself with magazines and my GPS that I brought along for the trip.

We reached the Nassau airport at about 1:30pm, finally! The airport was beautiful, though we had our minds on running for customs, baggage claim, and getting to the resort. Unfortunately, we had a little bit of trouble trying to find out how we were supposed to get to the resort. We saw a couple of Atlantis booths, but there was nobody sitting at them. Eventually, we found a taxi that would take us there.

The ride was enjoyable. It was fun to look out the window and see the island of Nassau and all of the huge cruise ships in port there, as well as Paradise Island as we traveled over the giant bridge.

As soon as we got out of the taxi, the staff was there and very friendly. There was one guy that took our luggage to our room for us and my Aunt and Uncle wondered how he knew our names. I saw him glance at out luggage tags when we stepped out of the cab, but played along anyways. Before we even stepped into the hotel you could see how amazing it was. We walked through the gigantic iron doors and into the hotel lobby which was simply amazing. Then we checked in and headed up to our room.

It was a suite! This was a surprise for my aunt and me, because my uncle had told us that there were no suites available. A couple pictures from the balconies:

After a quick change we headed down to check out the place. We had a quick lunch at the Dive In poolside restaurant, where we saw people dressed up as two Atlanteans. It was really cool. Then we found a couple of chairs over by the Mayan Temple Pool. My uncle stayed and read for a bit while my aunt and I took a quick swim through the pool over to the stairs to the Mayan Temple. We climbed them and tried out all of the different slides, my uncle eventually joining us.

Eventually we were very tired and pruned up an extremely large amount. So, we decided to go up to our hotel room and change for a 7:00pm reservation at the Café at the Great Hall of Waters, which we realized we had already missed. We called an made a new one for 8:00 pm. I was done with my shower and was waiting for my aunt and uncle to finish getting ready so I sat in the big chair near the window of the balcony in my room and sketched for a while. I decided to sketch the Mayan Temple because the attraction we visited for most of the day and it was literally right in front of the window. Once we were ready we headed down to the restaurant. It was extremely pricey, but we had a good time anyways.

After our dinner we checked out the dig, because there was an entrance in the great hall of waters. It was really cool, but on the longish side. After that we took a walk from the outside entrance/exit of the dig to the entrance at Poseidon’s Throne near the casino. Then we ended our mini tour and headed up to the room. I watched a bit of a travel channel style show on one of the many Atlantis channels on the TV in the suite and worked a bit more on the sketch of the Mayan Temple and then went to sleep for the night.

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Photos

Challenger Slides
One of the four slides on the Mayan Temple.