Paradise Island.

I read through all of your comments on my my most recent post this morning and it almost made me well up in tears all over again. I'm glad so many of you understand what I am going through while watching Buffy, and that so many of you reacted the same way as I did to the episodes I outlined in Season 5. Thank you for the wonderfully deep and insightful comments and for making me feel like I am just a human being experiencing a beautiful piece of art, rather than a dork-extreme. Sometimes I feel like a dork-extreme.

On that depressing note, here is the first blog about my trip!
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Bahamas: Monday!

It is so strange to be on a trip where literally all I have to worry about is whether I'd rather go to the beach or to the water park during the day, the nightclubs or the comedy club at night, or the marina village or a poolside snack hut when I'm hungry.

I'll admit, sometimes I feel like the most spoiled person on earth, but I'm not sitting in the Bahamas right now because my parents are rich or someone else paid for me to be here. Liz, Eia and I got free round trip tickets on AirTran last year when our flights home from LeakyCon got messed up, and when we realized those free tickets were about to expire, we booked 5 days in the most exotic/outrageous place the airline could take us. Which is how we ended up in Nassau, Bahamas on Paradise Island. Then Eia did some very excellent hotel sleuthing and managed to find us an amazing deal for the Atlantis, so here we are at one of the world's most famous hotels, sleeping in until 11 when we'd planned on being up at 8 because we're all exhausted from yesterday's traveling. So I guess I am a little spoiled, but I'd like to think of it as lucky.

We left Seattle at 11 pm on Sunday, endured a four hour flight (with some of the worst airplane sleeping I've ever attempted) to Atlanta, and then had a 6 hour layover. 6 hours! This time consisted of eating Cinnabon and hashbrowns at the equivalent of our 4 in the morning, finding a nice patch of floor to lay on and making camp there while we all attempted to sleep for awhile. It was pretty crappy, but I managed to squeeze about 2 hours of sleep out of the arrangement.

We all started getting a little goofy (including Eia, doing somersaults across the airport floor and Liz, finding a video game machine amidst the payphones that someone had left with credits still on it for playing) but luckily our flight left at 12:45, so we left Atlanta far behind us as we boarded the next plane.

This flight was super empty so the three of us were each able to get our own row of seats, which was awesome. My favorite type of flying is the kind where you can snag your own row of 3 seats. I think I attempted to read a chapter or so of Scott Westerfeld's Peeps, but I was so tired that I stretched out across my three seats and slept for the entire flight. Aside from when the flight attendant woke me with a, "Sorry, hun," and tossed me an immigration card to fill out. I think I filled in the bubbles in my sleep, stuck the card in my book, and fell right back asleep.

The Nassau airport was cute. It was small and everyone was friendly, and there was a little band set up in the immigration area to keep you entertained while you went through customs. Seriously! It was the weirdest and quaintest thing I have ever seen while traveling, especially after both of my stressful trips to London where the border patrol seemed to really not like me.

A very nice taxi driver took us to the Atlantis, and along the half hour drive I asked him about everything from the best liquor stores on Paradise Island to what his grandkids are like. He seemed to think the three of us were going to be trouble makers while we are here. I have no idea why he would think that. /innocent


Our room is a pretty standard hotel room, but the resort itself is amazing. We're right near the predators rope bridge and the manta ray and shark tanks, we can see the beach from our balcony, and the casino and nightclubs are just a quick walk away.

We spent the afternoon looking around for a place to eat and finally decided on an outdoor hut called "Shark Bites". After eating, we changed into our swimsuits and found that we had a Lazy River right outside our room, so we grabbed tubes and floated around that a few times. Seriously the most relaxing way to end your day. If I am ever totally rich and famous, I am installing a Lazy River around my house.

Then we headed back up to our room, changed into cuter outfits, and headed over to the casino. Neither of us were very keen on spending more than about $20, so we weren't there for long, but I managed to turn my $20 into $40 on one machine. So that was pretty exciting.

After gambling we went to the bar and grill right off the casino and had a drink and dinner, and I got into an argument with our waiter (because he didn't know the difference between honey mustard and a vinaigrette). It was still moderately early at this point, so we spent the remainder of the evening exploring the hotel and areas surrounding, finding a cute marina village full of shops, an arcade, a bunch of models of the whole resort, and a place called Atlantis Pals (which is just like Build-a-Bear) that we are definitely, definitely going back to.

Last google search: aura nightclub
Chipotle burritos: 20