Saturday 6 July 2013

Steve & Vic went to the Caribbean - part 1

Yep we went on a holiday! YAY! Holidays are great but this was really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, the Caribbean, sun, sea, heat, cocktails, relaxation and quality time together.
Steve is soooooo good at his job he was selected for “Best of IBM” 2013, the 500 top performers out of ~450,000 (as we were told more than once that means he’s .001 of a percent in IBM land). The reward a 3 day event holiday in the Cayman Islands including our flights, too good to not leverage we turned it into a ~3 week holiday (thanks IBM) in the Caribbean.

This is going to be a series of blogs to give you an overview of our holiday. This first one has links to maps of where we went. After this we’ll post them on our fabulous holiday experience, more about where we stayed, what we did and most importantly – photos, lots of photos.

The first thing we had to discover was exactly where are the Cayman Islands? and how do we get there from New Zealand? In short our trip involved 11 airports, unknown number of hours flying and in transit – a very long way from home. We flew via San Francisco in each direction with overnight stops to break up the journey and for me to fall in love with San Fran.

The Caymans are a group of Islands in the Caribbean Sea, near Cuba and Jamaica (near is relative distance wise) and not inside the Bermuda triangle. Here are some links to maps so you get the idea:

Where in the World are the Caymans - http://www.mapsofworld.com/united-kingdom/cayman-island/location-map.html
The Islands themselves on World Atlas - http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/namerica/caribb/ky.htm#.Udiu-lNSZe4

After the Caymans we flew to San Juan, Puerto Rico to catch a cruise. Our cruise took us from San Juan to Saint John, US Virgin Islands, Barbados and the West Indies islands of Saint Kitts, Saint Lucia and Sint Maarten before returning to San Juan. Here are some more map links of our route:

Caribbean Map showing everywhere we visited - http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/carib.htm#.Udix4VNSZe4
There are loads of websites that sell this cruise here is one with the map of our cruise - http://travel.travelocity.com/ecruise/CruiseDetailsItinerary.do?cruiseId=69949&Service=TRAVELOCITY

So that’s the overview of where we had our fabulous holiday.
Next Chapter will be the Cayman Islands and the Ritz Carlton!
http://myglutenfreelifeblog.blogspot.co.nz/2013/07/vic-steve-went-to-caribbean-part-2.html

Since returning I have also written a blog on the importance of holidays, here is a link to that one:
http://blog.optimalhq.com/2013/06/26/as-a-leader-is-do-as-i-say-not-as-i-do-ever-ok-to-say/

Happy reading, Vic
View from our room - Ritz Carlton, Grand Cayman

Lovely beaches, warm water, this one Sint Maarten

So many cocktails - yum

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