In the morning, we agreed that our stilt house was indeed awesome. I felt like not having A/C in there would be fine no matter what the weather was like. It was noisy in the wind, but that’s always the case along the ocean. Look how cute this place is!!

From the balcony, you can see both pools. That’s Seven Mile Beach in the distance, too.

The sea was pretty rough that day, splashing up over the cliffs. It was gorgeous outside, though. Jamaica makes it easy to forget that it’s winter in Minnesota.

I was beyond thrilled with the shower, too. It’s basically outside. I’m glad they supplied robes, too, so I didn’t have to get dressed to go down there.

Sadly, we had to leave our awesome stilt house that day. We carried the bags downstairs and left them at the front desk while we went to get breakfast.

Here’s the section of road we end up walking along 5,000 times in Negril. It’s the route between our hotel, Lance’s convenience store, and No Limit (in the center of the photo). There are a few other shops and restaurants along the way, too.

We walked down to Jenny’s Cakes for breakfast. The kids had slices of cake, and the adults had the typical Jamaican breakfast of saltfish and ackee, festival, callalloo, and boiled bananas (I had a callalloo sandwich). They have a great little patio, and the restaurant/bar is country-western themed, for some strange reason.

On the way back, we stopped into Peewee’s, across the street from No Limit, and checked out the ocean. It was still really windy, and Peewee’s had a tarp around its giant tiki hut bar.

That castle down the way is fascinating. I want to see inside.

We went back to the hotel and went to hang out at the pool for a few hours. We alternated between the big pool, which had a giant floating ring with a Sandals logo on it and cupholders, and the wading pool where we’d mostly sit on the edge and drink beers while the kids played.

Later on, we took a cab to the Canoe Bar for happy hour (where we had two-for-one Dirty Bananas), and then went to have a late lunch around 4pm at the German Bar (which is past the castle along the road). I hadn’t been there before, but instantly liked it. It’s decorated with shells and coral, has a huge thatched roof, and they serve really excellent rectangular pizzas (in addition to traditional German food).

After lunch, we walked back and hung out on the patio at the hotel. Once our room was ready, we rolled our bags down there and got settled in. We had an air-conditioned room this time, with a patio that overlooked the pool and hot tub. It was much bigger than the stilt house, but I think I’d still have rather been there.

We dropped the kids off with Nav and Byron, their babysitters for the evening. It was Valentine’s Day, and Matt and Kris had big plans for us. Apart from the fact that we were going to Pushcart for dinner, Orsi and I had no idea what was in store. We sat on the patio watching the sunset while they got ready.

And then there was this.

Kris’ mom is a seamstress, and had made their outfits by hand. Matt didn’t even know what he was getting; Kris had just demanded his measurements and told him he’d take care of it. They were a hit at the hotel bar.

We took a cab down to Pushcart, and were seated at the bar for dinner. The servers and bartenders couldn’t stop laughing about their outfits. Some tourist ladies came up and congratulated Orsi and I on getting our husbands to dress up like that; we told them that was all their doing, not ours!

Dinner at Pushcart was as good as it was on our first visit. I had ackee patties and the bushman stew, which was vegan (and way too filling to even eat half of). Matt had pepper shrimp soup, jerk skewers, and braised oxtail. The cocktails were great, too. Before we left, the dudes had to go get their picture taken with Gregory Isaacs. I think it turned out pretty well:

We took a cab back to No Limit and collected the kids. Matt and Kris and I walked over to Peewee’s for a rum punch. They got a long talking-to about the difference between bussin’ and boastin’, and god knows what else that was somehow related to their outfits. The dress-up bit seemed to make a lot of Jamaicans really profoundly uncomfortable, as if it might mean they were gay. (It’s an incredibly homophobic country, which is probably the biggest downside to Jamaica.) It was pretty hilarious.