Ok, I will admit it, I have had some success as an actor. With that, I get alot of free crap. It’s not a secret. My housekeeper is exceptionally well-dressed, if you consider crew jackets and baseball hats being well-dressed….(who would NOT want a “groundhog day” sweatshirt?)…..
Nathen and I were given 3 days at Atlantis resort in the Bahamas. That’s awesome, it’s SO kid-friendly that it’s almost nauseating. The people were amazing, and we got a BEAUTIFUL room in the nice part (the COVE), and, best of all…JetBlue flies there from NY in about 2 hours, for which I could use miles…(I only have about 250,000 of them)……so what could be bad?
Well, let me discuss “Paradise Island”….after seeing what things cost there, simple things, things that I wish I had known about and would have easily checked a bag for (JetBlue checks a bag for FREE by the way), then “paradise” quickly turned into the “Island of Dr. Moreau” to me…….now, I absolutely kid you not about any of this……NINETY DOLLARS for breakfast (thats for me and NATHEN, who eats like half a strawberry and a crumb and is full), NINETY FIVE DOLLARS for a $12 snorkel and mask, THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS for Nathen and I to pet the head of a dolphin for a total of 3 minutes…..and get this….are you sitting down….(hopefully you are, reading your computer while standing is highly hazardous)……FORTY EIGHT DOLLARS for a small bottle of sunscreen…….If I pay $48 for a $7 bottle of sunscreen, it had better grease me up PERMANENTLY, scrape all possible melanoma off of me, and throw in a plush beach towel as well……
Now I am smart, not cheap…so it is what it is….we are prisoners there on “paradise island” (one couple told me it cost $100 round trip to get a car to take them over the 3 mile bridge into town)…..so the final night, I put Nathen in the kids camp for 2 hours (at $25/hour by the way, there must have been over a hundred kids in there, nice tidy profit on that venture as well), and I went to GAMBLE. I LOVE to gamble, and I “gamble” to win money, but more on that sickness for another day (I could talk for hours about the reality of buying 20 lottery tickets…you know what happens when you buy one? Your chances go from ZERO, to ONE in a billion—-the second one, that’s right, your chances go to TWO in a billion, you do the math)…..So I go to the casino, and I can assure you, anyone who knows me knows this, when I go to a casino or a poker table or a racetrack, I am there for one thing, and one thing only, TO MAKE MONEY……so I win $950 and go get Nathen, here, I told you…..
So we go to checkout, it’s all VIP and celebritied-out and all that, and they give me my bill for the INCIDENTALS for man who isn’t eating because he is in the middle of his TV season, and an 8 year old, who isn’t eating because Dad asks him to eat, and neither of us has been drinking (well, Nathen had a couple of pops of Courvosier from the mini-bar, it’s one habit I can’t make him shake)….and our bill for 2 1/2 days (with COMPED ROOM) was $1350…….they asked me if I wanted to keep it on the card (remember, i use my card as if it is cash, credit is dumb dumb dumb), and I pull out THEIR money and pay my damn bill……Thank god I MADE the hotel take us into town for two nights to local restaurants, where we had GREAT adventures, GREAT food, and met GREAT people….after that first dinner ($140), which sucked, I had to get “off the island”……
What’s my lesson? Well, what was I thinking? Paradise Island is a development to keep the tourists there spending money, charging everything like mad and not noticing, enticing kids to do everything, keeping everyone away from the scary locals (SO not scary at all, friendliest people on the planet) and after all, it’s vacation, so who cares?? I CARE. The people who we met there could barely afford it, had saved for years to go there, and just by simply being informed (as I also should have been), could have packed some sunscreen, some snacks, thrown our snorkels in the bag, maybe even met a taxi driver at the airport who we could have called to come get us when we wanted……
So that was our trip. Do better. I know you can.
By the way, it has come to my attention from one of our most avid readers, that not only am I giving out some valuable advice here, but the time spent reading this actually SAVES you money, by taking up valuable time that you could be using doing online shopping on EBay, Craigslist and Amazon…..save that money and spend it instead on Elvis Costello’s upcoming “National Ransom”, one of the finest albums coming from someone who has had a slew of them…..and keep reading this space and sharing it——-we are just gettin started……
Just wait till I talk about valet parking tomorrow….just wait, it involves a girl, a blind-date, Michael Bolton, and the Beverly Hills Hotel….you won’t wanna miss it…….
WG
