A Very Lucky Girl

We arrived in Nice on Monday evening around 8 PM and quickly located our hostel just two blocks down from the train station. We checked into Hostel Baccarat  and a very kind man that we think was the owner upgraded us from our 10 bed dorm to a private room at no extra charge. After the day we spent dealing with the train delay in Paris our voyage was looking up! We rode up in the world's smallest elevator, tossed our backpacks in the room, and marveled at the attached private bathroom before heading downstairs in search of food.We stopped at the front desk again to ask for a map and restaurant suggestions. The nice man drew a line down the main street and told us to walk all the way down it until we reached the restaurants. We thanked him and headed out into the nice Nice night.  After taking a couple of wrong turns we found ourselves on the main avenue, but couldn't see a hotbed of lights and activity at the southern end. Instead, we stumbled into the nearest Mcdonald'...

Everything in Italy was pretty much all downhill after LDL abandoned Cadet Squad in Rome. She flew back to Dundee on our Friday in Rome due to final projects. Kylie and I dried the tears and moved on down the coast of Italy to Naples, bikinis in hand, in search of a proper beach. After some confusion we located our hostel where we had double room (thankfully) that locked from the inside. We kept that sucker locked at all times. Common areas were the only ones with Wifi, the church bells outside rang for more than an hour, the shower stalls were translucent on three sides, I found a bug in our bed just as we were about to go to sleep, and the lighting in our room can only be described as mood lighting. There was no other option.  We were hoping not to spend very much time at the hostel, because we had the beach mission in mind. We changed into our swimsuits immediately, covered them with actual clothes, and walked down the street in the direction of the water. Before we had gone fa...

Something magical happened on Tuesday. THE SUN CAME OUT. I felt naturally warm outside for the first time in weeks. Meghan, Nat, and I bought return tickets to Broughty Ferry for 2 pounds and twenty pence. The best bargain. We had some time to kill so we wandered along our own River Tay, in awe of the bright sky and lamenting our lack of sunglasses. Mine have been significantly unused for the duration of my stay in Scotland.  The train ride to Broughty Ferry took a whopping seven minutes and we had seen the whole town in less than twenty. We went straight to the coast, vowing to return to the various shops we passed along the way. You'd think none of us had ever seen a coast of any kind with the fuss we make over beaches. We navigated the slippery harbor and actually took off layers as the sun beat down on us. It was most welcome. We could see Dundee from our location and marveled at Dundee Law. If we had bikes it would have been a nice ride to Broughty Ferry and back.  I ap...

Just one, actually. A new one! I am an officially employed member of the Sandy Beaches team. I quit my position at Fuzzy's because I decided life is too short to work until 4 in the morning every weekend.  I was looking for nearly a month before I found a great new challenge in Sandy Beaches. I've never worked at a tanning salon before so I constantly feel a little mentally slow when trying to finagle the computer and speak the lingo. Low, bronze, premium, and 360 beds were all the same to me until I started a week ago. Now I can tell you how long you should spend in each bed, the difference between a maximizer and a bronzer, and sign you up for a monthly membership (only after five phone calls to another coworker to make sure I'm typing in the correct codes, of course).  I was terrified to close by myself the first time, but I managed and feel more confident now since the initial lone shift is complete!  I'm looking forward to camaraderie with new people and steady p...

I'm in love with Jamaica. I would absolutely go back there for a week or more. It was a perfect mix of lovely beach with regal hills in the background that reminded me of Roatan, Honduras, another of my favorite places. My first view of Jamaica was from the treadmill where I spent the beginning of my morning, but only for a mere 10 minutes as I had completely forgotten that I had Addison's Disease and totally skipped every pill necessary to expend energy. What.Was.I.Thinking!? After fueling up on legal drugs, I found my way onto the dock and we located a cab to take us to the prettiest beach I've ever seen. Along the way we passed several resorts, coexisting next to huts, and Usain Bolt's high school. The beach was utter perfection. I could set up a tent in the sand and live there forever. This was my last legal day of drinking before July 1 so I made the most of it. I partook in two Sex on the Beach's (the drink, not the activity), a Long Island Iced Tea (holymol...

We arrived off the coast of Georgetown, Cayman Islands on Wednesday morning. The Island was so small that there was no dock so tender boats brought us to shore in groups. We set foot in Georgetown around 11 AM, after eating a bacon heap for breakfast and marveling at the miniscule Island, and immediately found a cab to take us to a portion of 7 Mile Beach. here you can see the water BEHIND the island! mojito First things first: I hit the bar and ordered my very first mojito. It was DELICIOUS. Seriously one of my favorite drinks I've ever had. Tyler and I hung out in the waves with his step-family and I wandered back to the bar every so often to take advantage of my legal drinking age. I can vouch for the Cayman Lemonade, a second mojito, and a Cayman Crush that accompanied my lunch. I had sips of Tyler's Caybrew and White Tip beer, and immediately regretted them. We ate lunch at a water-side cafe called Paradise where Tyler and Hunter ordered turtle burgers and I c...

The women follow their dreamboat, Sean Lowe, to St. Croix. I missed the first half of this week, but I caught the second hour of the show at Tyler's house after we attended the OU basketball game against TCU where the Horned Frogs had a rather poor showing. Boomer Sooner! But I think all that I really missed was a lot of screen time of the Tierraist, so I call that a win-win. I caught Catherine, Des, and Lindsay mid-date on the beach with Sean. Lindsay cuddled up next to her man in the sand and I strained to hear their conversation over the sound of the waves crashing on the shore. There was an unmistakable blemish on her left cheek that I could not stop watching--guess her waterproof concealer didn't quite live up to its promises. Catherine replaced Lindsay a few minutes later and shared some history of her dad with Sean. Her father will not be at the hometown date because he resides in China after bouts with depression and a suicide attempt when she was 14. I think her main...