Jamaica..........

We have just come back from a week in Jamaica.  That's why I haven't been visiting your blogs, as I never take my computer with me.  I do take my phone and can access my blog to publish your comments from that.  I had pre done posts for when we were away.

We went to Montego Bay, to the Iberostar Selection Rose Hall Suites.  This was our first time in Jamaica, so we were going in with fresh eyes.  Now this is a 5 Star hotel and has great reviews online........that is why I booked it.  It's around half an hour from the airport but there are road works on the main road which slows traffic down.

We had booked an ocean front view, and our room was on the second floor to the left of the orange painted area.

There are 3 Iberostar hotels, each with two buildings.  The two buildings are from the Waves resort, our building is in the background with the orange, and that was the Suites Resort.  The other one Joia is closed until December.

It was a very spacious room, ours had a king sized bed and a seating area.  The bathroom had double sinks, a huge bath tub and a huge walk in shower.

The seating area.

Our balcony.

Below are three photos, of the view from our balcony.

Those photos were taken between 3pm to 4pm on the Tuesday afternoon, after we got into our room.

The resort wasn't overly busy the whole time we were there.  I think it's in between seasons for them.

We had temperatures around 30 to 31 oC every day, and that was without the humidity.  It had rained on the Tuesday when we arrived and so it was super humid.  We had rain this past Monday in the afternoon, it was the 3pm shower that came down from the mountains.  Then it poured day all day on Tuesday when we left.  So overall we were very lucky with the weather.  I, however found it way too hot and humid for me and it tired me out.  I have not been feeling well recently so that didn't help.

The meals were okay, not great, just okay.  The buffet was never hot, the food was lukewarm regardless of the time you visited.  The other restaurants as I said were okay, not 5 star food though.

The hotel looked "tired;" and too my mind, and others I talked too said needed some TLC.  Our room had chipped and broken tiles on the floor.  The patio door to the balcony was so stiff to open, it was crazy; probably due to the sea air.  All the grout in the bathroom needed redone.  The safe in the room was a huge plus and worked like a charm.

There seemed to be a decent kids club and they opened another pool while we were there for the kids.  The main pool was good, but had a swim up bar, which I always think is icky. The toilets in the pool area were always icky, and the hand dryers never worked the whole time we were there.  We had no problem finding a seat in the shade for me and towels were plentiful.

The sea was lovely and warm and the beach was clean; but I will talk about that more in another post.

The staff were wonderful and so very friendly, they were the highlight of the trip.

Overall the trip was okay.  The hotel/resort was okay.  Was it great, no but what suits one doesn't suit another.  We constantly compared it to the Lopesan in Punta Cana and it didn't match up in our minds.

Would we go to Jamaica again; probably not, in as much as we would like to visit other islands to see what's what.  

For a 5 star resort it didn't meet up to our expectations..........but I am glad we went as at the end of the day it was a break from our everyday routines and for that we were thankful.

Canada Museum of Nature Part 2

Now I can't for the life of me remember which gallery this was in but I thought it was interesting:

I did not know that it takes plastic water bottle at least 500 years to decay, did you?

I hope you can read what the photos say.  It was very thought provoking.........

Canada Museum of Nature

National War Memorial, Ottawa

The National War Memorial is more or less opposite the Parliament Buildings, you can see part of one of the buildings in the left hand side of the photo.

Each department of the armed forces takes turns standing guard.  They then switch out with another pair, I think on top of the hour.  It's a great honour to be chosen to stand guard.  It is also very moving to stand in front of this memorial and think about what the armed forces have done to protect us all in Canada and all over the world.

The memorial was unveiled May 21, 1939 by King George VI

 

More decluttering lists........

 This is Part 2, and look at "The Heart Stuff, " wise words, don't you think?

You can click on this link to see more.  Also if you don't like using Facebook here is a website for her: Alison's Notebook.

Facebook Marketplace sales in October.........

I had given up with selling on Facebook Marketplace after a frustrating encounter with a directionally challenged lady....LOL  I figured I would put things on hold until the construction at our closest intersection to where we live was finished at the end of September.  So fast forward to the end of September and the opening of the intersection is not happening until November.  Beginning or end who knows????  Everyone is furious.

However at the beginning of October someone messaged me to see if these exercise dvd's were still available.  I put them up in May and had just left them sitting there.  So I ended up selling them for $10.

With that success and adding to my message, "Please note our closest intersection is closed for construction, please use your GPS, for directions," I decided to start to list some more things.

Next thing I sold were these, The Dream Harbor boxed set of books for $40, which was great, as I had paid $45 for the set on a Prime Day sale on Amazon, so super happy with that.  They were in like new condition as I only read books the once.  I also added in a couple of other books, which she was happy about.

Hubby has been cleaning out the garage and found these spanners/wrenches he brought from the UK back in 1989.  He was going to throw them out, but then said see if you can sell them.  Got $10 for the set.  He said they were not worth anymore.  The guy that bought them, was restoring an old British motor bike so these were perfect for him:

Again while hubby was tidying up in the garage he found not one, but 3 brand new extension cords (don't ask!).  Sold all three to different people for $40 each. He thinks he may have one more somewhere that is brand new also. 😶

I then decided to list the Jane Austen book set I was going to read.  It has sat there for months, and I knew I wasn't going to finish them.  Paid $15 for the set, sold them for $10.

This next item I had online for 32 weeks, and it finally sold one Sunday for $20 for a set of 11 woman's sewing patterns.  Super nice lady as well. (only one shown in the photo below)

I have to say I am super pleased with what I sold this month as it was all stuff I had around the house that we didn't use.  It also shows that you can leave stuff on Facebook Marketplace for ages and it can sell.

Some food photos from Ottawa

I finally got around to sorting out some food photos from Ottawa.

Pubwells on Sussex.

We sat out on the patio and it was a lovely atmosphere.  I had the sausage, mash and Yorkshire.  I can only tolerate pretty bland food at the moment, and they seasoned the mashed potatoes with a LOT of black pepper.  So I couldn't eat much of those.  Otherwise it was good.  Hubby said they had a great selection of beer; he had two Largers so it must have been okay.  Hubby got a wrap and fries.

The name of this place was neat; Scone Witch.  We went to the one on Elgin, and honestly it's not the easiest place to find.  The staff were Eastern European and super nice.  The "scone" was good; we got cheese scones with butter.  Now as I am from the UK, I would call this scone more of a biscuit.  As it is so much denser and reminds me of the biscuits you get in the States.  It's all to do with the type of flour we use on this side of the ocean.  The scones in the UK are so much lighter and fluffier inside.  It was all good though.

On one night we were super tired.  Sat down in a pub for a meal and basically they forgot about us. After waiting 30 minutes to be served, so we trudged back towards our hotel. All week we had been passing a restaurant, so we called in there to have a Pizza.  El Taco De Oro is a hole in a wall place.  Super nice, pretty busy and serves great food.  Again, I have to be careful what I eat, so wasn't brave enough to try the Mexican food, so had a pizza.  The pizza's were good and hubby had a Mexican Beer.  Would eat there again.

Now I only took these photos because the display was so colourful.  This was in a bakery in Byward Market and they are decorated sugar cookies.  I think they were around $5 each.  I didn't get one, but was impressed with the decorating skills.

I know I mentioned this in another post, but I could have eaten Bobino's Bagels everyday.  The soup was one of the best I have ever had.

So if you are in Ottawa, these are some places where you can't go wrong food wise, in my opinion.

What National Day is it today?

 On October 30th it's the following:

• National Breadstick Day
• Haunted Refrigerator Night, where you purge all that forgotten food that is in your fridge!!
• National Candy Corn Day .....I hate those candies.....just saying
• National Text Your Ex Day........now that could be interesting for some!
• National Checklist Day........who doesn't love making lists?
• World Lemur Day.......they are cute little creatures
• Create a Great Funeral Day.........honestly it's a "thing!"
• Mine Rescue Day

There are other things celebrated, but these ones stuck out to me.

You can read more about them here.