Not here for a long time!

Just a quick getaway. Sometimes that’s what we need isn’t it? As a person who loves to travel, a four day weekend screams to me "plan a trip!"  Some people look at a long weekend as a time to catch up on things around the house, or maybe a time to just hang out at home and relax. Not me. The first thing I do is start checking airfares and bouncing from one website to the next to see where we can go and how many days more than those four days Keith can take off from work.


Fourth of July, 2008 we did just that. A spontaneous trip to Jamaica. We’d been there once before and it was ok. We really didn’t do much or see much and our hotel at that time was just ok. But this time I’d become a travel junkie. And the internet had become available to obsessively plan trips! I could check out every hotel on the island if I wanted to!


Jamaica became our choice because of the short, no connection flight as well as great prices for the holiday weekend. We wanted to stay at an all inclusive resort, but not a big one this trip. After some extensive research we chose Sunset at the Palms in Negril. It was charming! So different from most of the larger resorts we’d seen on the island. This resort had treetop rooms all made of wood. Like our own little treehouse. It was a very lush jungle property. The resort was across the street from the beach, which was no big deal because it was a small property so the walk was short. They had a nice beach bar and restaurant right on the beach.

We spent our long Fourth of July weekend doing absolutely nothing. The biggest decision we had to make was how long to stay at the pool before walking to the beach and then how long before moving back to the pool again. This was a do nothing but relax vacation and it was perfect.

We looked at several brochures for excursions, we thought about renting wave runners but we just relaxed instead. We recharged and felt great about doing nothing.

I came home with a t shirt that says on it “Not here for a long time, just here for a good time” and nothing could have been more true for our short getaway to Jamaica over our long weekend.

I was glad we went there.  After our first trip, many years prior I'd had no real interest in going back.  But after this mini-vacation I saw a different side of Jamaica.  Even though we didn't really leave our resort, I felt the island vibe.  The people we met there were lovely and the drive from the airport to Negril was long enough to get to see the beauty of the island.  We'll definitely be back!  Another trip in the works!