*sighs dramatically* BVI. The British Islands. Where. To. Start.

Intro

First of all, gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. It's part of the Caribbean after all, and you can certainly tell. I mean really, if you don't know what it looks like, just Google it. I'll wait :)

But alas, I'm not here to try and sell you a vacation, just write about my personal experience there, as some have requested ^^ As this is simply my experience, it does not necessarily mean that everything I write is nice. BUT, most of that was due to more personal reasons (and which I attempted to leave out for the most part), as the rest of the people that went on the trip seemed to enjoy it a hell of a lot more than I did. So don't think BVI is bad; I still would highly recommend it to anyone that has the opportunity to go ^^;;

I was on the boat with 8 other people, something a privacy-loving introvert like myself couldn't exactly stand very well. Since I don't really want to give out names, I'll give them letters!

T: My brother; he's 19. He's one of the few sane people x) Although he tried his hand at drinking (since the legal age in BVI is 18 and my parents let him), and he is...interesting when slightly tipsy >.<

W: My dad. My immediate family probably won't be referenced much, so I don't have much to really say about him xD

L: My mom. Same as before!

D: My uncle. He's...well, he's probably my favorite uncle, but ugh he takes it WAY to far with the drinking and he's too much of a jokester when he's drunk. It got annoying fast.

C: My aunt. She married my uncle 2 years ago (in the BVI, no less) and I've always really liked her. Until about halfway through this trip when I realized she can be one of the most passive-agressive people ever. And she's also up there with my uncle on her drinking being annoying.

A: My oldest cousin; 17, almost 18. I actually tolerated him very well this trip, especially considering I used to have serious problems with him (he has ADHD and it used to be really bad/annoying when we were kids, but he's gotten a lot better in recent years). He tries to be a peacemaker, but ultimately fails and tends to make things worse half the time. He's also a giant, and I'm about a foot shorter than him (he's around 196 cm, I'm 168 cm T-T)

G: My cousin; just turned 13. I'm not gonna lie; I've always had a bad relationship with him. He likes to pick on me a lot (I've learned to ignore it as he just does it to get a reaction out of me (and besides, he's 4 years younger than me, jeez), but sometimes he knows how to push all the right buttons to get me to snap) and I'm generally really sarcastic back. He was recently diagnosed with Asperger's sometime last year, so at least that explains part of his behavior...I feel bad, but we've always been on opposite ends of the playing field, and that's probably a fact that'll never change.

V: C's son; 8, turns 9 in the fall. HE. IS. THE. MOST. ANNOYING. AND. OBNOXIOUS. AND. BRATTY. KID. ON. THE. PLANET. He's rude to his mother (and just about everyone else), he's a know-it-all, he's selfish and arrogant, and-gah, I shouldn't even continue, I could write essays on how frustrating he is. It's not even to me (except a few times, he started learning from G. ing hell, kids these days), it's just how I've observed him.

As you can tell, 50% of the people on this trip did not end up being my favorite people, so that also added to my distaste of my vacation. This would have gone so much better if they were replaced by EXO members. Or really any idol at all. x)

(Seriously though, now I'm imagining a vacation like that with like...the SMTOWN Family, and let me tell you...it is glorious)

References: Map (with added bonuses of my pretty day-by-day key! (I CAN'T DRAW NICE LINES, I'M SORRY) The paths aren't really...accurate, since I don't know half the ways we took, I just know where we stopped xP), the catamaran (boat) outside/diagram

Notes: A really big part of the experience for a lot of people is the drinking. Which when drunk people get on your nerves >.< I actually refused to drink several times (I ended up trying rum punch (fruit punch...with rum in it) twice, and had a sip of a bushwacker (this dessert-y drink thing with rum) even though I'm 17 xD My parents were the ones that let me try, only after warning me that I wasn't allowed to drink once we got back home keke), and my uncle kept calling me a “pansy” (feel the family love)...but I don't like alcohol. I don't know, it's just not for me! (Sidenote: the bushwacker, which is supposedly really good, almost made me vomit. Why? When I was younger, maybe 6-7, I got this really bad throat infection and had to take the most disgusting medicine (some kind of liquified amoxicillin...it was white and came in a brown bottle, that's all I remember). Since I always freaked out and didn't want to take it, my parents mixed it with chocolate syrup so I'd take it. IT TASTED EXACTLY LIKE THAT CONCOCTION. I couldn't get water in my system fast enough *shivers*)

BVI is very expensive. We had a party of 9, so that's generally going to be expensive no matter what, but every dinner we had was well over $200, some over $300! Me and my mom usually even split meals to cut down on the cost. Every item on the menus usually was in the $20-$40 span usually, I don't think I saw much below that (I once saw something that was $50 too...). We were on a budget and had been saving up for this all year, but most people that go to BVI seemed to be old rich people. So...keep that in mind before telling your family that this is an opportune vacation spot. Hell, we went grocery shopping beforehand and a container of cookies was $9 (they were Chips Ahoy too)...what the .

We stayed on a catamaran, as already mentioned, and my uncle rightfully referred to it as “glorified camping”. That's honestly what it was. If you don't like camping (like me!), you mightn't enjoy it much! He also didn't want to see any electronics, and instead wanted us to enjoy the outdoors. So. You get what that means. NO. ING. IPOD. I couldn't write a single word while we were on the boat. .i.n.g.h.e.l.l.

I am aware that this is probably boring, I'm mainly writing because it was requested (and because venting can be fun!)...hope it's not to sufferable ^^;;

Anyway...on with the show!

Day 1: Road Town, Peter Island, Norman Island

Let me start this off with saying that we spent 10 nights and 9 days on the boat (a fancy schmancy Moorings 4600 that goes by the name “Therapy”), and we spent the night docked at the Moorings Resort in Road Town...so that was basically my experience with Road Town. Ferry from St. Thomas (U.S. Islands) and driving to the resort by taxi...yeah, that's all I really saw of Road Town. It's nice though, the resort is incredibly pretty ^^

We left fairly early that morning, me, not knowing I wasn't going to be showering for 3-4 days, only took a quick one. T-T I was sitting on the front trampoline as we went underway (meaning we started sailing), and was having fun for a while...but then like half an hour away from Peter Island I started getting sick. It wasn't even seasick or sick of the boat moving, it was like...secondary motion sickness. If I saw, say, another boat passing by, that's what made me feel sick. If something was moving that wasn't on the boat, basically. It was weird.

So we got to Peter Island, and I couldn't even stomach getting on one of the dinghies (we had two, since we had so many people and they were fairly small) to go to shore, so I only saw Peter from a distance. Fairly nice beach, there was a private resort right next to the public one, and that seemed pretty, too. My brother said it wasn't the best one he'd seen, but it was still worth going to. I felt bad I missed it :/

Anyway, then we sailed to Norman Island. Magically, several hours later, I was feeling perfectly fine. I don't know what happened, but I was happy ^^ We dinghied into shore (early on in the trip, that became a verb, even though I'm fairly certain it's not a real word ^^;;) and ate dinner there...I had something chicken...I think it was Chicken Roti, but I don't remember, not that it really matters. Every dinner I had while in the BVI was either chicken or pizza, I'm not joking x) They had a cute gift shop there, and everyone was really nice ^^

Day 2: The Caves, Cooper Island

Most people woke up early to go to The Caves on Norman, I, however, was not one of them xD It's pretty self-explanatory what they are, and from some of the pictures my dad took, it's really cool, but...early in the morning? No thank you. ^^;; C stayed back as well, and we ended up talking for like half an hour about odds and ends...nice bonding moment.

Once everyone else got back, we left to go to Cooper, which was pretty (that's like my only way to describe things OTL Even though it's true...). The gift shop was small, but it had a much better beach than Norman, so whatever *shrugs* The waiter we had at dinner was kinda rude, but this was personally one of my favorite places. I fell asleep while sitting in a chair for like 2 hours that afternoon xD

Day 3: Bitter End

Ahh, the day of my accident. Where I took a charging fight with the cement wall of a pool, ending with a battle scar on my nose; sadly, the wall won. >.< Thaaaaaaaat hurt~ :( You can see it in the pictures I posted in Chapter S of ABC (the pictures were taken the next day).

Bitter End is really cool, a lot bigger than both Cooper and Norman. We ended up at a pool there (which cost money...as opposed to the pretty and free beach 50 feet away.) where I got in my brutal fight, and then ended up going to this Yacht Club for some reason (doesn't that sound fancy? The boats in front of it sure were...we just pulled up in our dinghies...it was a surefire way to feel lame.)....Yacht Club Costa Smeralda. Such a long name, but it was one of the few I could remember, oddly enough xD

The adults ended up going to Saba Rock for dinner so us kids got pizza for dinner from this pub...so there's 5 kids, 3 pizzas. We shouldn't really have been able to finish all of it, but in our defense, those pizzas were ing thin. I could've eaten a whole pizza by myself probably...but anyway!

Sidenote, I'm not sure why there's no “Bitter End” on the map, since that's what everyone down there seemed to call it, but I know for sure that's where we were ^^ Hmm...

Day 4: Anegada

Probably my favorite day! This was the last day before I started getting annoyed with the world xD Anegada has the best beach. EVER. Cow Wreck Beach. Google that , it's fantastic. Pictures will never do it justice though...the sand is PURE white, but if you look closely, it's got bits of pink coral in it...so pretty.

So we were on the beach for a while, and my mom kept insisting that we needed more pictures of me, so then that happened (I'm just assuming you all saw the pictures in ABC xD), yadda yadda. We rented a car there (you're probably thinking, like, a van or something. No, no, no. This was a pick-up truck with seats in the back. WE WERE DRIVING THROUGH ING DIRT PEOPLE. I thought I was gonna die. Also, riding in the back of pick-up trucks is illegal here in Utah (don't know about the rest of America though). Fun fact.) and drove all around the island. There's a whole village there and everything (lots of the natives stared at us weirdly...oops.), even an airport. It was pretty interesting, to say the least x)

Day 5-6: Soggy Dollar, Great Bay

And this is where things took a turn for the worse, my friends. When I really started to realize the island life isn't for me and just wanted to get the outta there.

Soggy Dollar is a famous beach bar. Apparently voted the best one in the world, according to it's website. In other words, everyone was ing wasted. The amount of people I saw just fall over because they couldn't balance on their own two feet was insurmountably more than my whole other 17 years of living. And it annoyed me to no end.

We stayed there two nights, yay for me. If you look at the map, you'll see we were in White Bay (since that's where Soggy Dollar is), but for dinner we'd dinghy over to Great Bay (which was a half hour of terror both ways, since the waves there were really bad both days for some reason). Great Bay was less drunk, but it wasn't really much compared to what we'd seen before.

Oh, and there have their signature drink at Soggy, the painkiller (I think it's kinda like a piña colada? Don't know...). There's also raspberry therapy, which is a painkiller with raspberry rum instead of regular rum. Basically, if you get those drinks (I don't know if they have any others), they give you a complimentary cup to go along with it. I know we bought some of the cups by themselves, and I know G and V had maybe 2 painkillers each (minus the rum) but we had over 50 of those cups over the span of 2 days. There were only 5 people drinking, and I know T only had 5 (2 on the first day, 3 on the second) total. And my mom didn't really have much to drink either, maybe the same as my brother.

As you can tell, I was ing sick of drunk people.

The entire second day I spent lounging in a chair on the beach, reading my book glumly (“The Stand” by Stephen King, ing masterpiece) and ignoring all attempts at human interaction.

The beach wasn't even that nice :( There was a ton of cigarettes in the sand and it was nothing compared to Anegada. Ugh.

The only good thing about staying there was that we saw three dolphins on our second day on our way over to dinner. So cute <3

Day 7: Sandy Spit, Marina Cay

Sandy Spit is this tiny tiny island right out of Jost Van Dyke, you could probably walk around the entire thing in 5 minutes x) It was cute and we swam out to it because there wasn't a dinghy dock or anything (and trust me, that was one hell of a swim...we were swimming against the current too...bleh). My family went around looking for shells, but since I was tired and generally unhappy, I laid in the sand and tried to sleep. I hope somebody walked by and thought I was dead and had washed up on shore LOL xD

We didn't stay there long, since there wasn't exactly anything to do there and we then went to Marina Cay (which is pronounced “Key”...I think. That's what my family says, at least *shrugs*). We didn't really do much there, we went to use this hotel's pool (even though we weren't guests in the hotel OTL) and I just read some more.

The highlight of the day was dinner. We went to this one restaurant, Pusser's, and the highlight of this was not the food, no-no. They. Had. Cats. Walking. Around. IN. THE. RESTAURANT.

So.

ing.

Cute.

There were so precious, I wanted to keep them (there were 2).

It also started raining when we were there, and we had left all the hatches open (windows on the cabin ceilings, basically). So when we got back to the boat to see the damage after dinner, I hurry down to me and my brother's cabin, and guess whose side of the bed is drenched.

Yeah.

Day 8: The Baths, Bitter End...again

The Baths are amazing. That's the place you always see pictures of when you search BVI ^^ It's like this maze of boulders too...I don't know, it's cool. :)

There wasn't much to say about it though, we were only there a couple hours. And then we went to Bitter End...again. And ate at the pub...again. But this time I didn't have pizza!...I had chicken. OTL In my defense, Jerk Chicken is one of the best creations on this planet, I swear o.o

I really don't have much to say about that day, we didn't really do anything at all xD

Day 9: Soper's Hole

Soper's Hole...for lack of a better word, is adorable. xD Look it up, right now. Seriously. All the buildings are these crazy cute colors...oh, it was great. This was the place I got all my presents to bring home to my friends x) There was also another Pusser's restaurant...and again, more cats! There were 3: One really skittish one, a moderately friendly one, and this huge fat one that would watch you eat LOL It kept going over to this chick at another table that happened to be allergic to cats too xD

I don't know, Soper's was just reallly...cute x) We didn't do much there, and I know some of the people were sad that it was our last day on the boat, so...yeah. ^^;;

Day 10: Back To Road Town

We got into the Moorings around noon and checked into the resort right after. And let me tell you. That. Was. The. Best. Shower. Of. My. ing. Life.

I wouldn't even bother mentioning anything else, since it's no longer about the boat, BUT! We were eating dinner that night and there was another kitty! It was gray and had a kinda leopard-ish pattern on it's tummy, and oh my god. This cat. I have never wanted to adopt an animal more than that. It was just so cute and friendly and adorable...and it was so tiny. But my dad is stupid and wouldn't let us keep it :( (just kidding, I know it was nearly impossible to keep that cat)

The Rest Of My Vacation/Hiatus

We started out flying from Utah to Cali for A's graduation, and we spent the rest of that day and the next day in Sacramento (I also apparently sat next to some 80's rock star on the shuttle at the Cali airport, but we couldn't figure out who they were. Huh. They had guitars and everything, were talking about a show they were doing, and had that whole “I did various narcotics for at least 20 years” look that every 80's rock star has developed). I was feeling kind of sick while we were there, so I just lounged around and read (I have no life orz) The next day, the 9^th, we got on a plane to Minneapolis at...wait for it...10 pm (it was a ~3 hour flight). Then we had an hour layover in Minneapolis, and then another ~3 hour flight to Atlanta. And from there, another ~3 hour flight to St. Thomas, U.S. Islands. We checked into our hotel and got dinner and I went to sleep at 8 pm on the 10^th (the last sleep I got was the morning of the 9^th). Also, apparently the hotel phone rang around 1 in the morning, and it was literally less than a foot from my head, and I didn't even hear it xD I'm also one of the lightest sleepers on the planet, too LOL

The next morning, we hopped on a ferry and the story continues from there.

And then, after we stayed at the Moorings after turning in our boat, we took the ferry back to USVI and stayed at a place called Sapphire Beach Resort (I only remember that because it made me think of my SuJu boys <3) which was...not what we expected. It was cool (the room had two floors), but it wasn't very well taken care of, I guess? It was right on the beach, but I didn't feel like going out and exploring. I saw an iguana though, that was pretty cool xD The next morning, we drove around the entire island (thank god we rented cars and didn't use taxis; some of those cab drivers are crazy), since we had time to spare before our flight, and let me just say: the roads of St. Thomas would make a great roller coaster o.o It's...wow. Words are not possible. I was expecting a loop-de-loop or something. xD

The flight back was relatively boring, but the St. Thomas airport is the tiniest airport I've ever seen. Whoa. Too cramped for my liking. Then we had a 3 hour layover in Atlanta and then a 4 hour plane ride back to Utah. We got back home at 2 in the morning. That would explain my odd sleeping schedule mentioned in Chapter R of ABC's/Chapter 1 of eXXXotica. Bleh.

Conclusion

This, personally, was a vacation that, for the most part I enjoyed, but would probably not want to go on again. I'm not an island person, that's just not the lifestyle I particularly enjoy. Obviously it is for quite a few people, but like I said, for me it isn't.

I don't regret going on this trip, as it was actually fun for the first half and for a little at the end, but I don't exactly plan on returning. Ehh. I'd rather go to Seoul (not gonna lie, half the time I was in BVI, I was wishing to be in Seoul)! And before anyone says anything, I'm obsessed with K-Pop, yes, obviously, but I wouldn't want to go there to sight-see idols or anything...since, you know...South Korea is actually really ing beautiful, just saying. I obsess over South Korea and the culture and the history and the language, not just the pop music!

...I'm just gonna stop writing now, considering this is way too long (I even cut out my ranting about V and C, too!). I'm also too lazy to proofread,  but meh, it's a blog post. Please excuse any errors though ^^;; So...

...yeah. The end!

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