So, if you’ve been reading the whole story, you remember that we made all of our final plans pretty late in the game (at the layover, on the way to Barbados haha).
The only thing I had locked down early was scuba diving, because I didn’t want to leave it to chance, since I couldn’t go to Barbados without scuba diving.
All that being said, we knew we had to go to Mount Gay. Everyone said so. It’s the ‘birthplace of rum’ – which is like, Barbados’ thing.
And they have lots of different options for what you can do there, but the only thing that still had tickets when we were planning was the cocktail making class – which I was totally cool with, because of all the things we could do there, I thought cocktail making would be the most fun, since it’s so hands-on, and maybe even a small little skill.
But man oh man oh man were we drinked-out at this point.
The first part of the class, they kept giving all these samples to explain the differences between the rums. It was so hard to drink them all! We were suffering a little.
Alex only then told me that he had originally wanted to go to Saint Lawrence Gap on Friday night (if you remember, we moved it up because nothing was happening in Holetown), because he didn’t want us all drinked-out before Mount Gay. But it was a little too late to late for me to learn that now haha.
So we just made it through.
Now, the people at Mount Gay were super nice. It was a lovely place. So, nothing against them or any of that, but it’s crazy how much Alex and I were consistently on the same page.
We ‘graded’ everything we did, just for funsies. And everything had gotten an A so far – even the cave that just had the trolly thing through it, because it was cool and they had the greatest drinks of all time.
But, he said that he’s never been an alcohol-tour kinda guy, and I agree! I don’t really super dig that stuff either.
And I thought maybe if they taught us really specific cool Barbados cocktails, we might feel a little differently. But we ultimately just made two pretty simple, known drinks.
It was cool. But it was the first thing that didn’t get an “A.” (Actually, in general, Friday doesn’t get an A, as you’ll see with the rest of the stuff. But it’s okay because spoiler alert, Saturday gets an A+++++.)
It was funny that we kept trying to super water down our drinks and hide that we weren’t using the correct amount of alcohol, but there’s only so much people can drink – even in Barbados!
After we made our drinks, we chatted up a couple who seemed fun, who happened to be from where Alex was from. So, that was pretty lovely.
And I can’t even believe this, but after all these years, I didn’t know why Alex had gotten into working in television, and his story was INCREDIBLE (but I’ll leave that for him to tell, as this isn’t his blog, so I don’t need to be airing all his incredible stories on it). But if you run into him, ask him! It’s so good. And he’s such a good storyteller (which makes sense, since that’s what he does for a living).
After that couple had left, we hung out on a bench while we waited for our cab and we talked a little more about the new info I’d just learned about Alex. And it was really special, continuing to get to know him even better after all these years.
And then we were off to the observatory! (Again, just warning you, Friday doesn’t get an A. (Spoiler alert: the observatory is closed because of Covid.)) But we’ll get to the rest of Friday tomorrow!)