St. Patrick's Day

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

After our normal morning ablutions, we went to the World Café for breakfast. This time, we scored a table outside on the patio, which was very pleasant, as there were many small black birds flying about. Today, instead of empanadas as their ethnic dish, they had chicken burritos – also quite tasty. Their selection of fruit was also good.

Because Torsten had had such fun at the Kids’ Club, we went there first. It took a little bit of time, because he stopped every few steps to say “What’s that?”, to which we would reply “They’re ants”, and he would watch them for a while. We also stopped for quite a long time to look at the flamingoes, who live in a small pond near our building. One of them in particular is very colourful, and looks like he is getting more than his fair share of shrimp. As it was St. Patrick’s Day, there were also banners being set up along the beach, and one poor schmuck wandering around in a giant foam shamrock costume. Another staff member in a felt shamrock poncho didn’t look much cooler, and the poor aerobics instructor in a green hoop dress teaching the morning aerobics class just looked ridiculous.

At the Kids’ Club, we met a couple of children around Torsten’s age, named Austin and Sophia. Austin was engaged in throwing things into the small wading pool, and Sophia just happily splashed around. They were very happy to play with Torsten. We spent some time there, watching the kids playing, and also watching the aerobics instructor hopping about in her green hoop dress. Then we took a walk along the beach front. Unfortunately, Torsten took a dislike to the ocean; the undertow is quite strong, and although I held tightly to his hand and he stood on the side away from the waves, I don’t think he liked the sensation of the water washing around his feet and the sand dissolving under his feet. He soon demanded to go back up the beach, away from the ocean.

As I had some work to do, we headed back to our room, passing some truly ridiculous organized activities in honour of St. Patrick’s Day (green beer chugging competition, a sort of dancing competition to try to pop balloons around other peoples’ ankles, etc.). The really good thing is that, because the resort is so large, the activities are not really that obtrusive, so you don’t feel any pressure to join in.

At the room, I settled down to do my work while Ingo and Torsten changed and then went down to the pool. After my work was done, I changed and joined them. They had met a nice older couple from Cleveland, who were watching their belongings while Ingo pushed Torsten around the pool on a floating mat and “beached” him at various points along the side. I mostly sat on the low ledge in the water and watched them. Then we hit a highlight – a lizard was floating in the water, and one of the Cleveland people rescued it and put it on the side. It obligingly stayed there till Torsten returned to ooh and aah over it.

By that time, it was well past lunchtime, so we hopped out of the pool and had a hamburger from the grill at the poolside (Torsten had a hot dog). Glenn managed to find us there when we’d almost finished, and grabbed a hamburger as well. Torsten was quite tired by then, so we left Glenn to his hamburger and went back to the room, pausing on the way at the soft serve ice cream machine for a treat. That turned out to be rather exciting, because although Ingo and I ate the ice cream cone without mishap, Torsten had a messier time of it – and because of the ants in our room, we really didn’t want any drips anywhere. He therefore finished his cone in the shower, dribbling all over the place.

After his nap, it was pretty much time for dinner. We had arranged with Glenn to meet him at 6 pm at Himitsu, the Asian restaurant. Apparently, it only seats 30, and there are 3 seatings, so if you come too late, you’re mostly out of luck. As it happened, we got in for the 6 pm seating, but unfortunately, as Torsten is so young, we could only have dinner in the Chinese section of the restaurant, not the Japanese section (which looked like it might have been Teppanyaki-style, or at least a seating plan where the chef cooked directly in front of the dinner guests). The food was okay (I had a beef rice, Torsten had chop suey noodles, and Ingo and Glenn both had some sort of noodle dish with a side of rice), but the restaurant was so loud! There was a waterfall feature which was noisy, and background music which was loud to compete with the noise of the waterfall. When you add noisy diners and the same squalling baby that we had experienced the night before to that, the din was really quite something.

Escaping outside was very nice. After dinner, we took a quick walk around the Core Zone, which has a selection of sports areas and a teen-friendly atmosphere, as well as (randomly) two parrots. Glenn then decided to go off and look around some more, and later check out the nightly entertainment (it was karaoke night), while we headed back to our room. On TV, we found the Discovery Kids channel in Spanish, and Torsten happily watched the Backyardigans and other cartoons dubbed in Spanish until it was time for bed. We had a bit of difficulty when he discovered that I had brought The Little Duck, but not The Little Lamb (a lot of repetition of, “Where’s The Little Lamb? You forgot it at home!”), but he soon settled down and went to sleep.