Stingray City & Rum Point, part one

The coolest thing we did on our vacation to Grand Cayman was to visit Stingray City. They have packages you can buy and we had been recommended before we went to get the Stingray City and Rum Point package. 
They say “Kiss a stingray and it will bring you 7 years of good luck”, so that’s what we did 🙂 
These stingrays where so sweet. Soft and not as slimy as I thought they would be. Very friendly and didn’t seem to mind all these people that come out there in the ocean to kiss them. This was definitely one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced. 

Thanksgiving 2015

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This year we had plans to stay home just the two of us and cook our first turkey. We have been in Chicago the previous years but since we are going there for a longer time for Christmas this year we chose to stay in New York for Thanksgiving. On Wednesday evening we got asked if we wanted to celebrate with J’s boss and his family, so on Thursday morning we made a quick decision to take the train up to Larchmont
We came to Grand Central around noon and there were long lines around the whole place to get tickets from the machines. The lines to buy tickets at the counter was way shorter and it didn’t take long before we had our tickets and headed to the train. Thor was barking the whole 40 minute train ride, very stressful both for us and all the other passengers. We gave him treats for anxiety before but it didn’t help. Poor little baby. I don’t know how we can help him be more comfortable. But anyway, we finally got there and they came to pick us up. 
The first thing we did when we got there was letting Thor off leach in their backyard. We had to make sure that he would run out into the water, but other than that he seemed to have fun. And all the kids loved him and chased him around calling him a monkey, hahah. 
Before the dinner, we took a walk to a beautiful park area. They have a beach where they allow dogs to run free, but unfortunately it was closed off yesterday. It would be fun to see how Thor will react to beach but at least we got some park time. 
The food was really amazing. Thor had a lot of fun with all the kids. It was a very relaxed and fun afternoon with J’s boss, his family and relatives. It was very nice to leave Manhattan for a day and enjoy the nature and also nice for T to run free on grass which he’s not allowed to do on Manhattan.
One really funny thing was that there were three Thor‘s. A father and son with the Norwegian pronunciation and then our little puppy who has the American way of saying it. All day we had three different Thor/Tor to keep track on 😀

I loved that our plans changed. We had a great time. A fantastic Thanksgiving! T passed out directly when we came home and he’s still very tired after a day full of playtime. Of course we had a giant turkey and a lot of potatoes in our fridge that we had to cook today, but since J was working from home today we had the time to enjoy a second Thanksgiving day 🙂 

I ar hade vi planer pa att stanna hemma bara vi tva och laga var forsta kalkon. Vi har varit i Chicago de tidigare aren men eftersom vi ska dit en langre tid for julen i ar valde vi att stanna i New York for Thanksgiving. Pa onsdag kvall fick vi fragan om vi ville fira med J’s chef och hans familj, sa pa torsdag morgon tog vi ett snabbt beslut att ta taget upp till Larchmont.
Vi kom till Grand Central runt lunchtid och dar var sa langa koer runt hela stallet for biljetter att kopa i automat. Koerna for att kopa i luckan var betydligt kortare och det tog inte lang stund forran vi hade vara biljetter och gick mot taget. Thor skallde hela den 40 minuter langa tagresan, valdigt stressande bade for oss och alla de andra resenarerna. Vi gav honom godis som hjalper mot angest fore resan men det hjalpte inte. Stackars liten. Jag vet inte hur vi kan hjalpa honom att bli mer bekvam. Men iaf, vi kom tillslut fram och de kom och hamta oss.
Det forsta vi gjorde nar vi kom dit var att ta av kopplet pa Thor i tradgarden. Vi var tvugna att se till att han inte sprang ner till vattnet, men annars verkade han ha roligt. Och alla barnen alskade honom, jagade honom och kallade honom for apa, hahah.
Innan middagen gick vi en promenad till en vacker park. De har en strand dar de tillater hundar att springa fritt, men tyvarr var den stangd igar. Det vore sa kul att se hur Thor skulle reagera pa stranden men vi fick iaf lite park tid.
Maten var riktigt god. Thor hade sa kul med alla barnen. Det var en valdigt avslappnad och rolig eftermiddag med J’s chef, hans familj och slaktingar. Det var harligt att lamna Manhattan for en dag och njuta av naturen och aven harligt for Thor att spring los pa gras vilket han annars inte far gora pa Manhattan.
En riktigt kul grej var att dar fanns tre Thor‘s. En pappa och son med det norska uttalet och sa varan lilla valp som har det Amerikanska uttalet. Hela dagen hade vi tre Thir/Tor att halla reda pa 😀
Jag alskar att vara planer andrades. Vi hade en underbar dag. En fantastisk Thanksgiving! T slocknade direkt nar vi kom hem och han ar fortfarande valdigt trott efter en dag full med lek. Sjalvklart hade vi en stor kalkon och massor av potatis i var kyl som vi var tvugna att tillaga idag, men eftersom J jobbar hemifran idag hade vi tid att njuta av en andra Thanksgiving day 🙂

Seven Fathoms Rum

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On one of our days on Grand Cayman, we decided to walk to Cayman Spirits Co. distillery. Jim had tasted the Seven Fathoms Rum the day before and really liked it and then found out that you can go tours at the distillery, so that’s what we did. We got to taste all their different rum and vodka that they make there. 
I’m not a big fan of rum but it was very interesting to hear how they make it and the guy was super nice and really knew what he was talking about. For example, I thought it was interesting to hear about that the Seven Fathoms rum goes under water in oak barrels for three years.
You can read more about it HERE.

Kittiwake

One of our days on Grand Cayman, we decided to walk along the 7 mile beach to snorkel at two spots we had read about in the guide books. We reached one point, snorkeled, but found absolutely nothing interesting there, so we continued on. It started to be really really warm now and it was almost lunchtime, so our energy ran out of us. We stopped at a kinda crowded part to eat lunch at a restaurant. All of a sudden there were bus after bus with tourists from the big Caribbean boats that came in to the island earlier in the morning. The whole reason for why we decided to walk and explore the beach this day was to avoid all the boat people, but I guess they get pushed in to buses to visit different places on the island. 
We made a new decision at lunch, that we instead of walking for another half hour to an hour to the next snorkel spot, we could pay the guys by the beach to take us on a banana boat out to a much cooler place, which we would have not been able to swim out to on our own, at least not make it back without being extremely tired.
A nice guy and a younger girl drove their water scooter with us hanging on to a banana boat out to Kittiwake. We kept our life vests on which was kinda nice, then you could just float around and explore without thinking about if you gonna get tired and sink, haha. They gave us fins to use and this was my very first time to ever use fins. I didn’t like it at all. I love my feet to be free, but its good to try, because there might be times when using fins actually might be really helpful and then it would be good to know how to use them. 
Kittiwake was really cool to see! “Sitting at a depth of 62ft in clear Caribbean waters, the ex-USS Kittiwake is a former submarine rescue vessel that served in the US Navy from 1945 to 1994”. I’m glad we made the decision to go out there to see it. To snorkel is a new thing for me and now I got to see a shipwreck along with some cool fish.