In-Laws in Antigua

I do wish some of these so called navigation apps would understand the difference between a goat track and a main road. The mate was in despair! We had only 10 minutes to get to the airport before Sue and David (S&D) would be waiting and wondering where we were.

In Antigua you have to buy a driving licence, so we opted for the mate to buy one for as my navigation was better – well, not with this app it wasn’t! Normally I try not to do apps at all, but our friend Steve had shown us this one and it looked OK to me when he navigated us to the Epicurean supermarket the other week.

The mate doesn’t like stress, but stressful this was… After a few multiple point turns we were on our way again and managed to screech into the airport car park not long after S&D had come out of the building. Phew, Skip can live to fight another day :)

S&D looked great, considering their eight hour flight and much longer total journey. A much smoother return trip soon had them in their apartment, which was very nice indeed – a great shower room, big four poster bed, a kitchen and a large balcony which overlooked the harbour. This balcony had large lounger type chairs on it and it was soon to become one of my favourite places for the two weeks of S&D’s visit.

I’m sure S&D had started to think about what they would like to do in Antigua when we hit them with the news that we would have to abandon them for nearly two days and sail to Montserrat. All the details of this and our subsequent additional night away in Jolly Harbour are in the last blog, so I won’t repeat it all here. But, despite all this additional drama we had a lovely time with S&D and they enjoyed their stay in Antigua (or at least we hope they did).

We last saw my Mum and Dad IRL in Lanzarote in November 2022 so to say I was excited was somewhat of an understatement!  As they were travelling Premium they had a very generous luggage allowance, so in the run up to their visit all manner of boat bits, clothes, books and toiletries had arrived on their doorstep back in the UK.  Not only was it super to see them, but they were kind enough to courier out all our goodies, plus some belated birthday and Christmas prezzies.

It was an amazing two weeks which went too quickly.  We really enjoyed showing them Antigua and parking the jobs list to do plenty of relaxing (apart from the dash to Montserrat and back!).

We’ll tell the story of S&D’s visit in pictures. Here’s a selection of the many photos we took…

Beach Day – the first of many!

Christmas prezzie time

Trying to perfect the beach selfie…

Rum punch at Shirley Heights – guess who finished first?!

View across English and Falmouth Harbours from Shirley Heights

Shirley Heights steel band

Sunset at Shirley Heights

M&D found the beach bar whilst we disappeared to Montserrat

Rotis at Roti Sue

Before we started on the cocktails – they were zonkers!!

Mum and Skip were left unsupervised…

Balcony time

English Harbour rum tent above English Harbour :)

Outside Antigua Yacht Club – we spent quite a lot of time inside too :)

Last day in Nelson’s Dockyard

Final time on the balcony

Happy memories indeed :)  Come and visit us again!