Today dawned cloudy and a little rainy. On the island, showers don't last, so we headed out about 10:30 to go to The Sheraton Mall.." featuring 120 stores" with a "multi-cultural food court featuring local and international cuisine". I am quoting from the book Barbados in a Nutshell. I should lie as well as they do!
We walked to the bus stop, which Gordon says is 1/2 mile away not 1/4 mile as I had guessed. The bus to "town" came right away. Here, there are only 2 bus stop signs.."to town" and "away from town". They have 9 parishes on this 168 square foot island, but "town" means only one thing and that is Bridgetown. You have to go to Bridgetown to get anyplace on the island. You pay your $2 each to go to "town" and then walk to the bus station and pay $2 each more to go where you really want to go. We found out that we wanted to go to St Patrick's and waited in that line of people. The bus was there, the people were there, but the bus driver was missing. Missing for a very long time. After about 1/2 hr, he showed up and opened the gate and we piled on-board. We got a seat. It's going to be a good day. I asked the driver to tell us when we got to the mall. He said he would. 20 minutes later, as we were pulling out of a stop, I happened to glance to my left and see an obscure sign that said Sheraton on it. "Driver"., I shouted, "is this the mall?" Oh, yeah", he said, absentmindedly. He slammed on the breaks and we got off the bus.
We walked up the street to a building that looked like it housed maybe a small set of offices or a branch of a phone company. No, this was the mall. 120 stores? Oh, that's right, they forgot to print in the book THAT THE STORES WERE THE SIZE OF A TINY JUICE STAND AT ONE OF OUR MALLS!! So far, we have spent $8 to get here. The mall was laid out by the person who invented the corn maze. Nothing made sense. We kept doubling back to where we had been and there were no signs to tell us how to remedy this. We saw the same stores many times and then decided to go to the food court for lunch. We asked someone how to get there. She said we had to go outside to do that. I asked if it was outside and she said no, but that was the best way to get there (?) Ok. We went outside, figuring that, if we stayed in the same pattern of walking that we had done for an hour, the mall would close and we would have seen maybe 20% of it.
FOOD! Sure smelled good. The "special" at the first food stand was "only" $18.95. Pass. There were all sorts of "cuisines", but they all looked remarkably the same to me. Gordon spotted a Chinese takeout and said, "Look. Chinese!. I speak their menu", so we went to their counter. I think what he meant was "Look..only $6.95". Ok. I looked over the selection and it was pretty grim. Rice in 3 types, 2 types of LoMein, ribs from an unknown animal, sweet and sour chicken and chicken curry. Hmmm. I know chicken curry. Maybe that would be safe to eat. I ordered Lo mein with vegetables and chicken curry. We got a table ( the first time we had sat since the bus because this mall has NO chairs or benches in the whole mall unless you are buying shoes or eating.), I unwrapped my plastic fork and opened the Styrofoam container. This looks bad. Blind men with no taste buds made this, I thought after tasting it. Now I had a new goal for the day. Keep from vomiting and poop this out as fast as I could digest it. This was NOT chicken. I am acquainted with chicken bones and these were NOT chicken bones. Good Lord! Who knows what animal I was eating? I ate some of it, trying not to think about it, and some of the LoMein, until I just couldn't do it anymore, and then I threw it away. It was an insult to my colon which has seen some nasty shit before. Faced with this meal, the starving kids in China that your mother told you about when you were a kid, would rather.
We left the food court and found a set of stairs. They had a 2nd floor. This was an easy floor because it had four little shops and they were all selling valentine stuff. Even the hardware store.
We left this great mall and walked across the street to the "to town" sign and a different colored smaller bus came by. Gordon said we should take it. I asked the man who to pay and he said "get in". Ok, we're being kidnapped, I thought. A little yellow bus full of black people and 2 very white people careening through the streets and a teen finally came by and collected $2 each. We eventually got to Bridgetown where we once again walked to the bus station and boarded a bus to Sam Lord's Castle. Don't ask me. That's the one we were told we needed to get to go back to Worthing. We waited about 20 minutes and the bus pulled in and we got our seats (yes!) and the bus continued to fill and fill and fill and fill and fill, Soon people were pressed into each other just like our trip last week. This time, a postal employee was standing pressed into Gordon's left shoulder. He was being squeezed from all directions and all I could think of was "Lord, don't let him go postal!". A long 1/2 hr later, with stops all over the place where more people got on than off, and we were at our stop. When we body surfed to the door and were standing on the sidewalk, Gordon said "Well. That didn't work out well did it?" $16 spent on bus fare and all I bought was a $1 postcard and some crappy curried mystery meat. Oh yes. I forgot. He spent $1.75 for a piece of candy that had stones in it. We are sure that they were stones because he couldn't bite them, break them or even recognize them. He doesn't even know how do describe what the candy tasted like except to say it was sweet.
Guess what he's getting for Valentines day? He's getting to carry 2 loads of laundry down the stairs for me and I get to wash it, dry it and fold it. Ah, romance is in the air...or is that curry?
No comments:
Post a Comment