swimming

Grand Cayman Part 2

~ Adam Verdoorn ~ Leave a comment
The major city is Georgetown. Georgetown has a lot of shopping to offer, but the hours are more catered to the cruise ship traffic. Some shops even have different hours of operation depending if there is a cruise ship in port on that day or not! A lot of the shops and restaurants in Georgetown close up early in the day. Most of your shops and restaurants along Seven Mile Beach will be open later to a more normal business operating day.
One of the more interesting towns in Grand Cayman is literally called Hell. Hell is a very small town on the northern part of the western side of Grand Cayman. It was named Hell because of the short, black limestone formations. It looks jagged and unusual due to biokarst. Biokarst is when algae, bacteria, and fungi “eat” away at the limestone to give it this other worldly look. There is the world famous Hell gift shop here, along with some smaller shops by the local post office where you can send back postcards from Hell!
There are a lot of dining options on the island. There is a rising food truck scene on the island! We happened to come across Smokin Bros on a drive back from the beach. Their sandwiches and meats are to die for! The sauce is amazing too! There are two restaurants owned by the same family that are awesome. Chicken Chicken is one of them, a quick serve joint with wood cooked chicken and a lot of different sides to choose from. They also own Cimboco, a sit down Caribbean restaurant. I had the jerk shrimp pasta there and it was a fantastic meal! If you are looking for more fine dining, Lobster Pot will be up your alley. It is located in Georgetown and has a variety of seafood. I had the snapper, Cayman style. It was different, but appetizing!
One of the most amazing things I have ever done was on this trip. That is taking a boat out to Stingray City and getting kissed by a Stingray! I ended up booking a tour thru Captain Marvin’s. The representative on the phone was very helpful and discouraged us from booking the two-stop tour (“That’s more for cruise passengers and I have 120 booked for that tomorrow.”) to a three-stop tour (“There’s only 19 people booked and you’ll have the whole sandbar to yourself.”) I was very happy in the end for listening to her advice! It costs $45 per person for the three-stop tour. We took the 10AM tour, which I thought would be in the middle of cruise traffic. Once we checked in, drove out to the boat, and got settled; we took off right for Stingray City. Stingray City came to be because the local fisherman would clean out their daily catch at that sandbar, which attracted Stingrays, and they have been coming back ever since! The phone representative was right! There was only us and one other small catamaran out on the sandbar. It was awesome to have all the stingrays swimming around you and right up to you. The legend is that if you get kissed by a stingray, you’ll get seven years of good luck! Of course, we partaken in this! The other two stops were snorkeling stops with a lot of fish to see! The surprising part was the boat ride back, we saw literally a fleet of boats after boats loaded with people heading to Stingray City! I could only imagine what it’s like to be there with that many people, so I highly recommend you take the earlier tour times!
Grand Cayman is an amazing island to check out! I wished I had more time to just relax on the beach, but until then, I will have to long for returning to that tropical paradise!

Something better than the Blue Lagoon while in Iceland?

~ Adam Verdoorn ~ Leave a comment

During my family trip to Iceland, I really wanted to see the Blue Lagoon again. I went there on my previous two trips to Iceland and loved every pricey second of it. After further research, I found out that they do not allow children under the age of two in, as well as children under eight have to wear inflatable armbands. As my child was under two, we could not experience the Blue Lagoon together as a family. What could we do?

As I was on the side of the road in Gullfoss debating whether to still go to the Blue Lagoon or call it a day, I found out about the local swimming pools in the Reykjavik area. One of the more popular ones that was a couple of blocks away from our Airbnb was Laugardalslaug.

Laugardalslaug is a local swimming pool in Reykjavik that also uses geothermal waters. One of the biggest differences one would see right away is the entrance prices. A ticket to the Blue Lagoon is €40, which at this time is about 5,654ISK. The entrance price to Laugardalslaug is only 600ISK, about €4.24 or $4.59! Sure, the local swimming pool doesn’t have the bells and whistles or silica mud, but to hop in some warm water you can’t beat the price! Another good selling point for us was that there was no age restrictions for Laugardalslaug, very good for families with kids of all ages.

Laugardalslaug does not allow photography once you enter the locker rooms and in the swimming area. Once you enter and pay your fees, which include swimsuit or towel rentals, you come up to an area where you take off your shoes and leave them on a rack before you enter the locker room. In Iceland, it is always proper to shower off before and after you hop in the water completely nude. If you think you can try to slip past without showering, good luck, there is an employee staffed in the showers to make sure everyone does in fact shower off.

When you finally pass the showers and get your swimwear on, Laugardalslaug is an amazing place. There are 5 different “hot pots” with water heated to different temperatures, an Olympic sized swimming pool, a children’s pool, and another pool with a huge water slide! We spent most of our time in the children’s pool with my daughter and she had a blast! I did split off for a bit to check out the hot pots. The coolest one starts out at 36 degrees Celsius, then increases to 38, 40, 42, topping out at a hot 44 degrees Celsius! The pots are very small lining up along the Olympic sized swimming pool.

If I were to go back to Iceland or heard about a friend going to Iceland soon, I would highly recommend Laugardalslaug over the Blue Lagoon if they had to go to only one place. Laugardalslaug is full of locals and it is easy to be a part of the Icelandic culture at a local swimming hole than a big and pricey tourist destination. More information and hours can be found here: http://www.visitreykjavik.is/laugardalslaug