GRAND LIDO BRACO: JANUARY 19 – 26, 2002 BY: JACKIE & DAVE
INTRO: My husband & I live in Rochester, NY and always drive 2.5 hours to fly out of Toronto for all of our vacations. We did the Lido Lottery (for the 3rd year in a row—got GLSS Jan 2001 & GLN Jan 2000) through Sunquest and paid $1,400 USD per person ($2,100 CAD p.p.). That price included everything—airfare, hotel, all-inclusive….
TORONTO AIRPORT/FLIGHT: Security at the Toronto airport wasn’t any tighter than it’s ever been and we had no delays due to security. Our flight on Skyservice, however, was delayed by 1.5 hours causing us to arrive in Mo Bay at 10:00 p.m. That was the longest delay we’ve ever had on a charter flight.
MONTEGO BAY AIRPORT: By the time we got through customs (long lines as usual) and got our luggage it was probably 10:45. Our bus to GLB left at 11:00 p.m.
For the return flight, our bus left GLB at 6:00pm (got to the airport by 7:00pm) for a 9:30pm flight. When you get to the check-in counter for Skyservice, a few airport personnel check inside ALL suitcases (a group from Hedo 2 was in line right in front of us and there were some very interesting gadgets in those suitcases!!). Then you go to the actual check-in line where they check your suitcases and give you your tickets. After that we went on to the gate area and had something to eat at the Margaritaville restaurant (over-priced for the quality of food!). Upon boarding the plane, airport personnel confiscated my extra battery for my Kodak APS camera (they said I could either replace the one currently in my camera or give it up to them—turns out I had bought the wrong size anyway, so I gave it to them).
RIDE TO GLB: The ride was the usual crazy trip, encountering & avoiding cows, goats, people walking in the road, potholes, bicyclers, oncoming vehicles…. Unfortunately, since we always land at night, we never get to really see the sights along the way. Actually, that’s maybe a good thing since we can’t always tell how close a call we really had on that bus! The ride to GLB took 54 minutes w/ no stops along the way (oh, actually, the driver did stop to pick up a woman who was walking along the way & then dropped her off a while later). Six of us were dropped off at GLB and then the bus was continuing on to GLSS to drop off a few other couples.
RECEPTION: the bellboys greeted us as soon as we got off of the bus, and we waited to make sure they got the right suitcases off of the bus. In the reception room we were directed to chairs and given our paperwork to fill out. In the meantime, someone came and took drink orders from the 6 of us new arrivals. (A small coincidence—one of the other couples was also from Rochester and the woman works at my hairdresser’s salon, but I’ve never met her!!).
ROOMS: On the textile side, there are two rows of room blocks: The front row consists of Blocks 1-6 and are right behind the beach and Blocks 7-12 are behind the front row. There’s quite a bit of space between the two rows and lots of plants & trees and walkways, so if you’re in the back row you don’t feel like you’re right on top of the rooms in front of you. On the Au Naturel side there are 2 room blocks and I believe the rooms are all ocean view over there.
ROOM 1135: We were in Block 11 Room 1135, on the 3rd floor. We expected a room somewhere in the back row since we were on the Lottery. Once daylight came, we could actually see a little bit of the ocean between Blocks 1 & 2, and we could hear the waves from way back there too (that shows you how rough the water was!!).
We had a fairly large balcony w/ 2 wooden Adirondack chairs and a small table. We discovered that if you leave the balcony doors open even a little bit, the nice tile floor becomes VERY slippery from the humidity! The balconies are NOT very private—the room blocks and sections of rooms w/in each block are staggered so you can see very clearly onto everyone’s balcony around you and even over to the next block (especially being on the 3rd floor). The people 2 rooms over from us kept their light on all night (our light did not work) so we felt like we were on display if we were out there at night—no biggie, it didn’t stop us from sitting out there.
We had a real king size bed (last year at GLSS we had 2 twin beds pushed together and boy you could really feel that division if you laid on it!)—Actually, let me amend that—we had a king size mattress on top of a wooden platform/bed frame. I’m not sure if there was any kind of a box spring in there, but it was pretty hard (it never kept us from falling right asleep, though).
The room had a small desk w/ a cushioned wooden desk chair (that was the only non-bed seating option) and a cd player/radio bolted to the desk. There was also an in-room coffee maker that we never used. The TV had maybe 15 channels (still no Playboy!! L). Our air-conditioning worked great—we kept it at around 19 the whole time (I think that’s around 67 or 68°F).
Off of the bedroom was the closet(w/ in-room safe inside)/sink/counter area and through there was the bathroom (toilet & full shower & a scale (who wants that on vacation!)) w/ a window that you could prop open from the top (the air conditioning didn’t really make its way back there). A couple we hung out w/ had Room 1132 and their sink/counter was right in the bathroom, not separate like ours.
ROOM SERVICE: We got room service breakfast 2 mornings (we tried another morning but the hanger blew off of the doorknob & they never picked it up) and they delivered it right at the time we requested on the door hanger. The fruit was very fresh and the pastries were wonderful—very fresh and moist. Just a note: they put the cream cheese on the bagels and wrap it in plastic wrap, so if you don’t like cream cheese (like me) be sure to indicate that.
FOOD:
LA PASTA: We really enjoyed the food at La Pasta. We ate dinner there twice and lunch (pizza) on our last day. Now, it doesn’t compare to the ‘real’ Italian restaurants here at home, but we thought the food was very good nevertheless. The antipasti bar was very good w/ terrific potato salad. Raymond, the host, was very friendly and remembered us after the 1st time we ate there. Most of the other wait staff was either kind of friendly or rather indifferent.
VICTORIA’S MARKET:
Breakfast: We only went to breakfast 2 mornings and thought the buffet was very good. Lots of different selections: French toast (excellent!!), potatoes, sausage, bacon, scrambled eggs, poached eggs, an omelet station, pancakes, cereal, yogurt, croissants, pastries..…(and other Jamaican kind of stuff that I don’t eat!).
Lunch: We never made it to the lunch buffet.
Dinner: We ate here on 3 nights and thought all of our meals were excellent. I’m a very fussy eater & I found something on the menu every time (I made special requests for the menu item on some of the nights and they had ‘no problem’ w/ that). The presentation of the food on the plates was lovely. The service, on the other hand, wasn’t quite as good as the food. Most of the waiters weren’t that friendly and there were a lot of trainees working there.
MUNA HANA/PIACERE/NANNY’S JERK PIT: We never made it to these restaurants.
A/N CLUBHOUSE: We ate lunch here, on the deck, almost every day. I had a club sandwich and a salad every day and my husband had salads, sandwiches, nachos, lamb chops, pizza, wings, burgers…and they were all fine (nothing special, but good enough)(actually, he loved the lamb chops, of course!!). However, by the time the food was actually brought to us, the hot food was never hot (they prepare the food somewhere else and bike it over to the A/N Clubhouse). Also, it took anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour for the food to come, so be patient (‘come soon, mon’).
The menu here is the same as the Room Service Menu, offering: club sandwiches, burgers, steak sandwiches, lamb chops, chicken breast dinner, fries, nachos, chicken wings, potato skins, salads, soup, pizza, and desserts.
A/N LUNCH BUFFET: One day, I think on Thursday, they had a full lunch buffet at the A/N bar area. There were lots of selections, such as: jerk chicken, fruit, salad, rice, desserts, and potato salad that was delicious!! They set up more tables right outside of the bar area towards the beach, but they all got saved pretty quickly.
STREET PARTY: The Street Party was very well attended and it was hard to find available spots to sit. There were tons of selections; meats, seafood, salads, yummy potato salad (can you tell I like pot. salad?), potatoes, rice, desserts, breads…. Apparently, there was no lobster—I don’t eat it myself, but ‘Flubadub’, another Yahoo member, mentioned it to me on Saturday morning.
BARS:
WHITE GAULIN PIANO BAR: We went in here every night after dinner and Fitzroy made the best drinks there! It got pretty crowded in there after the nightly entertainment ended. Usually we went upstairs and played pool or darts or just sat out on the balcony and listened to the entertainment from over at Victoria’s Market.
DISCO: We only went in here 2 nights (Latin & Reggae) and it was pretty empty (and very dark and very small). We couldn’t stay awake much past 11:00 pm so I don’t know if it got more hoppin’ later at night.
A/N BAR: Wayne was awesome!! He was very friendly, made terrific drinks (pretty quickly) and had a great memory for multiple drink orders. The other bartenders there wouldn’t talk much and usually took forever to make drinks.
A/N CLUBHOUSE: We had to wait on ourselves more times than not in here! There was someone manning the bar about half of the time, it seemed. Most of the time it didn’t really matter to us, since we just went back and grabbed our own water or Red Stripe or Miller Lite. Sometimes if the security woman was around she would go back & pour beers or give out bottled water. Many mornings they were out of bottled water from about 9:00am to around noon.
We played quite a few games of pool here and one afternoon, my husband watched the Pittsburgh Steelers playoff game.
A/N POOL: We spent all of our days at the A/N pool, right near the A/N Clubhouse. The pool was awesome—varying depths, and large enough that you never felt crowded in there, even with pool volleyball going on. I did 10 or so laps 4 of the afternoons and, WOW, it’s a really LONG pool!! I always needed a nice cold Vodka Slush afterwards to help me recover!!
We usually got out to the pool by 8:30 or 9:00 and quite a few of the chairs were already claimed by that time. We ended up getting ‘our’ spot every day, but if we’d gotten down there much later I’m sure the chairs would have been claimed.
By the 2nd day, we realized that if you wanted fresh beach towels for the next morning you should take a few when you’re going back to your room in the afternoons (I think a lot of them get used at night for the hottub). A clean batch of towels was usually brought out by around 10:00ish.
SUMMARY: I realized that I pointed out a lot of negatives about GLB, but we actually loved it and had a terrific time. It’s a beautiful resort with mostly great food & service and we would not hesitate to return. Also, you can’t beat the A.N. side!! As I stated in the beginning, we’ve been to all three Lidos now, and we loved all of them—each has its’ positives (& negatives) and we can’t wait to do the Lido Lottery again (if they still have it) in January 2003!!
My e-mail: jmreynol@naz.ed
Dave & Jackie