Gretchen posted on December 14, 2013
Argh, another month and more craziness! Work has been very busy lately, with my usual responsibilities plus 2014 budgeting and meetings plus we opened a new hotel in Nassau, The Bahamas (yes, the official name includes "The") and somehow I got myself on the task force that is opening the hotel. Which means I got sent to Nassau for ten days. I guess there are worse places to get sent for work. The only problem was that the ten days included Thanksgiving. Long story short I did some last-minute maneuvering so as to be home for Thanksgiving.
We took over the Sheraton Nassau Beach, which is now the Melia Nassau Beach, a 694-room ocean-front hotel which will eventually become all-inclusive. Despite the 9:00am to 8:00pm work schedule, the other sales task force members and I somehow found time to do the tourist thing around Nassau, which takes about two whole days and then you've seen it all. We ate conch fritters and drank Bahama Mamas at the Fish Fry, bought souvenirs at the Straw Market, watched the cruise ships come in and, ironically, visited Senor Frog's. Since we spent a weekend there, I did a tour on Sunday to Rose Island, which involved taking a boat from Nassau to this island, snorkeling, relaxing, sunbathing, etc.
The hotel is owned by a large company that's in the process of building a huge (I'm talking $3.5 billion) complex next door which will involve a casino and luxury hotels, and the Melia will be a part of it. The interesting part is that the owners got most of their money from a loan from a Chinese bank, with the string attached that they had to hire thousands of Chinese laborers to build the complex. So now there is a type of Chinatown in Nassau (population 250,000).
Anyway, I made it home in time for Thanksgiving and mercifully found a fresh whole turkey, which I roasted with the traditional sides and we had a nice dinner. With about 15 pounds of leftovers.
More to come soon about our Christmas plans!