Calypso has been well and truly consigned to the rubbish bin of obsolete music genres, in Jamaica at least, by reggae. However, many years ago Harry Belafonte once sang a memorable ditty about 'leaving a little girl in Kingston Town'. It might have been true all those years ago, but there's a few inaccuracies these days. First of all, there aren't many little girls about here. Putting aside special cases like athletes, there are few people of any age that aren't overweight, and that goes especially for women. Even girls at school seem, as a generalisation of course, to be stacking it on around the stomach and hips, which has led to a bit of mirth during shopping excursions. We saw a range of one piece crocheted swim suits in one store, and they'd obviously been built around the shape of local women. Let's just say that the top half was roughly Mandy's size, but we each could have stood in one of the legs.
Today was our day tour of Kingston, and it became pretty obvious that it wasn't the same town that Harry once sang about. It's a rather large city, now only known as Kingston. In fact there are two main centres of commerce in the city, one known as Kingston, and the other where corporations and finance are concentrated known as New Kingston, so Kingston Town has well and truly gone.
The hotel where we are staying doesn't do breakfast, so we were bussed to a local eating establishment which specialises in providing breakfasts for locals. Not a huge turn up to the bus actually. The younger tour members are all starting to wilt after a week of rum and clubbing, so they all decided to take the opportunity to catch up on some sleep, and only the more mature (read - old) went for breakfast.
Breakfast was lovely and the menu extensive. Thoughtless remark of the day was awarded to one of our group in her late 60s who, after hearing the long list of local dishes available being supplemented with the offer of eggs and toast, remarked in a loud voice "Oh, you do have a normal breakfast then". Even our normally unflappable tour guide winced. Mind you, this was the same old lady who wanted to go clubbing with the younger ones last night because she liked music. We're not sure that she has any idea what clubbing is, and she finally changed her mind when we pointed out that she hadn't brought any dresses with her. The look of relief on some of the faces ....
After breakfast we all split up various ways to do our respective tour choices. There were three of us who opted for a city tour, so we piled into the ordered taxi. Whilst the taxi driver didn't do much in the way of a commentary, we did get driven around to the major sights in the city for about 3 hours, and certainly saw a lot.
A couple of the sights are worth mentioning. We went for a walk through the very large city market. It's actually the largest market in the country where virtually every farmer in the country comes to sell their fruit and vegetables. The range was amazing, and the number of stalls was huge. We think that we have a big public market at home, but we don't have anything on this scale.
We stopped at both the main athletics stadium and the university training track, principally because on several days of the year Usain Bolt graces these hallowed lanes while he trains or competes, so every person visiting Jamaica has to come here. His image is everywhere, and he seems to endorse everything from phone cards to banks to drinks to clothing. I'm sure if I looked hard enough there would be a Usain Bolt endorsed porridge.
We also stopped at Sabina Park, the home of Jamaican cricket, and were lucky enough to find a groundsman who was looking for a break from moving hoses, so was quite happy to show us around. Whilst we didn't get inside the change rooms, we did have most things pointed out to us.
Drove up one of the nearby hills, where the Prime Minister and the seriously rich live, to have a panoramic view of the city, before heading back to Devon House near our hotel. Devon House is famous for being the residence of the first black millionaire in Jamaica, and has lovely buildings in very extensive grounds. Must be worth a packet. Today its a heritage site that you can tour through, but is principally known as the home of one of the world's famous ice cream shops. We hit the bakery for lunch, before grabbing an ice cream and there, larger than life, was a picture of Harry Belafonte on the wall buying an ice cream, so he's still remembered.
Walked back to the hotel to enjoy the pool now that the day had got hotter, then went with the group for dinner at a karaoke bar. Took one for the team. It was close enough to the birthday of two of the girls so we celebrated with a big cake. One of the younger guys told she of the breakfast faux-pas that he'd put her name down to sing "It's Raining Men". She didn't get it (probably luckily) but Mandy needed a tissue to recover.
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