December 8-10, 2017.
December 8.
This trip came about sometime in November, when my friend (the one who showed me around Israel) found super cheap tickets through Norwegian Air to Martinique in December. Before we went to Israel we were talking down by the shore (that's the Jersey Shore) about a flight to Iceland for $99, and I wasn't willing to book. She then found the tickets to Martinique after we got back, and told me flat-out that I was not going to balk this time. The prices were far too good to beat, and I had never been to the Caribbean, so I paid up and marked my calendar.
I called off work, went to the train station to head to Manhattan, where we met up to head to JFK together. We realized in Israel that we have very similar travel styles, though she's still more "adventurous" than I am in the sense that she's way more of a backpacker type than I am, though we still prefer culture to dealing with tourists and resorts (we are not resort people). While there's nothing inherently wrong with that, in the course of reading this blog and any future posts I might make, you will definitely see that I do not like the resort/luxury lifestyle. I'm not bitter about the luxury part, I just don't like the idea of resorts simply because the idea of "all-inclusive" does not appeal to me. I don't want to just sit on a beach all day and not deal with anything else. I could definitely spend all day at the beach, but I also want, and need, to experience culture. It's imperative. I can't just go to another country or another place with another culture and not see it or smell it. If I ever do, I could never claim to have been to that place. Like I took a work trip to Dallas once, and never left the Hilton. So while I can say I flew to Dallas, maybe that I spent some time in Dallas, I've never actually been to Dallas.
Anyway, I got super excited about this trip because a. it was my first ever trip to the Caribbean, b. Martinique is a French island. So it's literally like going to Europe, and I can work with that.
I was actually pretty impressed with Norwegian. It's absolutely a budget airline and they remind you of that, but it's pretty comfortable for being one and they don't pretend to be something they're not. I also appreciated the free WiFi on the plane, even if it just wasn't very good. At least it was something.
