Half Moon Resort – Montego Bay, Jamaica – Part Three

I think I can wrap up this mini-series in four posts and this is the third.  To start at the beginning, read Part One here and Part Two here.

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We left off in part two at the end of my first night at Half Moon resort in Montego Bay.  I had just gone to bed in my own little paradise.

When I woke at 6:00 am the next morning I wasn’t surprised to see that the small sliver of bed I occupied looked as though I hadn’t even rolled over in the night.  I brewed myself a cup of coffee and enjoyed it on my patio, staring at the inviting blue water in my private pool.  So I thought what the heck….I’m gonna take a swim, and that’s exactly what I did at 6:30am.  If I keep harping on the fact that I was alone for this entire experience it might get boring but for real, it was really crappy enjoying myself this much and not sharing it with anyone.  I guess that’s why this little series is so long.  I need to share it!

Now let’s move on to breakfast, my favorite meal of the day (if I don’t have to cook it).  Seagrape Terrace is the one and only place to have breakfast at Half Moon and it is located right beside Il Giardino where I had dinner the night before.  All seating at this restaurant is outdoor terrace seating and the mother of all buffets is in a covered area right beside the terrace.   I think I remembered seeing indoor seating for dinners the night before.

I’ve never seen so much selection at a breakfast buffet in my life and there’s no way I could eat even a fraction of what they have available.  So I pretty much stuck with my standard veggie omelette, some gourmet cheeses, fresh fruits, potato patties, and of course the almighty bacon!  The entire buffet was much larger than the pictures I’ve included.  Service at Seagrape Terrace was pretty hands-off.  My servers brought me coffee and water but aside from that they didn’t interact much until I was finished eating and they presented the bills, which I happily signed like I was “somebody”.

On this day I didn’t make many plans because I knew I had my tour of the property booked at 4:00 pm.  So I decided to walk over to the resort’s equestrian center and see what it’s all about.  I wrote about that in a separate blog post because there’s an interesting story behind it.  After spending about an hour with the horses, I had just reached back to the lobby when a torrential downpour started to pummel us!  May is rainy season and there’s nothing you can do but sit and wait it out.  Many areas of the resort flooded quickly including a decent section of the walking path back to my cottage so I sat at the lobby at Lester’s café drinking Blue Mountain coffee, enjoyed a Caesar salad and simply waited it out.

Once the rain tapered off to a point where I could get back to my room I waded through the ankle-deep puddles and went.  Immediately upon entering, the guest relations desk called and advised me they had to cancel my property tour because of the rain.  Bummer.  They rescheduled for 10:00 am the next morning before my checkout.  That’s when it hit me that I actually had to leave this place.  Double bummer!

Fast forward to the evening of rain day.  The one thing Forbes Travel Guide absolutely required of me was to dine at The Sugar Mill.  It is rated as the top restaurant on the entire island and is located at the Half Moon golf course on the other side of the highway.  So again, I got dressed for the occasion and headed back to Cedar bar for a quick beverage before catching the shuttle to The Sugar Mill.  While I sat at the bar Caswell asked me if I would be attending the manager’s cocktail party.  I hadn’t even heard of it until now but it supposedly started at 6:30 and I had to be on the shuttle at 6:45 to make my 7:00 dinner reservation.  But Caswell assured me that since the resort was so quiet it would be fine if I was late for dinner and that I should definitely go upstairs to the cocktail party to see Mr Fabris.

Caswell is my hero.  I’m SO glad I went because boy, did it ever turn into a lucky break for me!

At the cocktail party there were servers wandering around with trays of free cocktails, wines and snacks.  There was also a representative from the Fern Tree Spa with a sit-down massage table, offering free teaser massages with the hopes of enticing guests to book a full treatment at the spa.  Of course, I indulged in the teaser massage!  The girl who did it was named Deneisha and she did her best to try and sell me on booking a real massage but I had to tell her that I was checking out the next day and wouldn’t have time to visit the spa.

While I was chatting with Deneisha, Mr Fabris found me and approached with a big smile on his face.  He asked how my stay has been so far and I just gushed about how amazing everything had been!  I joked with him about how I’m never leaving and that I’ll just be hiding out in random places on the property so that I could stay.  WELL…..my jaw kind of dropped when he said, “It’s not like we’re full or anything, do you want to stay another night?”  I looked him dead in the eye and told him it’s not nice to joke about things like that but he pulled out his cell phone, called the front desk and told them to extend my stay.  I was actually in disbelief and asked if he was joking but he laughed at me and said, “You’re good to go!  Just stop at the front desk later and have them update your key card”.

As soon as that happened Deneisha laughed out loud and asked me, “Alright then…..what time should I book you in for your massage tomorrow Miss Keller?”  All of us shared a good laugh over it, I booked my massage and then had to go catch the shuttle for dinner.  Believe me, I laughed myself all the way to the shuttle stop.  I couldn’t believe that just happened!

Stay tuned for the next post in this mini-series shortly!

Read PART ONE here.

Read PART TWO here.

Read the CONCLUSION here.