Sunday
on George Hamilton (Jamaica), 04/Oct/2010 11:18, 34 days ago
The sun finally shone on Sunday; it was the first day in 9 days of rain and flooding so we took advantage of the sunshine and went for a Sunday drive. Our original thought was to take public transportation to Port Royal but we also wanted to visit the Jewish synagogue and George noticed it was a four block walk from the nearest bus in a fairly poor neighbourhood, by our standards. Still nervous from Abdi's attack and robbery, plus subsequently hearing lots of stories of people being robbed at knife point in broad daylight, we decided to rent a car for the day to allow us to do both - visit the synagogue and Port Royal. The structure below is a building across the street from the synagogue. It's an inner city neighbourhood with lots of corrugated tin fencing.The blue building is the synagogue caretaker's home with their laundry hanging to dry in the compound court yard.Our fears in the synagogue neighbourhood turned out to be false. The people were very friendly. We drove around the block 3 times trying to work out how to get in and finally decided to park on the street and walk around to the lane but just as we were parking a man in a Canada t-shirt shouted to us not to park there because we'd be clamped and towed to the wreckers. Or at least the car would be. This not sounding like a good idea we sat puzzled for a few minutes and so the man ran over and said, "follow me", I'll show you where to park. We hadn't asked for directions, he just instinctively knew that we were looking for the synagogue. We in the car, driving, were supposed to follow a man walking around the block so George asked him if he wanted to get in and we'd drive him but he said no. So we he ran along the sidewalk and we followed slowly in the car to a familiar lane. We were driven to the synagogue on our orientation 6 months ago but we decided not to go in because there were people inside getting ready for an official function.The men in the lane fixing a parked car opened the gate for us to enter the synagogue and told us to wait for the caretaker. They didn't know where he was but suspected he could be at Coronation Market. Eventually a man on a bicycle showed up with a plastic bag full of bag juice dangling from his handle bars. He opened up the synagogue for us to view and went off to talk to his young daughter, leaving us alone.The first thing you notice inside the synagogue is the beautiful white sand floors. Only three synagogues in the world have this - Jamaica, Curacao, and the Virgin Islands, all in the Caribbean. It represents the exodus of the Jews from Egypt when they wandered around the dessert for 40 years and is used to reduce the noise within.There are 13 Torahs in the Kingston synagogue, collected from around the island since there is now only the one synagogue in Jamaica.The gravestones were moved from another location and are preserved for their artistic and historical merit in the court yard. Many date back to the 1700s but all were very clean and well maintained.We then headed over to Port Royal for a fish lunch at Gloria's. With directions from Jacquie we were able to find the smaller, nicer version of Gloria's down by the fishing wharfs and police station. George had the steamed fish which was two red snapper and I had the garlic lobster which had been removed from the shell so easy to eat. Both were out of this world. While we ate we watched the fisherman arriving with crates of fresh lobster - they seemed to arrive every ten minutes or so. The interesting thing about lobster in Jamaica is they don't have the big front claws.These Jamaican spiny lobsters don't have claws so are really large crayfish. They are found in the coral reefs and rocks off shore.Chillin' after lunch at Morgan's Harbour Hotel and Marina just watching the fishing boats and sea doos do their thing on the water.Later in the evening we took advantage of having the rental car and drove over to MegaMart to buy a turkey with Candas and Alastair who had never been before. Their impression was it was like being in Miami. It's a large box store similar to Costco which is open until 10:00 on Sundays. It is possibly the only business open on Sunday nights on the entire island. We bought our turkey for next weekend which is now safely home in Candas and Alastair's fridge ready for Alastair's professional preparation on Saturday. We don't want anything bad to happen to it, turkeys cost about double the price of Canadian birds.