Mid-week tour guide
on George Hamilton (Jamaica), 24/Nov/2010 23:48, 34 days ago
Today I spent the day hanging out with Maya, Candas's great neice. I've probably spelled her name incorrectly, but then that's fine in this day and age of identity theft. We started out buying fabric at the downtown Ping's location where Maya bought about 6 lbs of material to take home to her mother-in-law in Cuba to make dresses. She was so happy with her finds, material is so cheap here while in Cuba, her mother-in-law buys oversized second hand clothes to cut down and re-style. We were a bit perplexed working out just how much fabric to buy since it was sold by the pound, not the yard or metre but this added to the fun of shopping in downtown Kingston.Our next stop was to visit Coronation Market, but we discovered there was nothing there on Wednesdays so we returned to New Kingston for lunch because Tastee Patties downtown is only take-out and there was no where to sit and eat and I wasn't interested in eating at The Captain's Bakery, a chain which serves your basic fast food style jerk chicken with rice and peas.After lunch in the Sovereign Centre food court we walked to Devon House and hooked up with Steph for a tour of the stately manner built by the first Black Jamaican millionaire in 1881. He made his money in Venezuelan gold mining. The house is large and furnished beautifully with some of the original furniture. One of the unique features of the house is the chandeliers, although the master bedroom was very impressive.Before leaving, we had to join all the children still in school uniform for a taste of a new flavour of Devon House I-Scream.Today's flower was found at Devon House this afternoon. I'm still hoping to find some live poinsettias before I leave for Ontario for Christmas but it's not looking promising. Hopefully they'll be in bloom when we return at the beginning of January.