We were drawing close to the end of our trip. After a day at Seven Mile Beach and Stingray City, we went to the little beach where we’d been going for our morning sea baths to watch the sunset together our last night on the island.

We both brought our reading material, and it was sublime.

Throughout our trip, I wore something handmade every day. One of my favorite makes was a pair of rayon shorts I made the day before we left for our trip, to use as lounge/PJ shorts. I wore them for part of almost every day we were away.

I used the same shorts pattern I’ve used for most of my homemade shorts, using all French seams except for the elastic casing. They are super comfortable and became my new favorite summer hanging-around-the-house shorts. After the Arenite shorts I brought along on the trip, this is only the second pair of shorts I’ve made using rayon, but I’m definitely a fan and will be making more in the future. They’re so comfortable it doesn’t seem fair.The next day was our last. We had a late afternoon flight. We spent that morning back at Seven Mile Beach. We took another walk down the shoreline and then swam and floated in the clear water.After washing up, we went to our little local beach to read for a bit.Next, we headed over to Pure Art, a little shop between the little beach we’d been going to and the apartment where we’d stayed.

Pure Art was lovely. It was completely full, top to bottom, with souvenirs, prints, and original artwork. There were all kinds of interesting and amazing things there and I regretted that we’d already picked up things for some of the kids at another touristy shop in town earlier in the week.

We finished our morning with an early lunch at Singh’s Roti Shop to the familiar strains of soca. I won’t lie, I think it was better than the roti place we usually go to in Tobago (Sorry, Rena!), but equal to another Tobagonian place my mother-in-law got catered buss up shut from one time.

Singh’s only offered wraps and not buss up shut (this is the difference between having a burrito and a taco bowl). I ended up getting a take-out dish and making my own buss up shut because roti skin wrapped around soft food (chana, which is curry potato and chick peas, with mashed pumpkin, and some other mushy veggie thing – maybe callaloo?) is going to turn into buss up shut anyway.

When we got to the airport that afternoon, we found out our flight had been moved back. We’d already dropped off our borrowed car and now we had extra time. Such is air travel. I settled down to do some more reading, and we managed to run into one of the Chaplain’s friends’ sister, who was catching a connecting flight through Grand Cayman and happened to be at the airport at the same time we were (She was flying from Canada to the Bahamas, and was in the Cayman Islands for the first time in 15 years for that flight transfer, so it truly was amazing that we happened to be in the same place at the same time).

Arriving back at JFK later than we’d expected, we had two Lyft drivers not show up and were tired and sweaty. I was eying the Airtrain, but wasn’t sure if I wanted to end my day with public transit. We opted for a taxi, and almost $100 later and a lot of motion sickness later, we’ll be taking the Airtrain next time.

Free Travel Advice: NEVER take a taxi from JFK to Long Island. It was an FML moment at the end of a really nice trip.

I love the intimacy of a trip where we actually have people to ask, “What should we do while we’re here? Where’s the best place to eat?” And it goes beyond that – friends and family actually take us to the good food and unforgettable sights. It feels fun and exclusive. It’s also a tiny bit claustrophobic sometimes for an introvert like me, so I equally loved going to the Netherlands and being completely anonymous for a few days.

I think I need a little bit of both types of travel in my life.

I’m still processing the books I read on the trip – I consumed 2.5 books in a week – so keep an eye out for those, too.

Should you consider putting the Cayman Islands on your bucket list if it isn’t already there?

It depends. Grand Cayman is super touristy, but has incredible beaches and really good food. The U.S. dollar is worth less than the Caymanian dollar (CI), so that was a bit of a bummer. Cayman Brac is lovely, but I feel like it would be boring for some (particularly people who don’t travel with a book, and people who need activities other than “banging around the island to see what’s here, hoping to run into an iguana but OK with not seeing one.”). Cayman Brac was one of my spirit places (along with Arches National Park in Utah, Portland and the Mt. Hood area in Oregon, and the area around Denver, Colorado).

The Chaplain and I have been talking about taking this trip ever since we got married. We’ll be celebrating 13 years this month. Slowly, we’re crossing things off our bucket list as we walk through life together. It feels good to be realizing some of our dreams now, instead of waiting for the Perfect Time, whenever that is.

Special Thanks to my mom and dad and the Chaplain’s friends, who took such good care of us and our kids, and without whom this trip wouldn’t have been possible.

As a kind of post script, one of my favorite parts of coming back home was sharing the bread we picked up on Cayman Brac with our kids. Here are Five and Six chowing down on some bulla.

Catch up on this series: Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.