The Cohen Chronicle: Getting Lost in Atlantis

I'll start this off with an admission: I'm a lucky girl. Now that's out of the way, feel free to be jealous. Just kidding - mostly. :)

My new company goes on a holiday trip every year at the end of January. We celebrate the successes of the previous year and just generally have a great time together. There is no work - just play. The company pays for airfare for each employee and a guest as well as a hotel room for two nights. Pretty sweet deal. And this year's trip was to... (drum roll please)...

Atlantis! That paradise-like resort in the Bahamas.

From the moment I found out about the trip, A knew he couldn't go. So I asked my sisters if they wanted to go and we could all three split the third person's airfare. Unfortunately, sister S works for the slave-driver that is Disney and wasn't allowed to take vacation. Thankfully sister A was able to come with me!

We were on different flights getting in that Friday afternoon. We grouped up with one of my fellow Chicago office employees and grabbed a taxi to the resort. On the way there we stopped at a supermarket and bought some food for breakfast and snacks. (MUCH cheaper than the food at Atlantis!)

After getting our room, we went straight out to the beach. Such beautiful water!

Friday was unfortunately an overcast day and even in the Bahamas, it's cool in January. (The water was not heated, either!) We sat by the beach for a while but soon had to get ready for the first of two planned events - a happy hour. They held it on an outdoor patio.

After the happy hour, we played some blackjack and hung out with people in the casino. We were glad we didn't sleep in too much - we had plans to do as much as we could on Saturday!

This was the view from our room:

I forgot to mention the other errand we ran on Friday... we walked across the street to a liquor store and bought a bottle of rum. What is the Caribbean without rum? Plus it was the cost of ONE drink at Atlantis. Well worth it.

The morning was sunnier than the day before, so we hit the beach first. Sand, beautiful water and rum and Cokes!

Then we made our way to the pools. Atlantis has a ton of pools, along with slides and a not-so-lazy river. Think lazy river (drifting along in tubes) plus rapids. We rode along the lazy river and tried some slides. But first we warmed up in a hot tub!

That night we had a company dinner which included a D.J. Much dancing was done. More time was spent in the casino. Sadly, blackjack was not good to me this time.

On Sunday we had a few hours before we needed to head to the airport. It was the most sunny day we had all weekend. First we tried the part of the rapid river we had missed the day before and also a tube slide - super fun! Then we took a break to splurge on frozen drinks and conch fritters for lunch. Yum!