blamona

T&C seems to continue to be one of the "It" islands. Recently media, including newspapers, TV and magazines have featured it.

USA Today within the last couple of weekends has featured T&C twice. A couple of weeks ago the had an article of vacationing in luxury there, with a link to a video of potcakes. This past weekend the featured an article on owning a 2nd home there-the link is in their Travel section.

On the Travel Channel, currently showing 3 new shows with T&C in them: "21 Sexiest Beach Bars" features the excellent Da Conch Shack. "21 Caribbean Escapes " features T&C TWICE--including #2. The new "Bridget's Sexiest Beaches" features the best beaches of the world, the 3rd episode is all T&C. They also have a contest to win a trip there:

http://travelchannel.eprize.net/trip...09/index.tbapp

April 2009 issue of ELLE magazine will feature an 8 page Macy's/Anne Klein spread taken at Grace Bay Beach in Turks and Caicos. They also give you a chance to enter to win a trip to the excellent Turks and Caicos Club:

http://www1.macys.com/campaign/sweep...lein/index.jsp

Good luck to all---Although I want to win! ;-)

Caribzack

Thanks , just entered!!

virginia

me too, thanks, entered!

TPAYT

Just got back from Grace Bay. I entered both contests as I would return in a minute. Thanks for the tip. I'll post a trip report as soon as I get back on track.

The one disappointment of our trip was not seeing Daniel & Nadine. We went to O'Soleil on Fri. only to be told that there is some mix up with their work papers so they won't be around for a while. They did have live music---it was just O.K. What wasn't O.K. was the food & service. Well, I'll elaborate on that in my trip report.

Maybe they'll be playing again soon.

kellybeaches

thanks! We just entered too!

Caribzack

TPAYT...I feel so bad about O'Soleil, we loved it , ate there 2 fridays with Daniel & Nadine singing...I wrote about it here, so did Blamona and I feel we had a part in you deciding to go there...sorry, what happened?

TPAYT

Another article---came home to the April issue of Caribbean Travel & Life to find a mention of a "Grace Bay Charmer" as they called Sibonne.

Caribzack & Blamona---Yes you both had a hand in us going to O'Soleil. Even though it didn't work out for us, I still appreciate your recommendations. Maybe if we went there again it would be another experience altogether.

Well, of course, the biggest disappointment was not seeing Daniel & Nadine, but we'll try again next year.

As far as dinner was concerned,here goes! First of all let me address "Team Service". When it works, it's flawless. But in dining out many places in the world, most times it doesn't. Instead of 1 server ignoring you, you now have 7 or 8 ignoring you. And when the backup person delivers food to 2 people, he shouldn't have to say "Who has the baby lettuce salad?" Then try and get another glass of wine, you can order it, but when will you get it? I guess that person has to get another person for that. After finishing half of my extremely small entree, I finally flagged someone down to inquire if my wine would arrive before I was finished. I had ordered it in the middle of my salad.

I do have to say that the 2 very small salads we had were very good as was my tiny bit of seafood rissotto(sp). But MDH mistakenly ordered a N.Y. strip with steak fries. He laughed out loud when it arrived with 3 small steak fries---why bother! They did have potato sides on the menu, but he didn't order more when it stated N.Y. strip & steak fries.

MDH's coffee was mediocre and he was never asked if he would like more, which he did. Of course, the dessert menu was dropped off, and after about 15 minutes of again being ignored, we flagged someone down for our check. One of our "dining out rules" is don't try and save a bad dining experience with dessert, it never works. We went home and ate cookies, lots of them as we were still hungry.

There's more. The Zen Garden wasn't very "Zen" next to the parking lot with junky cars playing very loud rap music going in and out. We were moved to the garden on the other side of the restaurant. I have to say that was a very nice setting and much quieter.

Would we go there again? Probably not. Perhaps we would have a totally different experience a second time, but there are too many good restaurants in the area to bother.

Now Coyaba! Talk about great food, a great setting, and team service that works. I'll tell you about that in my report.

Caribzack

Wow , sounds like the opposite of our experience...and our Coyaba experience last year was so bad, I'd NEVER eat there again! So, goes to show it can be good one day and bad another ! ( for so many reasons)

PandyB

Sibonne unfortunately is not really charming...they always pick it because it's the cheapest hotel on the beach. Restaurant is good, but overall it's like a motel. Sorry but my opinion.

Caribzack

Sibonne is a dump, old furniture, small pool, shabby at best...no thanks.

travelenthusiast

Thanks for the contest link. The Turks and Caicos Club looked very nice when we ate at their restaurant. I'd love to be able to stay there. We saw the show on the travel channel that had Da Conch Shack on it. We saw the employee do the presentation on the beach when we where there in 2005.