August in Paris: And other travel misadventures by Marion Winik

Author:Marion Winik [Winik, Marion]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Shebooks
Published: 2014-08-10T04:00:00+00:00

Party Time in the Lost City

This is the first in a series of 134 articles about the Atlantis resort I will be writing to fund my upcoming Visa bill.

Family vacations are all about creating magical memories, and here’s one we Winiks will treasure from our four-day visit to the Bahamas back in the summer of 2001.

It was 11 a.m., Day Two of our trip. Hayes and Vince, my 24- and 22-year-old sons, were chillaxing on our 11th-floor balcony. Fragrant smoke wafted through the railing over a phantasmagoric vista: mangrove and hibiscus, vast freeform pools surrounded by flotillas of lounges, a DJ in a gazebo spinning Usher for the midmorning mojito crowd, and beyond all that, the turquoise sea. In the other direction, we could see right into what we had dubbed the Factory, a complex of loading docks and warehouses through which trucks and workers streamed continuously. Our Terrace View room, as the reservation agent described it, was just $500/night on summer special.

Inside, 12-year-old Jane had finished reviewing the map of the water park that is the centerpiece of the Atlantis resort (and you don’t pay anything extra for it, which is a phrase I will be using only once in this article). “Let’s go!” our energetic leader shouted at her slowpoke troop. Meanwhile, Vince’s girlfriend Shannon was trying to determine which of her bikinis was most likely to survive the Leap of Faith.

Suddenly, on a whim, I slipped out to the terrace. My sons watched me curiously as the last time I’d taken a hit of pot, in the early 2000s, I spent the next nine hours locked in my bedroom considering institutionalization as my New Year’s party rolled on without me.

FAQ: How do you buy drugs at Atlantis?

Easy, dude, it’s right on the beach! Find one of the gypsy jet-ski rental guys the notice in your hotel room warns you not to have any dealings with. Vince recommends Mr. Pointy Tooth, who is the kingpin of the operation.

So, yeah. Whoa. I was really, really wasted. Sternly I ordered myself to remain calm.

“Come on, Mommy! You said you would go on the slide today!” Jane said, and if I could say no to that sweet, beautiful youngest child of mine, we wouldn’t have been at Atlantis in the first place. I have never been to a resort in my life, never wanted to go to one, have always been the Paris-on-$10-a-day type of traveler. But somehow we started hanging out with these rich friends who were all Atlantis this, Atlantis that, and Jane was hooked. I thought, what the hell, we’ll do it once.

Once is right.

I trailed my group through acres of resort landscaping, which shamelessly combined real vegetation, birds, and sea creatures (a manta ray the size of my Yaris) with faux caves and waterfalls, all of it nestled among turreted pink hotels and seahorse monuments. It was sort of Mesoamerican, sort of Egyptian, sort of Greek, sort of Gothic—an Epcot Center of ancient civilization! Bizarrely, it also

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