re: Turks and Caicos Islands...

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Here's a quick review:
-Traveling from Nola airport to TCI was pretty simple, layover in MIA, flights were on time and we were in TCI by 230-3pm.
-Grace Bay is only 10-15 minutes from the airport which is awesome! Will be one of the reasons we will go back.
- Somerset was a nice resort. The people were great. Restaurant opened the day before we left.
The beach was perfect, the pools were super nice, and it was a huge Condo. Price was reasonable during the off-season. Would recommend, but shop around to get the right ambiance/value for yourself. All of the hotels along Grace Bay looked acceptable except for Club Med.

-Bay Bistro was a nice deck restaurant to eat at right on the beach. We ate there once and was next door to the Somerset. Not amazing, but decent deal and good food.
-Coco Bistro was really nice and the food was awesome! May have had the best appetizer we ever had. We ordered a second serving of it, but it was somewhat expensive.
-Mango Reef was a good restaurant. Their credit card machine was down, but that was the only negative. It was located on one of the waterways. So, you could watch the boats come in from a long day on the water. Food was good. It had some decent spices. I think I got curry lobster. I was pleasantly surprised.
-There's another one, but I forgot the name. I'll update later. ETA: Caicos Cafe.

-Graceway Gourmet (grocery store) was very convenient and a quick bike ride from the hotel. They don't sell any alcohol on Sunday.

-The beach on Grace Bay was beautiful and we spent several days just lounging.
Bring your own drinks/beer/food to the beach in an ice chest because again everything is expensive.
We bought 2 bottles of win per day that we drank at the beach.

I bought some hand rolled cigars in town. They were Nicaraguan tobacco but had "Cuban seed", whatever that means. The let me smoke on the beach as long as we took the lounge chairs all the way at the end of the property, which was fine by us.

We booked a private charter that took us Snorkeling, to Iguana island, fishing, conch hunting, and cruising with lunch and all the drinks we could stand.
It was called Island Vibes.
There was another one that was called M&J charters (or something) that my wife wanted to book as it was a bit cheaper, but we got Island Vibes to negotiate down 20%... still not cheaper, but the M&J charters were already booked.
I think the Island Vibes gave the same experience for $80/pp if you don't mind being part of a big group to go instead of private.

Taxi's were $14/pp to and from the Airport.
They would usually charge us $12 total for one way when going to dinner. So, we ended up spending about $150 on taxis while we were there. That's about the same price as the rental cars. So, unless you are doing a lot of driving... Just do the taxis.

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