Wednesday, April 6, 2011

We are at Princess Cay on a mostly cloudy day with a few short showers. We didn't stay ashore when the first shower came. We came back to the ship and spent the day by the pool and packing as we arrive in Ft. Lauderdale tomorrow.
The cruise went by so fast and we are well rested and tan.

To sum up the islands we visited, they were pretty but very poor. We did not experience any beaches worth repeating. For the most part they were rocky and had coarse sand. Antigua was the only one that had nice water and sand. None of the islands could compare to Bora Bora or Moorea.

Monday, April 4, 2011

St. Thomas

Boy this cruising life is tough. Every morning we get a wake up call, run to breakfast, hurry to the dock to meet our tour group, then we get on the bus and go, go, go.
Since we have been to St. Thomas twice before, and had enough of the beach and tours, we decided to sleep in, have a leisurely breakfast and go ashore when we felt like it.

When the Captain told us we would be tendering here, I was surprised. We usually dock, since St. Thomas has two cruise ports. Today however, we were to be the 6th ship in port!! The captain told us we would be anchoring right in the harbor and the tenders would take us straight to the center of Charlotte Amalie. This turned out to be great as we didn't need to get taxis to town. We did however block the harbor view for others. :)

After some shopping, we came back to the ship and had a nice lunch. We then relaxed poolside and on our balcony.

Saturday and Sunday, April 2 and 3, 2011
St. Lucia

From the sea, the island is majestic in appearance because of the twin Pitons.




They were formed by a volcanic eruption and we had the pleasure of visiting the inside of the crater. Phew, did it stink!! We took a full day tour. In the morning we were on a bus and in the afternoon we were on a catamaran sailing back to the ship. We got to see the island from both vantage points.


The driver stopped and picked a cashew from a tree to show us how it looks before it is dried and roasted.

The island has much poverty and depends on tourism. We did not see the water colors here that were present in other islands. The beaches did not have nice sand.

Antigua




We took a tour of the island and then spent an hour on the beach. We visited Nelson's Dockyard, a restored dockyard from the 1800s located in a secure harbor. This harbor was protected by forts above and around it when the French and British were at war.
Today, it is a safe haven for cruisers caught in a hurricane.
The beach at Dickinson bay was white sand and it was easy to enter the water as there were no rocks. The water was a lovely color also.

Friday, April 1,2011
Barbados

Barbados is 166 square miles with a population of 285,000 residents. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Barbados followed the sugar trade and had 26 British forts built on the island. It became independent of Great Britain in the 1960s.

Our tour today was to be a catamaran sail to see the sea turtles and have a picnic lunch and swim. Instead it was a tour of the infirmary to socialize with the doctor and discuss my cold and cough.:( Between antibiotics and Robitussin , the doctor assured me I would live to sail another day. So it is on to St. Lucia tomorrow no matter what.

I did leave the ship this afternoon to walk to the shops at the end of the pier. So I really can say I was in Barbados. :)