Well folks, it's that time again, time to figure what on earth I've been doing the past several days. I've been trying to catch up on sleep, trying to recuperate from the cruise.
Yes, I had a GREAT vacation (desparately needed) on the Carnival
Fantasy, sailing from Port Canaveral to the Bahamas and back, with stops in Freeport and Nassau. We left Sunday the 6th and returned Thursday the 10th. Wow...trying to acquire sea legs is not easy! The sail down to Freeport was a rough one and we (most of the passengers, including my co-worker and myself) spent the whole afternoon staggering all over the place...was very difficult to walk a straight line, and I wasn't even drinking! lol
A side note...if you've ever been on a cruise, you know that they keep the itinerary on the ship PACKED with various activities. The destination is the ship, not the ports of call. Those are merely sideshows. And did we keep ourselves busy...never ended up in bed before 1:30 a.m. And we just had to get to breakfast by 7:30 a.m. to avoid the masses (now you understand my sleep line I mentioned above) and hit the day running. The ship was full, not an empty cabin to be had, which meant there were 2040 passengers, with a full crew of 920.
Where was I? Ah, yes...first stop was Freeport. Man oh man...I thought Florida still had a ways to go in hurricane recovery efforts. Freeport makes parts of Florida look like a Japanese Tea Garden. I felt really sad for the residents there, especially when the major bulk of their livlihood is dependent on tourism, and tourism hasn't been as robust as in the past. There were A LOT of buildings, both residential and commercial, that sustained hurricane damage, especially to the roofs. But we hit up the shopping places nontheless...
"Come take a look, I don't charge for looking."
"Put on the brakes honey, come see what I have...t-shirts, 3 for $10." (They all have t-shirts.)
"Would you like your hair braided?"
"Conch shells, $5 a piece."
After you've seen one seller's stall, you've seen 'em all. We spent some time on the beach enjoying the colors of the water, watching people parasail, and just doing some plain 'ol relaxing.
The next day we were in Nassau, which is a bigger town than Freeport. In the morning, we spent a couple hours laying out. The whole aft deck was empty, so we had the entire place to ourselves, the pool, the jacuzzi, whichever deck chair we wanted. After the tanning session was over, we visited all the attractions - Christchurch Cathedral, the Queen's staircase, Fort Fincastle and the water tower, Paradise Island and the Atlantis resort, the Straw Market - all the time trying to remember to look to the RIGHT before crossing the street (they drive on the opposite side). On our way to the straw market, we were walking behind two guys from one of the ships. Laura saw something in a store window and said to me, "Hey, look." One of the guys turned his head to see what she was talking about - and kapunk, promptly walked straight into a pole!
We had signed up for the snorkeling excursion on Athol island. So we met at the designated time to board the ferry. As we're pulling up to dock at Paradise Island (I was wondering why we were coming here) there was this loud kerpow. The pilot and excursion director got off the boat, and about 10 minutes later, we're told this...
"We're sorry, but we have some bad news. One of the engines blew on the boat. We don't want to risk taking all of you the rest of the way on just one engine. So what we're going to do is put you on another boat and take you back to the ship. You'll get a full refund."
A chorus of moans ensued. I felt bad for the couple who were seated beside me. They'd been trying to go snorkeling on various cruises for the past three years. Either the weather was bad, or the excursion was full, there was always something, and this was the closest they'd gotten to finally snorkeling. Laura and I decided to laugh about our misfortune and spend more time shopping.
We spent one day at sea and we checked out such itinerary items as the ice carving demonstration and the hairy chest competition. And you've never seen sooooooo much food in your life. Besides the regular meals, there's 24-hour pizza and ice cream, the midnight buffets, formal dinner night, complimentary room service, the burger bar, the buffet dining room, it never ends. There was also a full salon, weight room, spa, sauna, jogging track, duty-free shopping, library, video arcade, basketball halfcourt, table tennis, internet cafe, several pools, a waterslide, television in all the cabins, blah, blah, blah.
It was a mixture of clouds and sun, with some cloud-spitting in Nassau, but overall, it was quite pleasant from a meteorology standpoint. On the way back to port, we passed one of Disney's cruise ships. That was kinda cool to see another ship at sea. I've included some pix from my latest global trekkings. Thanks for keeping the country under control while I was away!
