WELCOME TO BARBADOS!

Friday, January 23, 2009
Bridgetown, Barbados
80s, warm, humid, sunny!!

We awoke today before room service arrived to watch the Grand Princess’ morning TV show, hosted by the cruise director James Ibrahim. We wanted to see Brian, Lawrence, and Colin (CC friend from England)! Indeed, Brian was as good as his word and wore his grass skirt and coconuts and provided great humor. A morning TV show every day is a good idea—people have a way to interact (with birthday/anniversary announcements, etc. and question of the day) and passengers have another chance to see what’s in store for the day.

The ship docked in Bridgetown before 8 a.m. We shuttled to the cruise terminal (free) about 9 a.m. and took another shuttle ($2 each) to the downtown area. Barbados is the easternmost island of the West Indies—270 miles from the Venezuelan coast and about 100 miles east of our next port of call, St. Vincent. It is 14 by 21 miles, 166 square miles. The population is about 279,000 thousand.

We walked to the Boatyard beach, but ended up just taking a look for future reference. Our favorite beaches are in Cozumel (Nachi) and Royal Caribbean’s private island area, Labadee, near Haiti. In all our travels nothing has compared to these beaches since we like to feel a little secluded with our own palm tree and lounge chairs, and perfect sand. The beaches we have seen through many cruises are beautiful—yet lounge chairs are almost always side-by-side.

We checked out many shops—I love the smell of the island perfumes, the colorful island clothing (shirts, tops, beach cover-ups). We have nothing in mind to purchase, just enjoy looking. There were only a few market tents and the most goods did not seem native. There were two other cruise ships in port, the Emerald Princess and P & O’s Oceana. The downtown area is not too large and we enjoyed the walk. Traffic was very heavy and I do think there could be more traffic lights and pedestrian walkways.

Port security is very important and we notice that at every stop. There is a U.S. Navy ship (HSV 2), a destroyer or some kind of intimidating looking ship with lots of artillery docked behind our ship (much smaller than ours-high speed?).

We returned to the ship about noon. My cheeseburgers are available from 11 a.m.-10 p.m. After lunch, we went to the aft pool deck to read. Tim could live in a pool, I think.

more later