Beautiful Barbados I woke up and was a bit disappointed to find that the sky was pretty cloudy. We had a snorkeling day planned and, if you’re a snorkeler, you know that bright sunlight is always best for that activity. We booked an excursion using an outfit called Silver Moon. The reviews on Tripadvisor and cruise critic were nothing short of stellar and, I’m happy to say, they certainly lived up to my expectations!

We were on a large, immaculately clean catamaran. From the moment we boarded until the moment we disembarked it was first class all the way. Really, this is probably how celebrities feel every day. We were given warm banana bread in the morning, served a wonderful lunch with salads, grilled chicken and fried flying fish. Yes, you read that right, flying fish!!!

We sailed to a few snorkeling spots where we saw lots of turtles and fish and two shipwrecks. G loved it! The crew was great and the guy who helped us out in the water was particularly helpful with G and spent lots of time playing with her and helping her find “Nemo” in the water. He was pretty impressed by the snorkeling raft we have for her and said he’d never seen one like it. I agree it’s a total lifesaver and affords her a great view of the fish –possibly better than some of us are getting with our snorkels and masks because there’s no fogging issue.

After the cat trip, we did a bit of shopping at the stores by the terminal –the usual hat for Bobby, thimble for me plus I found a really pretty silver and larimar (a bluish green stone native to the Caribbean) turtle pendant which will be a great remembrance of an awesome day!

On to the food! I’m happy to say that after kind of a slow start its gotten better. For dinner I had two starters: a really tasty tomato and crostini and a just so so egg rolls. I followed it up with a chicken cordon bleu that was served with a most delicious grilled squash medley and a totally forgettable and unnecessary deep fried risotto. G had her shrimp and then a four cheese pasta with broccoli. For dessert, Bobby and I doubled down: passion fruit cheesecake and some chocolate thing. The chocolate thing was fantastic but the cheesecake only rated a bite. I thought G’s eyes were going to pop out of her head when they brought her dessert. It was an enormous banana split with 3 scoops of ice cream, marshmallows and nuts!!! I let her have at it for a few minutes then had to ask the waiter to take it away.

This is G on the front of the cat. She loved sitting there. From this small experience, I can see why people love to sail so much. Its so pleasant and calming. The turtles were so close! It was great. These pix would have turned out great if we would have had just a bit of sun. Oh well.

G at dinner. Do you see the size of that banana split??? Oh my gosh!

These are our after dinner pix. G loves posing.

Ahhhhh!

Now that G learned how to curtsy in her dance class. She practiced this skill quite a bit during picture time. What a goof :-)

Next stop St Vincent!

St Lucia one of the British Virgin Islands, is not tremendously well developed. I found it to be one of the poorer of our ports as well. This was a fairly startling difference from St Martin/Maarten the day before where they have govt provided education, medical treatment and social services. Again, we had booked a private excursion with a group from cruise critic with a guy named James. It was a very long and exhausting day. I actually think G dealt with it better than I did. We started out by visiting the island’s main cathedral, a beautiful roman catholic church with stained glass windows, painted ceilings and carved wood pews. It was explained to us that about 95% of the island’s inhabitants are roman catholic. James, our guide, joked that they used to have two muslims but they “ran them off.” Hmmm. He also joked that the island government had to change some laws to get rid of all the Chinese that had been moving in and buying up land. Hmmm again.

We then made our way on a very twisting turning road to the rain forest which was gorgeous. We stopped at a banana plantation and ate bananas just picked off the trees. James said that these were “sweet bananas” sold to England only and not available to the US. They did taste a bit different. G seemed to enjoy seeing the banana trees. She loves bananas!!

We drove past the Pitons (which I learned is pronounced Pee-tawns not Pie-tons as I’d always believed), through an extremely poor village where there were women washing selves and clothing in a dirty little river and eventually to a beautiful botanical garden and waterfall. We also passed by some of the devastation from Hurricane Thomas which blew through there last October. The side of a mountain came down taking with it several homes and a few families. Apparently the bodies have not and will not be recovered due to being buried by so much earth. Very, very sad. We also went through a fishing village –which looked fascinating. I’d love to spend a day there just wandering the narrow roads filled with shops and homes. It reminded me a bit of the Hutongs in Beijing. BTW, Rastafarians are everywhere. I asked James about it and said “ah yes, they love the gangi, mon”. Too funny! We then drove back about an hour and half on the same twisting turning road. I had to ask to stop once due to queasiness. Like I said, it was a very long day. I’m glad we did it but I wouldn’t repeat the experience. Too tiring.

My overall impression of St Lucia is that it’s just a very poor place. People are really scrapping to make a living here and it shows. We encountered by far the most aggressive vendors at the various stops. The people, however, were kind. I asked James if it would be safe for tourists to wander in the fishing village area alone and he assured me it would be. In fact, I did see several tourists (read as white people) and they seemed just fine. I’d like to visit St Lucia again but, like most of our stops, now that I know a bit more I’d probably do it differently.

Dinner was the best we’d had so far. I started with the antipasti plate and seafood risotto followed by a fantastic rib eye and cheesecake for dessert. G had her usual shrimp cocktail and then the always classic grilled cheese and fries! Bobby had two shrimp cocktails (hey, they’re small and he’s on vacation, right?), turkey with pasta (I think), and also the cheesecake. Yum!!

As always, G was dying to see the show which starts at 9pm. W always get there early to scope out a good spot –although I don’t really think there’s a bad spot in this particular theater which is very nice. At about 8:30 I looked over at Bobby and told him I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to make it. I was so tired from the long day. But G really wanted to see the show and, of course, she’d taken a pretty long nap in the car that day so she’d had some rest. I remember the show starting –some kind of electronic xylophone player guy --but about 20 mins later Bobby tapped me on the shoulder. G and I had both fallen asleep!!! I guess party animals we are not.

As usual we started with the official St Lucia photo!G was always really excited about having her pic done with whatever character they had for the day!

First stop was the main church. It was actually quite pretty for such a poor community

Notice the stained windows feature dark skinned people

but the angels were white

One of the overlooks on the way to the rain forest. The vendors were very aggressive here. Some in our group were very annoyed. It doesn't usually bother me. I just give them a smile and a confident sounding "no thank you" and that's that. The sad thing is that you're afraid to even express any interest in what they're selling or they attack you. I think they'd sell more if they'd give you a little space. But that's just not the way they do it there I guess.

G at the banana plantation. They wrap the bundles of bananas up in those blue bags to protect them from bugs and stuff.

Me holding a boa constrictor. Along the road there would be these random guys just standing there holding snakes. You can hold them and take pix for like $1 or so. G told me earlier she wanted to hold one but when we stopped, she was asleep. I'm not sure whether or not she would have gone through with it had she been awake.

Here's the guy who was holding the snake.

This is the dirty little river that they village women were washing in. It looked like a hard life.

Us in front of the Pitons. This picture doesn't do justice to how pretty it was there. Again, there were trinket stands here and very, very aggressive sellers. Our guide warned us that they would try to shove jewelry and things into your hands in some effort to force you to buy it (I'm not sure how that would work actually). In fact while we were there a woman from another group was sort of left holding a necklace of some sort. She finally gave it to a security guard who was there and left. I have no idea why there would be a security guard at a roadside trinket stand. The whole thing was a little confusing.

We finally ended up at a botanical garden. This sign attached to the tree near the entrance amused me.

The flowers were really beautiful. It made me wish I'd taken my big camera instead of my little pocket camera. This is a pink torch ginger.

Red torch ginger

There was a name for this little waterfall but I don't remember what it was

more flowers

This one fascinated me. It was called a Jade Vine.

These were G's favorite, Lobster Claws.

This was a good day but super long. The other problem was that our guide tried very hard to make everyone happy but in doing so, he really oversold the trip and what could be accomplished. The biggest issue to us being that he said there would be some beach time. On that basis we all wore swimsuits and I told G that she'd be going to the beach. After several hours it became clear that we were not going to be making it to the beach but even after having it explained to her several times she still didn't believe it and kept asking. Below is a pic of her saying "daddy, there's the beach, let's go" we finally fibbed and told her that the beach was closed. That worked. "Closed" is a concept that G gets.

Just a picture of the coast. The rock formation looks like a high heeled shoe!

Food pix: this was my antipasti starter

Seafood risotto starter.

G was thrilled with her grill cheese and fries!

Rib eye and wild rice, yummy!

Bobby with his turkey and pasta

After dinner G begged to do pix. So cute!!

I love this one. The look on G's face is so her!

More cuteness!

The photog (same guy every night) tried several times to get a good one of her jumping. I think this one was probably the best!

Tomorrow Barbados!

St Maarten/St Martin Two countries, one beautiful island! I pre booked a private excursion with a tour guide named Bernard. He’s kind of famous in the Caribbean cruise world and had received loads of positive reviews on cruise critic. We met about 9am and started our 5 our tour of the island. The group was large so we ended up being in a separate van with only one other couple and Bernard! He told us some interesting facts about the island –the history of the wars between France and Holland over the land and their eventual agreement to split the island in two, the fact that tourism has been the island’s chief source of income since 1949 when salt mining and cotton were abandoned by the govt, each side of the island has different currency, their own airport, etc. There are numerous differences in the laws for example: marijuana use and drinking and driving are both legal on the dutch side… hmmm. We also learned that the average person pays about 18% of their wages to taxes but that includes free education including college and govt health care for all…. hmmm again.

We made our way around St Maarten (the Dutch side) and St Martin (the French side) and, as always, I marveled at how beautiful it all is. We stopped at a rocky spot and were shown an absolutely enormous starfish (which I honestly think they may have planted there but that didn’t keep it from being real), live sand dollars, a sea star, and both black and white sea urchin. I’d never seen a white urchin before. It was very cool!

Then we were off to Orient Beach which is well known for having a nude portion—yes, they were absolutely naked. Whatever. We rented some chairs and an umbrella ($10!) on the merely topless side of the beach and G spent the next 2 hours running and jumping in the water and digging in the sand. They had seadoos for rent and Bobby was super interested but decided to pass since the strong and constant wind made the water really choppy. Bummer.

After that we went to an open air market in Marigot. There were only a few booths due to it being Sunday but I still managed to find a necklace and bracelet made of stone that the vendor called red dragon jasper. G slept through the shopping portion since she was pooped from the beach.

Then were finally headed to Maho Beach which is famous for only one thing: its about 50 feet from the take off/landing strip of the airport. The planes are so low as they come over the beach that it shakes the people below. Some crazies actually stand right behind the planes as they power up for take off so they can get hit with the jet blast. Uh yeah, interesting to see from a distance but it didn’t seem like those people who were getting pelted with sand were having much fun. Anyway, watching the planes land, especially the big ones, is pretty neat. Luckily G woke up just in time to see a 747 land. I thought she might be a little freaked out by the noise but she really liked it!

After that it was back to the ship!

Dinner in the dining room tonight was the best yet :-) The night before the assistant maitre d’ came by to ask how everything was going and we felt somewhat forced, unfortunately, to advise him that our service had been less than stellar. We felt bad complaining –the cruise crew work very hard but we felt like we couldn’t continue to ignore it. He said he’d take care of it right away and much to our delight, everything was tremendously improved! Our food was extra yummy (shrimp cocktail, chicken wellington and cheesecake for Bobby, crostini, duck wonton soup, pork tenderloin and banana walnut cake for me, and shrimp cocktail, cream of mushroom soup, mac and cheese and strawberry ice cream for G). Again G was excited about seeing the show and I’m so glad we did because it was fantastic! It was some sort of juggler who was not only a great juggler but very, very funny! As much as G wanted to see it, she crashed when it was about half over. These are just really big days for a little girl.

Our official St Maarten/Martin photo:

This picture is funny because every time G sees a sign or something, she wants to have her picture taken by it. She'll excitedly run over while screeching "take my picture mommy!"

I think this is the biggest starfish I've ever seen in the wild. It was the only one there though which kind of made me think that they parked it there. There was a lot of sea life there though. Many urchin and sea stars, etc.

Checking out the sea star

Isn't that little island/sand bar behind us to the left cool? It seemed like a neat place to snorkel.

G with the white urchin.

G enjoying her nightly ice cream. She ate so much ice cream on this cruise... eeek.

My silly girl

This is a few of our professional shots from that night. When the photog suggested that G stand on us she was super excited. She's always asking me if she can step on my back. She's such a goof.

Tomorrow St Lucia!