A walk to Bridgetown

As always with jet lag, I wake up at the time I would at home!  So it is 4am right now, same time as yesterday when I was hoping it would stop raining! And it did stop raining enough to allow us a lovely walk from the ship,into Bridgetown. 

On our last visit here, Alan and I discovered a beautiful public beach, complete with a little bar that sold flying fish sandwiches!  Luckily, it was not flying fish season so I didn't have to try them!  We had just arrived from a transatlantic journey and were accompanied by these interesting creatures during some of those days at sea.  If we had gone back there yesterday, I was considering trying them.....

Instead, we learned the history of Bridgetown, visited some of the buildings built by the British 200 years ago and did a lot of people watching!  This is a very busy city and there were little vegetable stalls everywhere - with so many types of produce I had never seen before!

It was a out a 40 minute walk into town on a hot day, so we had to sit in a bar for a while to rest!  We chose the Marina bar right in the edge of the Careenage.  This is an inlet of the sea where merchant and sailing ships used to come for repairs.  It now houses yachts and other pleasure craft. There was on very weathered and aged yacht with two matching crew sitting in one.  They appeared to be world travellers and must have been on the high seas for years!  I didn’t want to intrude by taking a picture, but did think they must have some stories to tell! 

The bar was teeming with tourists and offered local beer for $2 a bottle!  We shared a table with a couple from our ship, with almost 9000 passengers on the Ventura, I would guess most of the visitors today were our shipmates!  They were a lovely couple from Manchester, but having done this 3 times now, we know we may never see them again!

Here is a taste of the colour and vibrancy of this city:

As we walked back to the ship, it began to rain - heavy but not for long - typical tropical rain storm.  At the ship, we had lunch at the buffet then spent almost an hour at the pool, with a  bit of  rain every so often.  

The was also a little bar in the port where lots of passengers stopped on the way in or out of town.  It looked cute, so we went back there for a Piña Coloda!  It was delicious!  Sitting outside under a canopy was a great way to observe another quick but torrential rainstorm! 

For dinner, I had Caribbean Mary Fish Bang Bang.  No idea what that means, but it was delicious!  When I have easier access to the Internet, I intend to look that up.  All the food seemed much better than the night before, which is a relief! 

I think the wonderful way I felt yesterday following the long journey was the calm before the storm.   Last night, after dinner, I began to fade and fell asleep every time I sat down!  Good thing there was no special entertainment!  

We are heading toward Dominica today. This is the only island we have not visited before.  Should be interesting!

The lovely thing about cruising is that planning usually turns out to be of little use.

-  Dom Degnon