The Bahamas

In  September of 2007, Dave and I took our first cruise. We went with my dad and grandpa on the Carnival Valor. I was 6 months pregnant and let me tell you there is no place like a cruise ship for a pregnant woman. The food was spectacular and best of all it was never ending.

 

Growing up in California I had been to Tijuana many times but other than that quick jaunt over the border I had never been out of the country. So for me this trip was a big deal. Our cruise was scheduled to go to Honduras, Cozumel, Belize and Grand Cayman but, Hurricane Dean took our exact cruise route that very same week and our ship was rerouted to go to the Bahamas, Grand Turk and Jamaica. Most of the other passengers on the ship seemed to be pretty upset at the cruise company but, our little group of four was more than happy to avoid any and all hurricanes. We decided that it was a good thing that these were our stops because we would not have chosen  to visit these places on our own and we loved all three countries.

I have always loved to vacation (who doesn't) but, I think that this trip was what taught me how interesting traveling can be. Not only is it relaxing but, it is educational, and I love learning. Dave and I were eating breakfast in the dining room when our ship pulled up to Nassau, Bahamas. The view out the window was spectacular. The houses on the coast were amazing, they were jagged little shapes of extraordinary colors lining the hillside. Of all of the places that I have been, pulling up to Nassau was definitely the most exciting. It really did look like a fairy tale. (From the ship that is)

We all got off of the ship together, Perry "a tour guide" found us and offered us a good deal for a tour of the island. He was licensed by his government and we decided that take him up on it. Our first stop was an outside market where there was amazing handmade jewelry, I only bought a couple of pieces, assuming that there would be lots of jewelry to buy at our different stops. (I was wrong.) If we ever go back to Nassau I will be buying all the jewelry I can afford.

Next we visited the Fort Fincastle which was the fort that the British built to protect the island while the Bahamas were under British rule. It was a little fort that only had a few cannons an armory with a couple of cells.  (Picture above)

Driving on the left side of the road was a scary thing for me. We were in a big blue van that seem to swing way out into the other lane with each turn. I had never experienced this before and those left hand turns at red lights were quite an adrenaline rush. We drove past the old prison (picture above) and through the city into the suburbs to see the houses that the middle class people there live in. There was quite a bit of graffiti but, Perry insisted that the gangs problem there was minimal. LOL. Funny, Perry didn't realize who he had in the van with him and that he could not fool Dave.

Perry took us over a long  bridge and into the city of Atlantis where America's celebrities like to vacation. In Atlantis there was a huge (and I mean huge) casino where the slot machines would take anything from pennies to thousand dollar tokens. I wish now that we had stopped and thrown the dice at the craps table or put a few coins in the slot machines. The chandeliers there were spectacular, some of them cost over a million dollars. There was a salt water aquarium in the casino, we saw a lot of big big fish, stingrays, sharks and other creatures of the sea. The people of Nassau are very proud of the sea animals that they have, their favorite are called conch. A Conch is a medium to large size snail, their shells have a lot of pink to them and they generally have a spire. Conch is believed to be the cure for just about everything including sexual dis-function. The Conch is used as a remedy to illness and also as a main course on the dinner table. Perry said that he eats it cooked and raw. (Yucky!)

After all of the exploring on the island I was exhausted. Being so pregnant I could not stay awake for another minute. I really wanted to spend every last minute that I had available on the island but I just couldn't, I had to go back to the ship and take a nap. Dave of course wanted to utilize every last second so he wandered the shops until he had to get back on the ship or be left behind.