January of Traveling, Pt 2: Cruising (Barbados and St Kitts)

BARBADOS

Today we went to Barbados. It’s been Jon’s and my favorite port. Which is interesting, because we didn’t do anything complicated. The port terminal was really nice, first of all. Most of the rest of them have been set up so it’s like, “Look at our cute little town where you landed!” except it’s all Diamonds International and Tommy Hilfiger. This one was clearly a terminal, you move through it and it has clear places marked for which exit is for what type of thing, and there is a place to get a map and all that kind of thing. It’s like visitor services AND shopping, not just “come-buy-expensive-things-unrelated-to-your-port land” like everywhere else. We got through the terminal and headed for the beach. (this first picture is the view of the beach from the ship.)

Funny thing; we could SEE the beach from the boat, but you actually had to wind around for two miles before you could get to it, through industrial areas. We had a great time at the beach (the water really is that blue, even when you're right in it, and it's a decent temperature too!). What do you say about going to the beach? It was relaxing and awesome and warm and gorgeous, and I loved it.

We (I) got sunburned very quickly (Mom: I put on sunscreen two times! Honest.) and we definitely took a taxi back instead of walking the two miles. Worth every cent of the $8. We were out for a total of about three hours. Our time in the direct Caribbean sun sapped us pretty good, so for the rest of the night we just applied aloe and ate dinner, and probably read. (I was done with my chef memoir and on to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Prequel: Dawn of the Dreadfuls, thankyouverymuch.) Last night and tonight I got calamari steak, which is my absolute favorite way to have calamari. (Usually when you order calamari, they cut it in tiny strips and bread it and deep fry it, so you can't even taste the squid. I like my squid in thick hunks, thanks. It was very good.) We also watched "Big Fish" (one of my very favorites that I took along to show Jon). He says my favorite movies keep ending up being sad movies. haha. :)

ST KITTS

We thought it unwise to spend a lot of time in the sun on this day, what with my intimidating sunburn. (Don't you love when people ask you if you know you got some sun? Thanks, sir, but I'm this purple all the time. Which, yes, I know, it doesn't look so bad in the pictures, you're going to have to trust me.) We read a lot and went swimming in the pool a bit, and ate. We watched the rest of “Big Fish.” Later, we went into the town for about an hour close to the end of the day, when the sun wasn’t so strong. We actually really liked the town on St. Kitts. It was charming and locally. It was a cool place where there were a lot of actual people hanging out. And roosters. On every island, there have been free-wandering chickens and roosters. I have no explanation.

Here is a tiny moment of a street on St. Kitts:


Pretty much what we did on St. Kitts was take pictures, so here are some of those:

Up there is Jon with the ship and the giant moorings.
Here is us on our way back to the ship:

We wrote all our postcards and took them to the front desk to mail them. We went to dinner and went window shopping to the stores on the ship. They were pricy but fun to wander around a little.

We read books (I'm pretty sure I made it through my zombie book and had progressed onto that vampire hunter book, Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals) and came back to fancy flourishes by Danilo.

We watched “Up," which Jon had never seen before but liked. ("What?! You didn't tell me there were blimps in this movie!") And we got room service at like 11:30pm, because it was free and we wanted to. I got a hot dog and caramel flan. Jon had a sandwich and some cookies. Yay room service!