Beach on Barbados

We were pulling into Bridgetown as I made my way into Horizons for morning coffee. It was a cloudy morning that held a threat of rain. A little tropical shower wouldn’t be a problem should it develop as the plan for the day was to simply go to the beach.

We roused the boys at 8:00 for breakfast and after doing a little dance with Min, our cabin steward who was trying to make up the veranda room while we were trying to get our stuff together (Min is awesome: he is always considerate of our schedule and once he learned that sea days are school days asked when it would be best for him to make up our room on those days, which I thought was very considerate), we disembarked. Again a completely painless disembarkation experience as we notched our second new country for the trip.

We did take along photocopies of our passports that we obtained yesterday from reception. Yesterday’s morning announcements included a warning that we’d need government-issued photo ID when we went ashore in Dominica. Oceania had collected our passports upon check-in in Miami, so three of the four of us had no photo ID. So we got the copies from reception, but it was a little jarring to be told we’d need ID and not have any.

Back to Barbados. We wanted to go to Carlisle Bay Beach, which is right in front of Bridgetown. I’d also read about other beaches on the island but given that we did not have a ton of time in Barbados, this one seemed easiest. We’d found a place called the Boatyard which provides lounges, umbrellas, and water activities like floating trampolines and a rope swing, along with the obligatory beach bar and restaurant. We walked there and it proved to be a good choice. Pretty much everyone there was from a cruise ship, but that was fine as the water was crystal clear and calm, the boys loved the provided facilities, and we got a place to sit and get shade. The clouds never came together, so it was mostly sunny all day. When we were ready to return we used the provided shuttle to take us back to the cruise port. It was a nice day at the beach and I got one more life bird: Barbados Bullfinch.

In the later afternoon Thomas worked on getting his YouTube channel going. With the flakiness of the ship Internet it’s a real challenge to wrangle photos and videos into a place where they can get uploaded. We got the appropriate links set up and then let it run over night; hopefully this morning he’ll have access to the files he needs on his laptop and can get to posting something. As this was going on DJ did his reading for school while Liz and I prepared for the upcoming sea/school days (three in a row before we hit the Amazon). Czytaj więcej