We set sail on the evening of Christmas Eve - we knew it would be a little chilly aboard the ship, but I think the little bit of optimist in me grossly underestimated exactly how cold it was going to be. If I'd had a scarf and my gloves with me, I would have been wearing them!
My awesome husband took this photo of me - I think we'd set sail at this point.
Most of my photos consisted of sunrises and sunsets. I couldn't help myself. The sky was so pretty, and how often do you really get the opportunity to sit on a huge ship in the middle of the Atlantic or the Caribbean and snap sunrise and sunset photos?!
Christmas Eve sunset.
Merry Christmas morning sunrise!
Welcome to Nassau!
According to the locals, there is a dog problem - if I remember what he said correctly, he said, "We have dogs on sale...buy one, get four free." These pups were hanging out at Fort Fincastle.
This is one of their policemen, or firefighters. I don't know which, because I learned that Bahamian firefighters are also policemen. A two-fer of sorts. I really wanted to ask this guy if I could snap some shots of him, but I decided against it. The old adage in my work place is, "It's easier to ask for forgiveness than ask permission." I also learned that most policemen in the Bahamas do not carry guns, unless they are on special assignment or duty. This dude definitely had a gun. Probably watching all of us crazy tourists get ripped off at the straw market.
This guy was my favorite local, and I didn't even talk to him. He was hanging out at a food stand near one of the markets hacking those coconuts to bits, charging four bucks a pop to tourists so that they could drink the coconut water with a straw, straight from the coconut. I just love that he's sitting there whacking away at these things with a machete, with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Also, his shirt says, "If you see da police, warn-a-brother." A nice play on the Warner Brothers logo, yeah?
This is the Queen's Staircase - one step for every year of Queen Victoria's rule. The entire rock area surrounding the staircase, and the staircase itself, was carved out by slave labor.
My hubs took that cute shot of our feet with our point-n-shoot camera. I love it.
And our fabulous local tour guide, his name was Unochea or something like that, took this for us.
Todd and I got back on the ship after our little tour of Nassau - we made it onto the deck just in time to see the sun sink past the horizon. Lovely Christmas sunset over Nassau.
Have you noticed a lack of photos from the second day of our cruise? Me too! The reason for that is awful weather conditions. It actually looked very promising at first. The weather didn't look bad as we were making our way to CocoCay, Royal Caribbean's private island in The Bahamas. It suddenly took a turn for the worse as we got closer. The seas were far too rough to get the tender boats running. The crew turned our private island day into a day at sea. Bummer. I did look on the bright side, though - if I wasn't on a private island and the weather was bad, it meant that I wasn't getting sunburned! It also gave me a chance to look through the photos I'd already taken.
I think it was a pretty cool way to spend Christmas. :)
