For the second morning in a row I’m up eight minutes before my alarm is due to go off. My body seems to be adjusting itself nearer to UK time, a week before I get home.
It is just a week now too, and although it’s a week with a Caribbean holiday to enjoy I’m starting to count down already. I may have been away for too long. My cats wont even recognise me.
As I retrieved morning coffee the ship was docking in a tiny harbour against the sea wall, Bridgetown sprawling out on the other side. My plans for the day were to get off the ship and work out what to do today. Apparently the big things are a tram ride through a cave (bah) and a rum distillery tour (shrug). I’ve seen too many caves and distilleries (and breweries). The town centre is 2km from the ship so I opted to risk sunburn and go for a walk.
Given I’d woken up with a sore knee that was clearly just a silly plan.
No fresh fruit, vegetables or food can be brought ashore. So basically the same as every other country. No camouflage clothing may be worn either, because.. actually, no, no idea why. I went for the blue t-shirt and black jeans combo, mainly because it was what I was wearing.
The walk from the ship to the terminal was ten minutes along the sea wall. Another five minutes to get through the terminal, another half hour into town. At the port entrance a young man stopped me, offered to shortcut it all with his taxi. “Five dollars to town,” he offered.
I looked up into the sky, shrugged, replied, “Half hour walk in the beautiful sunshine.”
“Yeah, but half hour walk. Five dollars, help me out a little.”
I didn’t even consider it, let him know our relative income levels, “That’s a quarter of my annual earnings last year.”
“Come on, that’s not true,” he said, and continued to disbelieve me as I walked away assuring him it is.
Bridgetown is lovely. It’s poor and worn down and has little to offer but it’s bright and the people are super relaxed and when you smile at the women you get the most gorgeous warm smiles in return. I enjoyed my walk through the town, but also knew it had to end.
Walking back to the ship my knee was holding up superbly but my left hip was complaining. That’s a “too much walking signal”, and by 10am this morning I’d done 30km in 50 hours, so I guess it’s justified.
I stopped at a local supermarket, bought rum and raisin chocolate “Made with Caribbean rum”, a 40p bottle of water to keep me alive until I reached the ship (I did have water with me, but more is always welcome) and three bottles of locally distilled rum.
Back at the ship I fully expected the security team to offer (and insist) looking after that for me until we returned to Florida so made it easy, put the chocolate in my camera bag and handed the plastic supermarket bag full of rum to the guy operating the scanner. He heard the glass bottles clink, raised his eyebrows, put it on the conveyor. Another security guard was watching the scanner screen, said nothing, didn’t look at me, didn’t look at the other guy, who picked up the bag and handed it back to me, looking in surprise at the guy on the scanner.
I just thanked him, headed for my cabin, dumped it in my suitcase. I’m taking it home anyway, some time in February I’ll fend off a cold winter night with a warm tasty reminder of Barbados.
The port had free wifi but it couldn’t handle a thousand internet hungry cruise ship passengers all trying to connect at once. I’d caught up on email passing through on the way, had given up even trying on the way back in. This update would have to wait for another day, another country.
At just gone 11am I found out that nowhere on the ship was offering food. Breakfast had stopped everywhere, lunch hadn’t started. I took coffee to some comfy seating near the dining room, read until noon, walked around and found the dining room closed. Elsewhere on the deck are three premium restaurants, all charging additional fees, and a lady that will book you a seat in any of them. I mentioned to her that the dining room was closed and she commiserated. They only open for lunch on sea days, so that they don’t waste food while so many people are on shore.
How about only cooking for the people that arrive for lunch then? How about cooking as they arrive? How about learning how to run a bloody restaurant?
I didn’t ask her any of those questions, just for a booking in their premium steak restaurant on the next gala night. THe main dining room is stupidly full every evening, one reason I’ve been avoiding it, and the final gala evening (and sea day) of the cruise was likely to be the worse of the lot.
Her response was that their premium restaurant is already fully booked that night. Guess I get to save some money then. As I walked away she asked if I’d like to book one of their other restaurants. I didn’t ask if she meant the two selling only seafood, which I don’t eat, or the one selling pasta, which I don’t like, just gave a simple “No” and left.
So lunch ended up being a burger. Fine dining indeed.
After lunch I filled in the disembarkation form, spotted that it needed to be handed back that afternoon, walked down to Guest Services with it. There’s a wooden box there into which the forms should be dropped but the slit in the top was wide enough only for an A5 sheet of paper, portrait width. I looked down at the A4 form I’d just filled in, carried carefully uncreased through half the ship, needing to be in a flat opened A4 format to be read, and whimsically just stuck a corner of it into the slot, let go, watched it fold over itself and start to fall off the box.
As I caught it I heard a giggle from 20 yards away. One of the women at Guest Services had watched and started to walk around her colleague, clearly intending to come and take the sheet from me. I saved her a walk, folded it in half, dropped it in the box.
I’ve booked a transfer to the airport that’ll get me there 7 hours before the flight. That’s not great but messing about getting somewhere interesting then getting to the airport in time would be a pain as well as expensive; the cruise line’s transfer price is under half the cost of a taxi straight there.
With the ship docked and no crew drills going on the captain was wandering the decks, making himself visible, responding when people greeted him. He’s Dutch, quite short, lacks visible authority, makes bad jokes, perpetually sounds like he’s spent the day in an Amsterdam coffee shop, not drinking coffee. This makes him very likeable and it’s nice to see that a different leadership style hasn’t stopped him being successful. Compared to the captains of the other three ships it’s nice to actually see him.
I’m still working through the whole “why come to the Caribbean?” thing..
As I left the cabin to get coffee ahead of the talk on our next two destinations the forward camera showed the sun nearing the horizon. By the time I reached deck 9 and the coffee machine it was already dark outside, a strangely swift transition.
Tomorrow’s port is in France, a quick detour to the EU. I forgot to bring my spare Euros with me 🙁
A test of the chocolate I bought today proves a disaster. It’s not just low grade Americanesque crap it’s triggered a mood swing (which fortunately I’ve noticed). I have two more bars, don’t now dare eat them; I’ll need to find someone less susceptible and less prissy about their chocolate.
I maybe wasn’t starting from the best place. 12km walked today and only two photographs (both on my phone) suggests I haven’t been in a receptive or creative mood all day. Oh well, there’s always tomorrow.
