Stuart's Travel

I pulled on a t-shirt this morning, one I’d bought a couple of days ago and washed before wearing. As feared hanging the laundry to dry in a smelly hotel room has left my ‘clean’ clothing stinking of stale cigarettes. Not impressed at all, but also can’t sensibly redo two full laundry loads. Guess I’m […]

It could’ve been a better day. Starting 123 miles from Key West is fine, turning left out of the hotel and being told by the satnav, “Stay on this road for 123 miles” is fine. The bridges over the ocean failing to fulfil my hopes and dreams is fine – they did meet my expectations, […]

I woke up in the dark, was up before the sun, drinking coffee while waiting for my laundry to finish. I’m not sure if the sun rose, it certainly wasn’t in sight. By 8.15 I was driving through a thunderstorm back into the Everglades, multiple roads flooded, large puddles on the others. I got there, […]

Today was a special day for me. For the first (and hopefully only) time I have been to a Walmart. It’s big enough that it has different entrances depending what you want to buy. I just wanted to see what was in there so ended up traversing the whole store anyway. I went in to […]

Woken this morning by everybody else getting off the ship. I’d booked car hire for noon so there wasn’t much point in being the first off, would’ve just ended up sat in downtown Fort Lauderdale waiting for it. Free coffee if I wait on board, and a little more comfort. I did get out onto […]

It’s nice to see the Bahamas when you emerge from your room, seeking coffee. We were already stationary by then, the tender to shore starting service while I made my way back down to my cabin. Half an hour later I was on it, landing on Half Moon Cay and going for a 3km walk. […]

Getting over jet lag – or indeed large diesel-electric engine lag – isn’t helped by a morning with no requirement to get out of bed. I didn’t even wake up until after 9am and that wasn’t a trigger to get up, another 40 minutes snoozing in and out of dreams. I’m not a fan of […]

Getting up before 7am on a sea day feels very wrong. It was though the only way to visit the onboard zoo, a temporary early morning exhibit for just one day. The day’s schedule had it listed as Towel Animal Zoo. I went along, expecting a table lined with examples of the towel animals left […]

I saw Cartegena this morning. We were still at sea, 90 minutes from scheduled arrival, probably only an hour out, but the city is tall and obvious even at that sort of distance. It put me off trying to fight through traffic and time constraints to actually see it. Unfair perhaps, the old town area […]

The Panama Canal is terribly named. It’s a big artificial lake with locks at both ends. The lake is full of pretty islands, thick trees on all of them, rare beaches in amongst the banks cleared bear by bow waves. It’s quite pretty. I suspect it’s even prettier if you’re able to get closer in, […]