Adventures in the Caribbean: Eleuthera, The Bahamas

From Dallas we flew to Miami, arriving early in the morning Saturday, December 27.  We spent the night at a dive of a hotel called the Runway Inn, which was probably a nice place to stay circa 1960.  It was convenient, though, and relatively cheap by Miami standards.  

The next morning we took a long, hot route from Miami to Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, where we were to catch our cruise ship, Caribbean Princess.  We didn't want to spend $60+, so we improvised, traveling via a combination of hotel shuttle, taxi, Tri-Rail, bus, taxi, and finally arrived some hours later at the terminal.  This trip only cost about $30, so it did save us money, but man was it a trade off for stress, confusion, and heat.

Anyway, now at the terminal, we had to wait over an hour longer, as the Princess check-in and security people were just swamped.  One of them told us he had never seen it so busy.  

Eventually, however, we got on the ship, and found our cabin, an interior one on the Aloha deck.  It was close to three o'clock now, and we hadn't eaten lunch, so after dropping off our bags we headed straight for the buffet.

Geez, we were ever impressed with the food!  Such good quality, so much variety, and so many restaurants to eat at.

We spent the rest of the day on board unpacking, exploring the ship, eating twice, and making use of the wonderful gym facilities.  The gym was one of my favorite things about cruise life, since it's something I typically miss the most when traveling.  Besides, running on a treadmill with the sea spread out in front of you is quite the experience!  

Sunsets at sea are also pretty special, and this was the first one of our trip:

The next morning we began our day with breakfast while our ship was preparing for disembarkation.

We were visiting a spot on the island of Eleuthera called Princess Cays, a private Princess resort area on the southern tip of the island.  Rather than docking, our ship tendered passengers in using the lifeboats.  Certain passengers had priority, such as those with certain excursions, or those who were colour coded as more frequent Princess cruisers.

Although we were not priority passengers, we didn't have too long to wait, and around 10:00 we are ashore.

We rented a large locker ($9!) and stashed our stuff immediately.  The resort is fairly long end-to-end, and divided into two sections, with the little dock more or less in the middle.  We wanted to start our day by exploring the area, but we didn't have any intention of necessarily leaving the resort compound.

We began our tour by heading to the south half of the resort, across a little bridge that took us over the docking area.  In no time at all we had left our fellow Princess cruisers behind and were alone on The Bahamian beach, with our cruise ship sitting out there looking just as alone.

On our way back we realized we had gone well beyond the Princess Cays boundary, so perhaps we were illegal migrants, but regardless we had a good time, and there were certainly no Bahamian customs guards to stop us.

We walked for a couple of kilometres or so, and even went inland slightly along a trail that took us to a lagoon.

We saw hermit crabs, and coral, and at some point, finally, we decided we for sure must have gone further than we probably should have.  So we turned back and made our way back to the resort.

As I said, on the way back it became obvious that we had actually gone past a bit of a fence that delineated where Princess Cays' boundary was, but it had not been obvious earlier, and I'm glad, because if it had been, or if there had been a sign saying "Stay within this boundary," we would never have gone on, and I was very happy we had.

Next I wanted to buy a postcard and mail it, so I asked a very friendly lady who was working a bit of a information booth, which apparently is run by The Bahamas government's tourism agency, or something like that.  This lady had one of the biggest smiles I have ever seen, and she was listening to a radio preacher on a little battery powered radio.  I asked her if there was somewhere I could buy a postcard and mail it.  She told me just outside of the Princess Cays compound there were some shops where I could buy postcards, but that there was nowhere to mail it.  "However, if you give it to me, I'll mail it for you on Tuesday, because I'm going into town."  So that was a very generous offer, and I took full advantage of it.

This time we left the compound the official way, through the main gate, where a man made sure we had our passports.  There was a cluster of souvenir shops on the other side, one of which was selling postcards 4 for a $1.

The friendly lady also told us how we could get our passports stamped, because the man at the gate didn't do so.  There was an office somewhat around the corner, where a Bahamian customs official worked.  We knocked on his door, and he let us in, and it was surprisingly dark and cool compared to the outside.  He was also very friendly, although not as friendly as the big-smile lady, as it would be almost impossible to be as friendly as she was.

Anyway, now that our "chores" had been completed, we visited the lunch buffet that Princess offers--staff from the ship tender ashore and run the buffet, so it's all included, just like on the ship.  We expected hamburgers and hot dogs, but it ended up being quite the impressive spread, with ribs and corn on the cob and lots of salads and fruit.  

After lunch we relaxed on the beach for a while, and I did some swimming in the ocean (which is really the Atlantic even though people talk about The Bahamas being in the Caribbean).  The water was pleasant, but much, much colder than it was later on in our trip, in the "real" Caribbean.

Around 14:00 or so we decided we may as well go back to the ship and take advantage of things being a bit quieter on board, so we said good-bye to Eleuthera and caught a tender back. 

Once back on the ship we went to the gym, which is at the front of the ship.  As we ran on the treadmills we could see the island stretched out in front of us, and watch the lifeboats ferrying people back and forth.  It was quite unique and lovely.

The cruise lasted one more day, which was spent at sea.  I certainly love visiting new places, but the days at sea are wonderful in their own right.  

We even had the excitement of the crew spotting a little boat floating aimlessly.  The ship stopped and sent a boat to go check it out.  In the end I guess it was just a boat another ship had abandoned, and so our crew called the coast guard and that was that, but it was pretty neat to watch it all unfold.

So the first of our two cruises ended the next morning, December 30, back in Fort Lauderdale.

Adventures in the USA: Dallas, Texas

Dallas is certainly not in the Caribbean, but it was where we were laid over for eight hours en route to Miami.  Our flight from Edmonton landed around noon, so basically an afternoon in Dallas was a bonus, courtesy of American Airlines.  

Neither Andrea nor I had ever been to Texas before, so we made the most of it, starting with a 45 minutes, $5 round trip ride into Dallas on the DART rail.

Once in the city we got some Texas BBQ right by the DART station, at Sonny Bryan's Smokehouse.

Then we began a walking tour roughly based on a National Geographic walking tour map I found online.  We saw the grassy knoll and Dealey Plaza where JFK was shot;

the Old Red Courthouse;

John Neely Bryan's cabin;

the JFK memorial (surprisingly unimpressive);

Reuinion Tower;

Pioneer Plaza;

Pioneer cemetery;

City Hall;

Hotel Adolphus;

and Thanksgiving Square, which has obviously seen better days.

We stopped for coffee in the Magnolia Building, the first skyscraper west of the Mississippi, or something like that.

And we also ran into the remarkable complex of First Baptist Church, which integrated three generations of church buildings in a very attractive way.  This was not an attraction on our walking map, but it was maybe the most interesting place we visited nonetheless.

The day after Christmas was probably not the best day to tour Dallas's downtown, because most things were closed and quiet, but we had nearly perfect walking weather, and anyway, it sure beat sitting at DFW airport all day.

You can see all of my Dallas photos here.

Coming up next . . . Adventures in the Caribbean

For the 2014 Christmas holidays my girlfriend Andrea and planned a two week getaway from the Alberta winter in south Florida and on two cruises (we also got to take a little tour of Dallas en route!).

It was an amazing experience.  While cruise life is not typically all that adventurous, we managed to find a mini-adventure or two along the way, and all in all had a spectacular time.  Check back soon to hear more! 

Adventures in Europe: Helsinki, Finland

My first view of Helsinki was this naval vessel across the harbour from our ship:

Once ashore we had to figure out Helsinki's transit system, which wasn't too hard to do.  The best part about the system are the trolleys which have good routes and good frequency, even on the weekend.  Once we were checked in at our hostel we headed out on a bit of a tour, which included a walking portion, and a long trolley ride that took us past many of the famous Helsinki sites.  They even make a sightseeing guide with a map for the number 2 & 3 trolley routes.

We saw Finland's parliament;

Narinkkatori (public square);

Senate square;

iconic Helsinki cathedral (which in contrast to Oslo's main cathedral, is much more impressive outside than in);

and Kamppi Chapel.

We crashed early, as we were both still fighting colds.  

The next morning we began our day with extended visits to the hostel's sauna, before heading straight for the harbour.   

We had the privilege of passing Bad Bad Boy (artwork Andrea could not appreciate because she lacks artistic taste).

Our transit pass allowed us to catch the ferry to the island of Suomelinna, about 15 minutes from the mainland.

Once there, we found out that Suomenlinna is every bit as lovely as advertised, and maybe more.  It combines fascinating history with charming culture and gorgeous nature.  Just off the ferry and up a little cobblestone hill we stopped for coffee and a shared piece of cheesecake on the patio of an old home.

That was lovely, and then we continued our walk, past the Suomenlinna Church, and on past buildings from Suomenlinna's past as a military fortress and current existence as a village, and its eternal home to nature.  Without a doubt Suomenlinna was the highlight of Helsinki for me, and we had picked a perfect day to visit.

After several hours exploring the island and enjoying the lovely day, we caught the ferry back to the mainland.

Back ashore we stopped by the open air market where we ate a late lunch of reindeer meatballs and salmon soup.

We turned in early once again, because we were so sick that even the couple hours of walking on Suomenlinna had worn us out.  

The next morning, Monday, we caught a bus out to Vantaa, where the airport is.  We had a reservation at a hotel there, so that we could sleep a bit longer prior to our early flight on September 2.

We checked in and then walked to the big Jumbo shopping mall, where we ate lunch and did some shopping.

I really cannot emphasize enough how awful we were feeling at this point, because even walking to and around the mall felt like a great expenditure of energy.  We spent most of the afternoon back at the hotel room lying on our beds and watching Finnish TV.  

We also made excellent use of the hotel's saunas, which are apparently a very important part of Finnish life, and are absolutely terrific for countering the symptoms of a cold.  

For dinner we ate in the dinning room of the hotel, and once again ate reindeer, this time in a stew.  And that, sadly, was how our northern European adventure ended, over bowls of reindeer stew which we could not adequately appreciate because our taste buds were so compromised by head colds.