Cruising the Caribbean - Part 1

At the end of March we flew out to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to catch our 14 night Caribbean cruise. We'd booked it just before Christmas, so had been looking forward to it for a while - Andrew had never been on a cruise before, and I'd talked it up a lot, so I was hoping he'd enjoy it! We cruised with Princess Cruises, who I'd cruised with before. The ship, the Grand Princess, holds around 2600 passengers, and about 1200 crew. It was a great ship, despite being one of their older ones, but it was well kept and the staff were great - we quickly made ourselves at home!

The first stop was Aruba, which we came to after two days at sea. There was some interesting architecture! And the water was beautiful, we caught a cab up to the beach, which is about 10 minutes away from town. It was HOT as well - mid 30s, and we were already bright red from being burnt while at sea - with a bit of a breeze, we didn't realise the sun was so strong! Oops....

Next day it was on to another Dutch island, Curacao. The cute little coloured buildings reminded me of a place in Copenhagen called Nyhavn - very similar. Here we mainly wandered around the town and checked out the shops a bit.

After Curacao, we had another day at sea in which to enjoy the ship. Lazy breakfasts at the buffet, followed by lunch, afternoon tea, and then a 4 course dinner..... punctuated by a swim here and there, and at least one trivia quiz every day. I could get used to this life.....

We arrived in Port of Spain, Trinidad, in the morning, and this was the only place we'd organised a shore excursion through the cruiseline. I'd read that it's not really the safest place to be by yourselves, so we booked a half day tour around the city and out to the beach. Our guide was good, telling us lots of stuff, and all about carnival and the steel pan drums and stuff. Trinidadians are the colourful ones of the Caribbean - anyone remember the last cricket world cup that was held in the West Indies? The Trinidadians were the noisy ones!! The British influence was evident in a lot of the architecture - quite a contrast the the Dutch influence we'd just seen in Aruba and Curacao. We did get out to the beach as well, the weather wasn't the greatest unfortunately, but lots of palm trees by the beach!

Next day was Barbados, which I'd been looking forward to for ages - but, we didn't realise it was Good Friday, so everything was closed! We walked out to the beach, beautiful white sand and clear blue water, and strolled for a while. There were lots of people swimming, playing frisbee etc - they were just all in the other direction than this photo was taken!
We walked back through Bridgetown, the capital, where again, the British had obviously been, and found a bar that was open, so Andrew could partake in a local brew while we sat in the shade and played cards. We pretty much worked it every day so that we were back on the ship for lunch, and then we went off again if we wanted. Saving money!