Barbados was the first island we have been to that didn't seem completely alien. St Thomas was pretty good too, but Barbados just felt like any other town... Granted it is surrounded by amazing beaches, all public, but was still very comfortable.
We decided to not do any activities with the cruise line again on this island, and no there really was no rhyme or reason as to which island we chose other than a tight budget and more interesting things on other islands. Anyways a point of interest is that there were no private cabs at the exit point of the cruise, the best bet (we found out much later) is to take a cab for 2$ into town and hire a private car there for a tour of the island.
What we did instead was take a cab for 7$ a person to the beach. There I spent another 25$ on a snorkle, I really should have held out for something cheaper but we were only planning on being there for a couple of hours. Once I had the snorkel I swam out to a couple of boats who were in the process of feeding the turtles. The water on the Caribbean on the side of the island is really murky, so the turtles would swim in and out of the murk and eat bits of fish the divers were putting out for us. I'm pretty sure there was only one turtle, but he had some attitude so it made it really fun.
The murky water really did make me think about jaws, and while I was swimming with 30 other people I was fine, however once I broke from the group and swam the 200 or so yards back to shore there were a couple of moments where I was having trouble breathing. I told myself the same thing I told myself as a kid, if it's going to eat you, there's not much you can do about it so I swam along the way happily snorkeling and swimming around in circles due to a bad knee....
Once we got tired of being alternately burnt and rained on we hitched a ride back to the port and grabbed some more delicious free food before heading back into town where I found out that shockingly the bank machines didn't give out us currency... Yeah I know right, what a moron, of course they don't give out us currency any more than a machine in Montreal would... But after 30 minutes in the bank we settled that particular snafu and were off to wander around downtown Barbados. Other than some kitchy junk there really wasn't anything to see or do that we found in the hour or so we spent there. The one thing I did note was that the watches in the watch store we stopped in were less expensive than the ship, of course if they weren't real there wasn't much I could do about it.
Most of you know that my opinion of watches is that it's the only piece of jewelry that a man can wear without looking silly, that and maybe glasses, but beyond that I feel anything else makes me in particular, look stupid.
Tomorrow being our 15 th anniversary we will be zip lining through the rainforest of St Lucia, and sampling some chocolate covered strawberries, shhh don't tell Jenn.
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