Cruise day 2: Nassau, Bahamas

So I should throw out the disclaimer now that West has seen my blog on the first day, that's he's not too happy with some of the pictures I put up of him... i.e. the ones with his eyes closed because of sun... but I didn't want to pester him with "do it again" when I was already taking a million pictures, and I really wanted to show the scenery. So, sorry babe, up they went. Maybe now he won't grumble (not that he ever has... yet) about all my picture taking. Just trying to get a good one :).
Amazingly, after crashing so hard the night before (we were in bed by 8:30, Bahamas time, which is what... 5:30 Utah time?) we woke up right on time and feeling incredibly refreshed and ready to get off the ship at our first stop, Nassau Bahamas. We met up with the other four and grabbed breakfast at the buffet. West mentioned while we were eating, that we should have sat at a table near the window so we could see the island, and it hit me. "Oh my gosh! I'm in the BAHAMAS!" (insert freaking out silently in my head here).Wess snuck up into the picture behind us. I've since learned this is something that the four of them do. we walked through all the shops they have set up for the cruises and came out on what I'm going to dub "taxi alley". We were bombarded left and right, $4 a person, anywhere we want to go! And the scooter guys are calling out, "you don't need taxis, rent a scooter for $40 for the entire day and go where ever you want to go!" Scooters were calling West's name. He was feeling the adventure of it, so we bailed on our almost taxi man and went to the scooter booths. Of course, $40 turns into "plus insurance, plus taxes, plus gas..." hey, a scooter for $95 a day. No way. So the next guy jumps in, we can do it for $65. Still no way. We heard $40, that's what we want. We start heading back to our taxi man, when one more scooter man (oops, I guess I should be saying scooter MON at this point ha ha) says, $40 a day. Flat rate, no extra fees, just buy your own gas. Sold. BUT, please remember that in the Bahamas, they drive on the left side of the rode! I was told as we drove off by a nice local mon, that it was my job, as the person on the back, to yell, "LEFT mon! STAY LEFT!" And we were also told by another local mon from his car next to us on the road, "Please don't drive like idiots mon." Uh... we'll do our best. Ashley and Wess...
Megan and Aaron ahead of us... just trying to remember to stay to the left and find our way out of "down town".
This sign is blurry because we were driving when I saw it, but it says, "We don't serve energy drinks, you did come here to relax, didn't you?"
Heading over the bridge to Paradise Island in hopes of finding a beach. I had the map and was pleased that the navigational talent I had in California, still worked in the Bahamas.
So, the cool thing about going with the lowest bid, is you get what you pay for. Our scooters kept breaking down. Except Megan and Aaron's, who just plain broke theirs. West stated, "one of us is going to tip today." It was Megan and Aaron ha ha. This break down happened right by what is called the cloisters. The cloisters are a 14th century French Monastery that was imported, stone by stone, to the United States by the newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst in the 1920s; 40 years later the Cloisters were bought by Huntington Hartford and installed at the top of a hill on Paradise Island overlooking Nassau Harbour. The Cloisters are a popular site for weddings. As it should be. Check out the view of the whole thing. It was gorgeous, one of the most amazing things to stumble upon. This garden was in the center of the double square walk way.Aaron found a coconut lying on the grass and managed to bust it open. West... Aaron... The good thing about the scooters always breaking down, is that it only needed a small rest before it would start going again. And our hopes of finding a beach were not in vain.
Hello blue water! Check out the incredible color of the ocean in these pics, it still amazes me that I got to swim in that! You can see the rolls of sand under West in this one... and the sand was so soft and fine.
I'm in love with this place.
Megan and her snorkel mask. I could hear her laughing through the snorkel.
cannon ball into the ocean... West throwing me up and in... he acts like it was so hard ha ha. You practically floated on the top of this water!
Ashley diving in...
As much as we hated to leave that beach, we decided that maybe we should actually see something in Nassau. So we got dressed and headed back over the bridge. Except our scooter decided it didn't have what it takes to climb the small hill of the bridge, so West had to hang on to the back of Aaron and Megan's scooter, and they pulled us up it. Check out the bumper stickers on this van...
One of the things that caught my attention in all the tourist information was the Queen's Staircase, so I navigated us to it. We couldn't find any legal parking, as it was next to a hospital, but a vendor lady was extremely nice and motioned us over to park by her.
Nassau's most visited attraction is the Queen's Staircase. Climb the 65 steps, recently renovated, carved out of solid lime stones by slaves in the late 18th century, between 1793 and 1794. It is reported that slaves were forced to cut through rocks with axes and other sharp hand tools.
This 102 foot staircase was named in honour of the 65 years of Queen's Victoria's reign. Construction of this monument is still regarded as remarkable. (I'm getting my factual info from http://www.bahamasgo.com/). Looking at this picture reminds me of the number one lesson I learned there. Wear as LITTLE clothing as possible. I consistently had sweat pouring down my body. My clothes were soaked through.
An awesome alley way leading to the staircase, and a waterfall next to the stairs.
At the top of the Queen's staircase is a lane of shops (West found a 69 pipe which he thought was hilarious, but the lady wouldn't drop the price low enough), and at the end of the lane is a fort that was used to protect the island from pirates. Hello, I'm a whole head taller then Megan and Ashley.
We went back to the ship for lunch. I was sitting at the table looking through the pics on my camera when this waiter came up and posed. I had to take it, he was hilarious.
After lunch we went back to where we had parked out bikes on the sidewalk. Someone else had parked a scooter there already, so we figured it would be OK. We turned the corner to find cops surrounding our scooters. Oops. We told them we had parked them there, we were sorry, but when the cop realized we didn't own them, he wasn't interested in us. Apparently they weren't registered and no plates on them. Our shady friends kept telling us "we're straight mon, we'll get you new bikes, and you can keep them until 8 instead of 5." They told us to get in their van and they'd take us to where they had more bikes. At this point I'm telling West, "please don't tell my dad I got into a van with strangers in a third world country..." (though I did find out after I got home that my dad (Dick) has done this in Barbados, my sister McKell has done it in Jamaica, and my sis-in-law Roya has done it in Thailand... just add me to the family list now I suppose!) The van door was broken so we drove down the rode with it open, and the tires squealed and skid when they hit the brakes too hard.
The weather stripping of the door fell off right in West's hands...
I'm pretty sure a rear view mirror is supposed to go here...
This guy was jamming to hard core reggae. I would describe more as goth reggae with very disturbing screaming to a reggae beat, mon.
And this guy was smoking who knows what.
They drove us further and further into the ghettos of Nassau, and I was having quite the combination of feelings inside me. A little nervous and uneasy of the situation and where we seemed to be going, but more I felt guilty at my lavish lifestyle. Looking around me, at the cars and the houses and buildings. It was beat down, worn down, and even in the nicer part of town that we saw later, by the resorts, the most extravagant house I saw on the island was no more than would we would find in the avenues here. We finally made it to a beat down dirt yard inside a cement fence were there were several scooters sitting. We took off with three of them after promising not to park them in town again.
The conclusion that West and I came down to was that these weren't shady people per se, but they just ran their business shady, to undercut the bigger companies by taking customers (it worked, they got us) and by making a better profit by cutting expenses. Like registration, such a trivial thing.
We found a less posh beach, that was still as gorgeous as the other in terms of white sand and aqua water, but was less touristy and more local. Here there were a few locals hanging around, the other had just us really. And a few other tourists showed up as we were leaving. We bailed to go shower for our formal dinner on ship.
I fell in love with these trees. They have them in Florida too. The orange blossoms are beautiful!It was fun to get dressed up with West. I love feeling beautiful for him. I find him so insanely attractive.
We found this little guy on our bed after dinner... I'm not sure what it is.
After dinner (which took 2 stinking hours every night because our waiter was so slow. Until the last night when West made a side remark to the head waiter, it picked up nicely that night.) we went back out the the scooters. We'd parked them by the scooter booths with the guys who'd rented them to us, and we handed over our keys. Our original instructions were to take them back to the yard in ghetto-ville. Luckily we didn't have to do that. They were waiting with the bikes when we came out and we simply handed the keys over. One more round of "we're straight, mon."
We'd been hearing about Atlantis on Paradise Island and that it was a must see. We'd regret it if we didn't see it, so we caught a limo taxi over.
Atlantis is a resort, with a casino, and an aquarium. It had some pretty cool stuff in it. I totally bent my knees in this picture so I wouldn't tower over Megan and Ashley.
These next two were chandeliers... so amazing!
The aquarium was set up to look like the ruins of the lost city of Atlantis. And there was the biggest manta ray I have ever seen in my life (OK, I know this isn't actually saying much, as really, how many manta rays have I seen? But take my word for it, it was HUGE. At least my arm span wide, probably bigger).
I'm sure the grill over the star fish is there for a reason, but that didn't stop us from poking at a few. (Just wait for day 3, when we actually swim and get stung by these things, instead of just staring at them through glass).
Just another day in paradise.
Nice little waterfalls.
We found the outside of the aquarium and got a different angle of that manta ray swimming by. It was eerie!
And just so I could tell Daniel, I played craps in a real casino.After Atlantis, we caught a taxi back to the ship just in time to join "Family Feud". Our group minus Megan, who filmed it, played a nice round against another team. Right off the bat Wess and the woman he was against knocked their bells to the ground in the rush to ring first. Megan was at the bell next, and then it was my turn. The question starts out "Name the most popular storybook character..." I'm thinking, I read to my kids, I know story book characters, so I rang. The guy looks at me and laughs. "Maybe I can finish the question? OK, what's your answer?" Dang it, what's the rest of the question? OK, how about... "Little Red Riding Hood". The rest of the question was "... that begins with 'Little'?" And I got the number one answer! LOL, way too funny!