My alarm went off around 8:30 so we could still make it to "fancy breakfast",
which turned out to not be as tasty as we thought it would be. The highlight was
having eggs Benedict, at least for Dad, Mom and T. M and I had French toast, it
was absolutely delicious! It was thick but still crispy on the outside and
lightly sugared, we topped it with with thick whipped cream and strawberry
syrup. The whipped cream is more like "solid milk with sugar”.
After breakfast we tossed on our swimming gear and headed off the boat.
Someone had told me that there was a beach beside the port in Barbados so
instead of taking a taxi we decided to walk to the beach. Unfortunately his
opinion of the port being "right beside the beach" actually meant it was a 30
minute walk, or short taxi ride to the beach... We’d already walked about a
kilometer to get out of the port, what’s a few more right? The side walk to the
beach was beautiful, it trailed along the ocean with large trees to provide
shade from the piercing sun. When the pathway ended we walked along the street
until coming to the boat harbour where we quickly turned to the boardwalk to get
away from the busy streets. After what seemed forever I saw it. Through a little
crack between the buildings I saw sand and water glistening through. I yelled
down the road to the family who had gotten ahead of me, I waved them over to
follow me.
When we walked through the small entrance was we were immediately greeted by
a vendor trying to sell us a "shipwreck/sea turtle" excursion package. We
declined repeatedly and walked straight to the water, the beach was almost empty
so we got the water to ourselves for most of the morning. We all immediately
dropped our stuff and ran into the water, it was a long walk and we were all
overheating from the burning hot sun. So far this trip this beach has been my
favorite, it has perfect waves for body surfing/wave riding and the sun. The
only drawback is the sand is so fine it gets into every nook and cranny you can
imagine! When we would ride the waves up the beach the crashing water would fill
our bathing suits with sand. All of us girls were sporting very sexy “Sand
Diapers”
The sun was so incredibly hot today, luckily there as some clouds in the sky
to give us a little break; but as soon as the sun came out from behind the
clouds it immediately started burning our skin. Poor T, she must have put on
sunscreen a million times today and she still burnt to a crisp.
Since this has been a very go-go-go trip I tried to take a nap on the beach
while the sun was behind the clouds, but as soon as it came out I felt it
was biting my skin it was so hot.
Later in the day my bathing suit was so full
of sand that I couldn’t take it anymore. I swam out far where no one could see
me and slipped my bathing suit off to clean the sand out. Word to the wise,
don't take your bathing suit off completely when you’re swimming in the ocean;
salt water is extremely buoyant... Mom saw me swimming out and was starting to
swim towards me to see what I was doing. I tried to quickly put my bathing suit
back on when a wave came and pushed me over while I was just getting my bathing
suit around my ankles. Since I was in the ocean I got knocked off balance by
the waves, my butt floated to the surface… mooning the beach, and a party
boat that happened to be passing by!
I don't think anyone on the boat saw, but
Mom sure did! When I finally got my bathing suit on I swam over to here, she was
laughing so hard I was sure she was going to suck in some sea water! She asked
me what on earth I as doing and we had a good laugh about it. I learned a very
important lesson that day, do not to take your one piece bathing suit completely
off in the ocean.
Mom was swimming along looking at the sand below when a tiny fish swam
straight into her goggles, it shocked her and she jumped back surprised that
such a tiny fish would swim right up to her. That little fish spent the rest of
the day with us. It would follow us around no matter where we went, its favorite
spot was right between dads legs. If dad would move it would quickly swim so it
was right between his legs again. It was so cute, I'm sad we had to leave it
haha we all gained a small bond with the little guy!
We snorkeled and played in
the waves while soaking up the extremely hot Caribbean sun, until it was
finally time to go. We had soaked up as much sun as we could handle and Taylor's
skin was starting to look like 2rd degree burns. With slight hesitation we began
our long walk back to the boat, I walked barefoot most of the way because my
feet were still covered in sand.
We stopped in the main market to see what
souvenirs we could find. I bought a "Barbados" wrap for the beach, and a
Jamaican colored bracelet.
As we were shopping around for gifts for the girls
boyfriends, T called my name to get my attention. She lip-pointed over to the
Norwegian guys that had been hanging around us off and on the whole trip. I
turned my head and said "oh yeah I already know". Apparently he had heard and
seen the whole thing and started lightly chuckling. M made eye contact and gave
him a raised eyebrow look, aren’t family hilariously embarrassing? When it was
time to go back to the boat we ended up sitting right in front of the Norwegian
men on the shuttle bus back to the boat. Thank goodness for that shuttle bus
because we were all exhausted. When we got back on the boat we changed into dry
clothes and we went up for lunch. Today was the "Tshirt" sale on the boat so we
went and got some cruise Tshirts to commemorate our cruise. These T-shirts were
more involved with the cruise line instead of the individual ports, making them
more meaningful because that's where we spent the most time!
T was sore from her sunburn so she stayed in the room to rest while the rest
of the family dressed up and went to our final formal dinner.
I fell down the
stairs twice because of the heels I was wearing luckily J was there to catch me
each time, then relentlessly tease me about not being able to walk in
heels. After supper we went to "the show" off the night. It was called “The west
end to Broadway” it was a bunch of singing and dancing with no story line again.
After the show we came back to the room to shower and write in our journals.
T and I watched a few videos on my laptop before we all passed out.
