Saturday, December 10, 2011
Bridgetown, Barbados
Lots of ships in today. It's an industrial port and we're parked right next to a huge loading crane. Actually it was interesting watching the container activity. They have a motorized gantry which drives around moving containers. It drives to the semi hauling the container on its flatbed, drives right over the container (its platform fits outside the truck's profile), gloms on to the container, lifts it up, and off it goes to plunk it somewhere. Reverse applies to load a container on to a flatbed.
Biggest excitement this morning was hoping the captain of the Norwegian Dawn was a better driver than all those Carnival captains that are always running into things. He pulled in front of us at a 90 degree angle, I could have sworn he was only inches off our bow. He then had to reverse 90 degrees into the pier. Thought sure he was going to take our bow off, but I'm happy to report that we're still intact and seaworthy! Amazing how they can manouver these giant ships around!
We weren't planning anything exciting because you have to take a cab into Bridgetown and we did that last year. I took the shuttle to the cruise terminal because I wanted to mail a postcard to mother. Cost me a dollar, but she gets a wedding stamp! (Barbados is part of the British Commonwealth). Woo Hoo! Discovered they had free wi-fi in the terminal, so took the shuttle back to the ship, grabbed my laptop, and came back. Well the wi-fi was seriously slow—a person could fall asleep waiting for e-mail to load, so I finally gave up. The price was right but the service sucked. Had a downpour while sitting there waiting for my e-mail to boot. Fortunately I was inside. Looked in the shops, but didn't see anything which was shouting BUY ME!
Back to the ship, had lunch with Michelle & Fred from our Cruise Critic group. Did some delicates in the sink and the floor drain overflowed. Mopped it up with all the pool towels I had used to get the moisture out of the laundry and went in search of the cabin steward to deal with it. He came and dealt with it in his usual efficient manner. He was all concerned about the formal top I sent to be dry cleaned. He said that there was a diamond missing from the clasp. I told him that they weren't diamonds and that the “diamond” had been missing for some time, so not to worry.
Played 3-way Sequence with Peg and Beth (Carolyn decided she needed a nap). We each won a game and then Beth won the fourth game. She's been pretty lucky on this cruise!
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