Cruise ship central - Nassau, Bahamas

Several months ago I found amazing airfare prices to Nassau, Bahamas (under $200 a person round trip). I quickly booked the flights and Hilton hotel for a week in November.


Generally, any beach location receives top marks from me. I'll pack my pre-loaded nook, a few magazines, the camera and sunscreen and I'm happy as a clam. I must be getting picky and now require a certain level of privacy. The Hilton British Colonial in Nassau is located near the cruise ship dock. While it is nice to watch the large floating cities pull in, it gets old. And, after the third, fourth, and fifth ship in port....you almost begin to send vibes that the darn things will go back to sea.


Given the proximity to the dock, quite a few cruisers try to infiltrate the Hilton's beach and it quickly goes from peaceful reading time under a palapa to screaming kids and 20 somethings smoking who knows what upwind from my lovely location. Um, yes, I despise everything smoke-related!


Aside from the hotel's location, the staff were quite friendly, especially the 6th floor housekeeping staff. On the day that the hotel water main broke, then was restored (but not our room), Donna quickly found another room for us to duck in and take a shower until maintenance was able to fix our water pressure.


Would I go back to Nassau? No, but I might head to one of the other Bahamian islands like Harbour Island or Eleuthra.


A few pictures from Nassau.

Atlantis on Paradise Island

The view from our room...yes 5, count them, 5 ships!

Stream of Consciousness - The Rumbaba

My stream of consciousness this morning went something like this: book hotels for April trip to Copenhagen and southern Sweden, find excursions, how about a boat trip, remember the Rumbaba in St. Thomas.

In 2007, Chuck and I booked a house in St. Thomas for a week (I can't seem to find a link to the property). My parents and brother joined us. Poor Kasey is a guidance counselor so she had to work. When we were in St. Croix the previous year, we chartered a sailboat and went to Buck Island to snorkel. So, I thought it would be fun to charter a sailboat to snorkel around St. John. We've been on some disasterous large snorkeling trips with 75 other people (Princessa Yelapa in Puerto Vallarta, rings a bell). Chartering a sailboat for just us made more sense and for 5 people it was probably an extra $100 or so to have the entire boat to ourselves.

Enter the Rumbaba. I searched the web and found quite a few different charters, but decided that the Rumbaba and Capt'n Bobby would be perfect for us. It was fab.u.lous. Honestly, it was one of the best things we have ever done on a vacation.

A few pictures from our day of snorkeling. The water was so incredibly clear, even the pictures from the cheap underwater camera turned out!