Please start reading this post below at Barbados

 

SAN JUAN

 

On Saturday we arrived back in San Juan, Puerto Rico and took a tour of San Juan off the ship before being dropped at our hotel. San Juan is a city of half a million people with the historic part located on an island. The buildings in Old San Juan date back 400 years and represent centuries of Spanish architecture. The whole area is heritage listed and by law if a building is repainted it must be in the same colour to preserve the heritage façade. Speaking of colours they are quite varied, with a sandy yellow being popular and many examples of orange, light apple green and various blues. A very pretty area. It also includes the old Spanish fort, the Castillo San Cristobal which has a wall 28 feet thick (which also surrounds the whole old town) and used to be defended by 460 cannons (see photo 3). Impressive, as is the price of condos in that part of town – about one million!

New San Juan is modern and has a sort of Miami/Honolulu feel (see photo 4). The beaches are lovely. The Capital Building which serves as the centre of government is the only one of its kind in the world with sea frontage and is made from the most beautiful Italian marble. When excavations were being made for its construction a treasure trove of ancient Indian artifacts was unearthed. These were pieced together to form a totem pole which was erected in the square to mark 500 years of European settlement. It seems very appropriate.

The tour finished at the airport so that people could catch flights, so we facing the need to get a taxi to the hotel. But luckily Pedro, our very nice driver and our wonderful tour guide with a very dry and cheeky sense of humour, offered to drop us at the hotel and even helped with our bags. Just a couple more of the very nice people we have met on this holiday.  The hotel had a strict policy regarding getting into your rooms, se we sat in the foyer for 3 hours cooling our heels before being given the OK.  The room was well worth waiting for, as the view from our room could only be described as breath taking!!  However they party hard in San Juan, and the band downstairs finished playing at 3am!! 4 pretty tired travellers then spent the day plane hopping back to Houston. (Never complain about waiting for luggage at home – we waited just on an hour for our luggage to come out when we landed at Houston!!)

AT SEA

Our last day on the ship was spent at sea heading back to Puerto Rico. We were all so tired it was great to just chill. Lounging by the pool, the odd drink or twenty-two etc – hard to beat.

That night we ate at Portofino, one of the specialty restaurants (see photo 2). Sue’s birthday occurred before we left home but Jamie and Gary wanted to celebrate it with us anyway, so it was a special treat. Jamie has been having the best time marking Sue’s birthday ever since arrived. She has a wombat theme going and so wombat stickers, post cards and other wombat paraphernalia (ordered on line from Australia with Phil’s help!!!) keep appearing in unexpected places. One morning on the ship we awoke to find the outside of the cabin door festooned with streamers and wombat stuff (see photo 1). Jamie is one very fun lady J.

BARBADOS

Our last stop was Barbados where we docked at Bridgetown. This island is one of the bigger ones we visited (166 square miles) but nowhere near as big as St Lucia, though it does have a population of 290,000. It is the most easterly of the Caribbean islands and was the only one consistently occupied only by the British, so it has some interesting historical buildings and ruins. One structure we were thrilled to see close up was Kensington Stadium, home of cricket in Barbados and the scene of many test matches between the West Indies and Australia (see photo 1). Out the front is an impressive statue of Sir Garfield Sobers.

The island is so similar to St Kitts in lots of ways that there is no need to repeat things about housing, education etc. Photo 3 shows some typical poorer housing. First home buyer's dream? Challenge for The Block?

Like St Kitts Barbados is hilly rather than mountainous. Once again tourism is the main industry and sugar is down the drain almost totally. But the island does have many prosperous areas and a substantial middle class, with financial services its second top industry.

The very best thing about Barbados is the beaches (see photo 2). There are no grey volcanic beaches here, just fine white coral sand beaches fronting tropical green sea and decorated with palm trees. Your picture perfect tropical paradise! While Sue and Phil did a highlights tour of the island Jamie and Gary went to a beach just outside Bridgetown. The water was warm, clear and inviting, and Jamie saw schools of tropical fish and had a close (but friendly) encounter with a stingray. Life’s tough on a cruise J.