A little warm water, some cuddles, and a promise of a fun day had him claiming to feel better after about 30 minutes, so we threw open our curtains to look outside at the port we had just pulled in to.
Hmm....overcast and drizzly. It reminded me much of home here in the Pacific Northwest. Determined not to let our rocky start dictate the rest of the day, we dressed ourselves and headed off the ship.
They both look thrilled, right? We had a rough start that day.
As we worked our way through the parking lot at the cruise ship terminal we were approached by a taxi cab driver and offered a tour of Barbados. He had two other passengers from our ship with him. The price was reasonable. We had no other plans. We took a chance.
Our first stop after working our way through town and seeing sites like "the place where Ricky Martin lives" and "The fence that guards the home of American Idol judge, Simon Cowell" was an Anglican Church:
We then wound our way up through the interior of Barbados. Beautiful country side here. We chugged through it so quickly I sadly didn't get many photos - and certainly none that are blog worthy. We ended up at some strange tourist trap with a bunch of random taxi cabs for a misty, soggy, wet photo op of a shore line we couldn't see well through the clouds and mist.
Hanging around for about 20 minutes while people wandered aimlessly about, The Little and I decided to go on a nature hunt. We found the largest African Snails I've ever seen. There were so many of them it was like a snail convention.
When we left, we had the opportunity to head to a local beach, about a 5 minute walk from the cruise ship terminal. Looking out at the rain clouds that kept forming and pushing the hair back from my sons eyes I could tell that a beach excursion just wasn't in the cards for us this day. The Little really wasn't feeling very well and teetering on the edge full nuclear melt down. We opted to head back to the cruise ship for rest and lunch.
All in all, Barbados didn't leave me terribly impressed - and I should add this is not the fault of Barbados or her people. Just our dumb luck that day. The one beach we did see as we drove through town, Paynes Beach, seemed to push right up against the busy main road and wasn't nearly as beautiful as I thought it would be. We stayed in our state room all night and ordered room service. The 3 year old just wasn't up to the main dining room that night. Keeping my fingers crossed that a solid nights sleep would make everything better we turned in early.
The next morning we were in port at St. Lucia. I was so, so excited! Of all the ports we were scheduled for, this was the one I was most looking forward to. After some careful study, I had arranged a tour with Spencer Ambrose Tours He came highly recommended on cruisecritic.com and I couldn't wait for our day of adventure.
The Little had different plans though. Waking up the second morning with a sore throat and now a cough and runny nose I knew our plans were over. We cuddled all morning in bed. We watched cartoons. We drank warm tea and I pouted.
Finally around noon, the kid seemed to perk up a bit. He'd been devoid of a fever the entire morning. I made an executive decision. It was clear this was probably a cold picked up from the airplane or perhaps Camp Carnival. We were at least going to a beach. He could be miserable in our stateroom and rot his brain on cartoons all day, or he could deal with a runny nose at the beach. I almost couldn't handle the idea of having two days in a row without a beach.
We quickly dressed and grabbed a taxi to Reduit Beach. It was a nice beach. Public, a bit more crowded than I would have liked. Lots of facilities and pretty white sand. The water was fairly calm and butted up against some fabulous forested green mountains.
Always building sand castles with his daddy.
We only stayed for about 2 hours. It was all the kid could handle. We grabbed our taxi again and headed back to the ship, traveling through some beautiful and interesting scenery. I'm still disappointed we weren't able to do our tour with Spencer Ambrose. Hopefully we'll be able to return some day and utilize his services. St. Lucia held the promise of being my absolute favorite port.
We spent the rest of the afternoon in our stateroom again. Thank goodness for the Lido deck and room service. There was no way I was taking my congested, sickly feeling child into the main dining room. We settled in for another evening of reading stories, watching cartoons, and cuddles.
St. Kitts next.
Simple Mama
From a Lucian-Bajan, hopefully next time you'll do better both places - Barbados has some gorgeous places - depending on what you like - old Great Houses on plantations, the house where George Washington lived for a while...submarine tour of the reefs, Orchid World, Harrison's Cave...The Crane...yes, the beaches tend to butt up against the roads, but the sand is gorgeous and the water too :-)
ReplyDeleteIn St. Lucia we have less beaches - a trip to Soufriere, the Volcano -bathe in the black mud river from it too (hot), a rainforest trek or skyride, ziplining, waterfalls...
Hope you come back for a second try to both places :-)
Finola, than you for taking the time to comment on my blog. Are days in St. Lucia and Barbados were mostly disappointing because my son was feeling so poorly. It threw a serious wrench in the plans we had, and required improvisation. Combined with a storm system making its way through the area and we were just out of luck those two days. We'll be back someday, hopefully sooner rather than later and hopefully with family members who are all healthy.
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