Thursday, March 6th: Antigua

We pulled into port on a bright sunny morning right next to a Celebrity ship. At the end of the dock are brightly colored stores. It looks very appealing. As soon as the ship cleared, we got off the ship and went right into the town. After looking around a bit, we decided to take a taxi tour again. The first driver we came upon gave us a reasonable price, brought us over to the side while he tried to talk others into joining us in the van. However, these people he was talking to decided they wanted a taxi to the beach. Remembering our experience in St. Thomas, we bailed out. We eventually found another taxi driver further in town. He had 3 Canadian couples and wanted the 3 of us to join them - same tour, same price. They seemed like really nice people, so we jumped into the van. He actually took us on a really nice tour of the island, stopping in a place called Nelson's Dockyard. The British Army had a long history in this area on the Southern Coast of Antigua. It had lots of old buildings and..........gift shops! NaNa was delighted. We had a short guided tour, then were on our own for 1/2 hour. When our time was about up, we went out into the parking lot looking for our van. Honestly, there must have been 20 or more of them parked there and they all looked alike! As we were poking through the parking lot, a lady in a jeep suddenly shot by us. "Bloody Tourists," she screamed. We yelled back our thanks before realizing she was not yelling at us, but was frustrated with the vans taking up all the parking spots. We got a good laugh out of our ruffled British "friend." We finally found the van and the rest of our party, then it was off for more sightseeing. Antigua is also beautiful, but my heart still belongs to Barbados. 3 1/2 hours later, we finally rolled back into town. We got a great tour, but it was much longer than anyone of us had patience for. We climbed back onboard the ship and (again) had lunch. After lunch, NaNa wanted to go back in town to try her hand in a casino she saw close to the dock. DH decided to stay behind and take a nap. The casino was very dingy and had older models of slot machines. NaNa had a little bit of luck while I just donated to the cause, like usual. NaNa was excited because it was the first time she ever played in a casino on foreign soil.

After our casino adventure, we stopped at every souvenir shop, courtesy of NaNa. Amazingly, she didn't buy anything here! Eventually, hot and tired, she decided it was time to get back on the ship and have an ice cream cone.
I abstained because dinner was just in two hours.

We went through our usual routine of getting showered and dressed for dinner. It was one more night that I didn't like my dinner and disliked dessert. I spent more time picking at my food the whole cruise, and I am not at all like that. I eat quite a variety of foods, but I just didn't like meat that was hard to chew, cakes that were dry, and cheesecake that didn't taste like cheesecake at all. Picky, picky, I guess. At least I didn't gain any weight during the cruise - that's good!

There was another singer and dancer show on this night which we were looking forward to seeing. This was our 2nd big production show we'd gone to. Just as it started, they had to stop the show due to technical difficulties. I forgot to mention that this same thing happened during the 1st big show. Hmmmmmmmmm....... However, once the show started it was wonderful!

NaNa decided that she was boycotting the casino on the ship since she wasn't winning, so we did other things after the show.

Next installment: St. Kitts - a piece of paradise!