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Sunday, August 17, 2014

Nassau, the Bahamas


Saturday, April 12. Nassau, the Bahamas.  Sure enough, morning found us docked in Nassau, ready to explore a little bit and enjoy a visit to the beautiful clear waters aboard a glass-bottom boat. Tourists from some of the five BIG ships in the harbor joined us, but not in large numbers. 
A few of the ships in the harbor



We enjoyed seeing Nassau from the water, the nice waterfront homes, and eventually the reef with its varied corals and fish life. 
fish and coral

Harbor ships from the other direction

The pink hotel is the Atlantis

This is a mecca for second homes in the tropics

After we returned to shore, there was plenty of time to explore downtown Nassau on foot. We ended up walking down busy Bay street with its many tourist-centered shops, the most interesting of which was the Straw Market. This is a very large open warehouse-like building crammed with tiny shops where local entrepreneurs were busy hawking all kind of souvenirs. We resisted.  

The Straw Market

We enjoyed seeing the clean streets, pretty pink government and historical buildings, horse-drawn carriages, and some of the local citizens. These included a very spiffy unarmed policeman and a “rastah man” type who I was reduced to sketching later because I couldn’t get my camera out in time. I'll spare you the sight of my really BAD sketch!




Majority Rule is important here, as this museum attests


We strolled the colorful waterfront tourist traps for a little while, but really, that’s not our thing. Heading back to the ship we again marveled at the size of the other ships in port and congratulated ourselves for sailing on the Navigator. People think Regent is expensive, but when you compare, it really isn’t, because everything IS included, from tips to cokes to tours. The supposedly less expensive lines charge you extra for everything, and by the end, you have paid about as much as we did but spent your time aboard a crowded behemoth as part of a very large herd. 
The competition

The Navigator. It looks big, but the others dwarf it.

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