Vacation Day 6

Day 6

Nassau Mon!

So now I can say that I’ve traveled to 4 foreign countries (not counting layovers):

1. Philippines

2. China (Hong Kong and Macau)

3. Mexico(both south of California and Phil’s neighborhood)

4. Nassau, Bahamas

5. Canada doesn’t count

I made sure to force Susan awake today as we only had 8 or 9 hours in port and she walks slow. The first thing I noticed was that we were in a 3 boat dock. We had a Holland America boat on one side of us, and a Norwegian Cruise Line boat on the other. And it was Damn HOT down there. The Bahamas is made up of about 700 islands but most of the people only live on a few of them. New Providence (the island we were on and the capital of the Bahamas) houses about 60% of the whole population. One thing that was cool was that it was near the Atlantis hotel and casino is on Nassau. We were docked on the north side of the island and only about 15 minutes from the hotel. Phil and I saw it on TV a few years ago and they have this monster water slide that is really cool looking. The Nassau tour guide that was in the room said that it would be at least $12 each way plus tips to get to The Atlantis is technically on another island, but it has a bridge connecting it but you have to pay a toll for it. As luck would have it, we found a boat tour that would take us across for $6 per person round trip! Half the price! SCORE!

It was a short 10 minutes site seeing ride across to the other island. Club Med used to have a spot here, but the owner of the Atlantis bought them out to expand his hotel. One of the producers of Thunderball (an old James Bond movie that you will laugh your ass off watching if you’ve watched the Austin Powers movies) moved here after they filled Thunderball since he liked it so much. They point out the houses and stuff like that. When we got to the Atlantis, it was pretty cool looking. A Vegas casino needs to copy the underwater thing like here (Mandalay Bay doesn’t have anything on this place). Even though it looked just a nice as a Vegas casino (though the casino itself was a bit on the small side in terms of mega resorts), it still had that “foreign smell” to it. I can’t really describe it, but if you had kidnapped me, left me blindfolded, and walked me through the place, I could probably tell I was out of the country. I think it’s the heavy moisture in the air that causes the smell (I smell it in the Philippines too) but I’ve never smelled it in US even when I lived in Texas.

We went to the customer service booth to see how much it costs to ride the water slide. They said since I wasn’t a hotel guest, I could buy a day pass for $75. $75!?! Man I could practically get a room for that much. And that was each! Not $75 for the both of us. So I said, screw that! I wasn’t lured to the slots at all as I’m practically immune to it from living in Vegas for the last year. But when Susan played, I decided to play some too. I played Family Feud since I hadn’t played it before and on my 4^th spin, I won $80 (I was playing quarters so I spent a total of $1.25 to make $80) so I just stopped there :)

After some other site seeing, we went to….. Starbucks? Geez go all the way to the Bahamas and I’m drinking a mango tea shake from Starbucks ha ha. After that, we took the ferry back to New Providence Island and did some shopping (while sweating to death too). After that, it was back on the boat to do a little eating and swimming (to cool off!). We went and saw the show on the boat that might (of course heavily Disney themed) and then went off to dinner for the “Pirates in the
Caribbean” dinner (told you in an earlier post to remember that part!). It was dress up night so that’s why I’m wearing a tie in some of the pics. After dinner (naturally we were one of the last ones to finish ha ha) we went above deck for the continuation of the Pirates in the Caribbean night. There was dancing and music and one thing I’ve NEVER seen on a cruise boat. They had fireworks launched from the boat! That was pretty neat. After that it was another snack (hey I paid for it might as well get my moneys worth) and then off to bed. It sucked too since my throat was starting to hurt a lot from getting sick by Susan.