My grandson’s favorite color is orange. He was pretty excited that our last port of call would be a two day stop in Oranjestad, Aruba. Gotta get a T-shirt for sure. Doesn’t look like shopping will be a problem in Orange City. We were off early on our tour of Aruba and right away got ...
That is what they call this pontoon bridge across the ship canal in Curacao. Its official name is the Queen Emma bridge and it was put into service in 1888. The swinging old lady was a highlight of our visit to Willemstad, Curacao. But first, we were off on our tour of the island. Our first ...
That what the slaves called Bonaire when they were brought here to break their backs working in the salt crystallization pools. Bonaire was called “the useless island” by the Spanish who soon abandoned it. But the Dutch had a lot of fish to salt down at home and they soon found that Bonaire’s arid climate, hot ...
Back in 2008, when we were on a cruise around the British Isles, we had the most wonderful tablemates for dinner. They were three lovely “southern ladies” from Birmingham AL – Rebecca, her mother Jean and their friend Vangie. We had many laughs and ended up closing the dining room every night We kept in touch ...
When I learned about math back in the stone age, I found out that a Bayesian was a particular type of statistician. More recently I found out that a Bajan is an inhabitant of Barbados. The two names are pronounced in the same way. We hung out with some Bajans during our tour of the ...
Long, long ago – back in the antediluvian era before smartphones and Instagram – I began to take photographs with 35 mm film. In doing so I was following in the footsteps of my Uncle Howard. He was a master photographer who used an old Kodak manual camera as early as the mid-1950s. My first ...
Another day, another island we have toured before. St. Lucia is the most luscious Caribbean island we have ever seen, and Dave and Sarah had booked a boat tour to go to the Piton volcanoes. The kids were staying on board, so we agreed to take a short tour of Castries and look after them ...
Antigua – our next port of call – was also affected by Irma. The island was not seriously damaged, although its low-lying sister Barbuda was nearly obliterated. Since we had been here before and seen most of the historical sites and sights, we decided to just schlep around the capital city of St. John’s. Sarah, ...
Hurricane Irma struck Sint Maarten in early September 2017. Six months later both the Dutch and French sides are struggling to recover. 80% of the hotel rooms are unusable. The airport’s new 100 million Euro terminal sustained 76 million Euros worth of damage. They are meeting incoming flights in a big tent and it’ll take 2 ...
We planned this particular cruise two years ago – actually booked it when we were on another cruise. The main reason for such a long pre-booking was so that Dave, Sarah and the grandkids could get a large suite-like Family Oceanview cabin that accommodates 5 easily. We took a two-person Oceanview next door. It was a ...