Few more Caribbean photos

I thought I'd post a few more photos while I'm off work and have a little time to myself. Coming to the end of the cruise I'll be posting a few that I missed out. Taking two cameras means two memory cards. Most of the photos I've posted so far were taken with my Canon SLR, these tonight were mostly taken with my Canon compact camera.
NCL are a really good cruise line, very much family oriented, it was nice to go with them for our first cruise. I remember my friend booked a surprise Caribbean cruise for her sisters birthday, the whole family went and they hated it, couldn't get off the ship fast enough! Lots of drunkenness from passengers which ruined it for others. I had my reservations about it, I do like being on land, but not having to unpack and repack suitcases every couple of days which happens on tours was enough to sway me to try it. We were lucky that the weather was hot and perfect, the sea was so calm ~ it was like floating around on a pond! Apart from wanting to do a Panama cruise next year for my sixtieth birthday I don't know if I'd do any more. There just didn't seem to be much time in each port. I think I prefer land based touring as you're seeing scenery all the time instead of wide expanses of open sea between destinations.
This first photo is the Barbados flag. Each day we had a different flag on the ship, it always showed the flag of our next port.

The cannon is one left from the English fort on St Lucia. There were some lovely views from on top of the hill.

This is part of Nelsons Dockyard on Antigua, everything seemed to be so tranquil in the Caribbean!

Our ship again, it looks like it's trying to get on land! Lol!


St Lucias' flag.

Antiguas' flag.


We saw lots of these birds flying alondside us on our way back to Miami. I found out that they're brown booby birds. A bit blurred but they fly very fast!



Grey skies.... it must be Barbados! Lol! Who'd have thought that Barbados would have clouds like England!

Still, they did make a nice sunset!



This is the food waste being ejected into the sea. All the food not eaten aboard gets processed and is pumped overboard where the fish eat it. They must be the most well fed fish in the world!


The colour of the sea doesn't look real does it?!



Well, that's all for tonight. I'm off work with plantar fasciitis in my right foot so tomorrow I want to have a good clear out of my paperwork. I've been off for a week now but have wasted most of it sitting around doing nothing; the pain when I walk is too much so I tend not to at the moment!
Enjoy the rest of the week, we've had quite good weather here this week, typical as I'm stuck indoors! Rain's forecast for this weekend so make the most of the sun!
I've just lost my signature tag, I was getting rid of the blank space at the bottom and it disappeared! Lol!
Jeannette xx

Barbados

I decided to add the photos of Barbados tonight, I was so disappointed with the island, or that which I could see through the torrential rain! I'm sure it looks much better in the sunshine and we were lucky to have only had this one day of rain in a tropical zone like the Caribbean. Still, it would have been nice to have seen the island too! As Lori pointed out, this wasn't the order in which I saw the islands. We actually visited St Lucia after Barbados although I've posted those photos before these, I wasn't going to post any of these photos but decided you could sit and suffer through some soggy weather pics for a change! Lol! The top photo is Kensington Oval, yes, Barbados has it's very own Oval like us here in the UK! I always thought that Sir Viv Richards came from here but learnt that he came from Antigua which we had visited before Barbados. Ome of our surgeons at work comes from here. He told me many years ago that when he was a boy he and his friends used to get branches from a tree and a coconut then they proceeded to play cricket on the beach. No wonder they're so good once they get there hands on proper bats and cricket balls!
On with the soggy photos! This first one was the non-view from the bus window!

A soggy banana plantation!



A not so soggy church, it was nice to get inside and shelter from the rain lashing down!Some kind of Bajan pigeon acting as official greeter at the church!

Inside was very grand with a beautiful organ.


The pulpit.



Caribbean churches all seemed to be fairly plain but very beautiful.
Some of the wet 'n wild shoreline!



It doesn't make you want to throw off your clothes, run to the beach and jump in does it?!


We stopped at a hotel where we could have had some beautiful views if we could've seen through the rivers of water running down the windows! I went out the back of the hotel and saw this pretty little bird instead!
On our way back to the harbour I saw this pretty little china blue flower. One must grab any photo opportunity available on dreary wet days! Lol!
A welcome sight, our ship! Notice how the sky has mysteriously turned blue on our return! We booked our excursion for the early afternoon but the booking office changed it for the morning so we left at 8am instead of 1pm. If we'd got the booking we wanted we would have missed all that rain so we weren't too happy!

Just a couple of photos taken at dusk aboard the ship as we were sailing out of the harbour.

I hope you enjoyed the rather drab photos, they certainly made a change from the usual, turquoise sea and endless blue skies didn't they?!
Next entry I'll post some photos of the melon carvings, chocolate sculptures and the birds we saw on our way back to Miami plus a few more of the ships' decks etc.
No signature tag tonight, I forgot to add it first and it takes a while to add it after and try to drag it down to the bottom!
Jeannette xx

Second batch of photos of St Lucia

I can't believe it's been over two weeks since I posted the last entry, time is going so fast just lately. I've been meaning to do this entry since Wednesday evening. I came home early from work that night and haven't been back since. I've got a very painful case of plantar fasciitis and have felt so tired I've fallen asleep every time I sat down! Probably because I've just finished three weeks of nights and my body clock is all over the place!
Anyway, on with the cruise! There are only two more destinations after St Lucia.... Barbados and Miami. Barbados was a washout; it rained so hard it felt like we were back home! We also had two days at sea sailing back to Miami. We were due to arrive in Miami at 8am where we'd be taken straight back to the airport. Our plane didn't take off till 5.30pm so it would have been a day just sitting around then another ten hours sitting on the plane when we flew home. It didn't sound very appealing so we decided to take an excursion offered to the Everglades. I'd been there in '91 but Andy had never been. It proved to be a great day out and a good end to a wonderful trip. Before I post the photos of that and the few I managed to take in Barbados, between the rainstorms, I just have a few more of St Lucia to show you. I loved this island, it was so tropical and jungly!! Is that a word? It is now!! Lol!
The photos below are taken from the ship when we were docked in the harbour, all apart from a couple which I took from the terrace of a plantation house.

I hope you liked these photos, it's nice for me to see them again too as I post them, so often we just put our photos away and never look at them again don't we?
Thanks to Donna for the signature tag tonight.

St Lucia

I've finally found a few minutes to downlad the photos from St Lucia, a beautiful island with stunning scenery. It was more tropical feeling than the other islands due to it's more 'jungle' type of scenery. We booked a tour of St Lucia so that we could see the highlights of the island. On the tour we visited the beach, the mountains where we got some good views of the whole islands and a plantation house which was occupied in the days of slavery.
So.... on with the photos.

The Norwegian Jewel, our home in the Caribbean.

I hope you liked this set of photos, I've got more of St Lucia which I'll put in the next entry. This will probably be the last photos I'll add to this journal owing to a lack of readers. It just doesn't seem worth it any more, I'm really disappointed with the demise of our J-Land community, seems like it wasn't as close knit as we thought it was. In future I'll only be adding photos to Facebook.

More Antigua photos

These are the second set of photos of Antigua, believe me I've got hundreds more!! It was such a beautiful place and was just what I imagined the Caribbean to be like.

A steel band greeted us as we disembarked from the ship.

We made our way through St Johns, the capital, to see the quaint cathedral in the town centre. Although it was built of stone outside the inside was very different.

I loved these blue flowers in the churchyard.

It was completely wooden inside. Very dark in comparison to the sunshine outside. My friend was confirmed here so it was lovely to visit.

We carried on walking through the town enjoying the sunshine and seeing the bustle of life.





We stopped at the museum. Antigua is very near to Barbuda, another island and theire history is similar. It was interesting to see the exhibits and learn about the inhabitants and slavery.

The flag was just inside the museum door and explains what the different colours and symbols on it mean.

There were lots of pretty coloured birds about but most moved too fast to get photos of. This little one did however sit for a few seconds!


Then it was back to our ship to have lunch and shower before our excursion in the afternoon. That was the one I showed photos of in the last entry. I'm trying to keep the islands in the order which we visited but due to having to do entries when I can get on here means the photos won't neccessarily be in the right order!

I have to go to bed now, I'm working nights for three weeks. I don't mind, I shall get to see more of Andy as we'll both be working in the A&E department at the weekend. I'll be back when I can!

Enjoy the rest of the week.

Antigua

Hi again! I'm adding some of my Antigua photos tonight before I go to bed. I think I've added too many, they won't let me add any more in this entry! I'll add the rest another day.

Antigua is a particularly beautiful island and one I've always wanted to visit. My friend at work was born and brought up on Antigua. She married a Scottish man and they often go back to the island to visit her friends and relatives. She said I had to visit the cathedral in St Johns where she was confirmed so that was our first stop. It was unusual as it's made out of wood inside. The walls and pillars are all made from hardwood trees that grown on the island. I'll add the photos on the next entry.

We took a bus and visited Shirley Heights where there are great views. We also went to the Blockhouse where there are more stunning views overlooking the bays and Eric Claptons house! our last stop was at Nelsons Dockyard, the old 18th century dockyard named after Admiral Horatio Nelson. It's a working dockyard situated in English Harbour, not as busy as it was back in the old days!

The island was a real pleasure to visit, the people were so friendly ~ I'm sure it must be the constant sunshine that makes everyone so happy there! Maybe it's that wonderful blue water that surrounds them too! St Johns, the capital is quaint. The streets are narrow and you have to be careful where you walk or you could disappear down a pothole in the road. Andy twisted his ankle when he went down one. That evening he asked me to call the ships doctor out but decided against it when I found out it was going to cost $135 just to call him out after hours! After a couple of days the swelling went down and he was as good as new.

The first few photos are of St Johns.

The first cat I'd seen for ages!

I loved the murals on this wall in the main street!

Our ship again.

The view from the Blockhouse. Right at the end of the promontory is Eric Claptons house.



I've zoomed in so you can see it clearer. There's also a rehab centre there.

The views were gorgeous from here.

Part of the ruins of the Blockhouse.

The sea was unreal looking, I think it should be illegal to have sea this colour!! Lol!

The wonderful view from Shirley Heights.

The view over the island, looking from the Caribbean side over to the Atlantic Ocean.




If my memory serves me well the island on the horizon is Montserrat.








This and all the remaining photos are of Nelsons Dockyard.

I'm off to bed now, I did have a signature tag here but it disappeared when I was moving the photos up. That's one thing that I hate about Blogger ~ all the gaps between photos, it takes ages to close them up doesn't it? I've just noticed a few more gaps when I scrolled down, I really can't be bothered to close them all up, I'm losing the will to live! I've got to get up early for work in the morning. I start at 7am.... ugh!

All those of you who are off for the Bank Holiday or Memorial Day in the US, have a good day.

Jeannette xxxx

Tortola, British Virgin Islands. A tropical paradise!

I thought I'd add a few more photos of my cruise while it's still the weekend (just!). This is Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, it has the most beautiful colour sea surrounding it. It's actually the island setting for Treasure Island, the novel of the same name. It was like arriving in paradise, the colour of the sea just didn't look real! Surely they'd dyed it just before we arrived!
Andy and I did a coach tour of the island, the hills were so steep, we didn't think the bus was going to make it up to the top! We headed across the island over the mountain range and down to Pussers' Landing, a yacht harbour with some beautiful pastel painted houses and shops. I'm not writing a lot here as it's late, I'll let you get on with looking at the photos.

A pelican who seemed to be the official greeter at the harbourside!





They did dye it didn't they? Nobody is entitled to have sea this colour!




The Norwegian Jewel, our home on the high seas!

Colourful tour buses.

Our ship again, it was a beautiful place to live for a few days!

This was interesting, it's a church, or what remains of it after a tropical storm destroyed it many years ago.

The view from the top of the mountains, the scenery all over Tortola was breathtaking.

Sorry, I couldn't resist taking a photo of this strangely named road!!

Just look at the sea between the islands, there are around seventy islands that make up the British Virgin Islands.

It doesn't look real does it?!

Our ship in the harbour.

I could quite happily live here!

They even have their own observatory here!

Stunning!

I wonder if they'd like to trade their blue sky with our dirty grey one?! Lol!

Iguana Island.

Another harbour

This is Pussers Landing. It was absolutely beautiful. The sky, the houses in these pastel colours! It was all just unreal!

I could have stayed here for a week.... make that a month!

That's it for tonight, my bed is calling me!

I hope to be back soon to add more if my computer lets me, it's lost my Windows XP twice today but I managed to restore it.

I won't add a signature tag in case I lose the entry!

Jeannette xx