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.