St. Barts Photos
Today is Thurs. 2/3/05.
Debbie slept in and took her time getting her sea legs this morning. I feel bad that the seas did not calm as the Filipinos had told her to expect. She tells me that they did! She says that between 11:30 and midnight it got calm, but by 3AM it got rough again. Oh, well. We walked up to the bridge as we were nearing Gustavia, that is a nice touch, keeping the doors open. I did not realize that we could come & go there until Debbie assured me that Diamond was known for this. I did not hear the anchor go down, but we appear to be drifting around it a mile or 2 from Gustavia. According to my reading of the map and the landmarks I can see, we are anchored between Gustavia and Colombier. I can see the end of the island sometimes and all the rocks with breakers which is labeled Petit Jean. Debbie says she thinks the crescent shaped beach in front of us is Corossol. We would need binoculars to actually see Gustavia from here. Not looking forward to that tender ride, but it is not too good out here either so I think we will go ashore. We timed the first 2 tenders and they took about 10 minutes to load and then 12-15 minutes until they were out of sight in the moored sailboats off Gustavia's harbor.
We had breakfast in The Grand Dining Room but I forgot my camera. I had lamb chops and fried eggs. Ngaire is right RSSC has delicious baby lamb chops and I am not even a big fan of lamb and never had it for breakfast before, but I could get used to it. Debbie had french toast. She did not get enough syrup and thought they should leave the little pitcher at the table for her to serve herself as needed. Good idea. We took things slow, wandered around the ship some more, worked on the jigsaw puzzle in the atrium outside our cabin and then went to lunch. We had lunch at The Grill. I went out to the barbecue on deck and had mixed meat and vegetables with a salad. Debbie stayed with the indoor buffet selections and had a cup of creamy herb soup with some crackers and then tried the pasta station. The cook there fixed her penne Alfredo and then convinced her that it would go very well with the roast pork loin at the adjacent carving station, so between the 2 she got a full plate and ate it all. They were pouring white wine at the deck barbecue but we opted for diet coke and coke instead. Something fizzy felt good on the stomach about now. We heard the PA announcement the the catamaran tour has been canceled. Rough seas?
Debbie has read that things close in Gustavia between noon and 2PM. Since we did not start tendering until after 11AM we are killing time to tender closer to 2PM. We plan to walk around the harbor area at a leisurely pace and then visit the Musee de Saint-Barth. We arrive at the Musee about 5 minutes early, we sit outside through one of the intermittent rain showers for about15 minutes. Debbie gets up to read the sign. It is in French, it has been awhile but she translates it, Closed all afternoon on Weds. only. Closed noon to 2 every other day. We give up and go get me an ice cream cone. After we get to the other side of the harbor again, Debbie sees that the museum doors are open and much, much later we laugh ourselves silly when we realize that Debbie does know the days of the week in French as she recited from memory to me what was on the sign, but that we did not know what day of the week it was. Today is not Weds., it is Thurs.! How goofy are we? A few days on vacation and we lose it completely, maybe Debbie is right and we can't go 122 nights.
We get a Cheesburger in Paradise T-shirt for me at LeSelect. I don't know it, but Debbie insists it is a famous Buffett song, OK. We get on a tender back around 4PM. We get on and then we sit in the harbor and bob for 20 minutes, oh no. Debbie asks the driver what is up and he says that another ship has left and Diamond is repositioning closer to Gustavia and he can't pull up to the ship while this is happening and so we have to wait here since the swells are bigger outside the harbor. Yeah, or we could have happily waited on land. Another 10 minutes or so and we are back on board Diamond. The new location seems calmer. We also notice coming back that while we had assumed the Diamond was anchored, we do not see an anchor chain running down either time we are in the tender. We do see that Diamond is constantly running engines and manuevering to stay more or less in place.
I go in for a nap and Debbie tries lying down and feels worse. She goes back to the jigsaw puzzle just out in the atrium. She says she feels better because it is an interior space and she can't see. While we worked together on the puzzle for a short time before I go full-bore for the nap, an officer came down the stairs and walked by and censured us twice for wasting a beautiful day outside. OK, tsk all you want, but different strokes for different folks, buddy. Debbie convinces me to go with her to tea at 4:30pm, it takes a lot of arm twisting since they have cake. While we are in the Windows Lounge for the tea, a man puts up a sign outside the side room on the lower lever below our table, designating the space for the invitation only, AMEX cardmembers cocktail party this evening. We paid for this cruise on AMEX and we gave Reception a Platinum AMEX imprint for charging our onboard account. We assume this means that we will be invited, and we go back to the room and look for an invitation, but we did not receive one.
Debbie comes in and wakes me for dinner. She stayed at the puzzle for longer than she had planned because another obsessive/compulsive had joined her and he kept telling her, we can't leave until we complete this part. She assured him that the puzzle would still be incomplete when we left the ship and he told her he didn't want to think that. She stayed at it with him, but the flag section of the puzzle remained incomplete, though he made a lot of progress on it. Sunset cocktails and canapes were served by the pool at 6PM but I slept through sunset with the curtains open and Debbie was in the interior without her watch and did not realize the time. We changed and went to dinner at 7:30pm. We hoped to be back in time to watch a movie on TV.
