Cruising the Bahamas - Wednesday

Day 3 of our vacation was in Nassau, Bahamas.  We were up and at the gym before breakfast, I did 2 miles on the elliptical!  Then Joe and I met up with Mark and Kat for another delicious meal at the rear deck buffet, seriously, those were the best waffles I've ever eaten, before heading off the ship to enjoy another day of fun.

It started raining almost as soon as we were off the boat and it kept raining on and off all morning.  We made the most of it by walking from shop to shop looking at jewelry.  Well, Kat & I were looking at jewelry, the boys were drinking beer from paper bags.

We came across a plaza that Mark swears was honoring Tommy Bahama...we took a couple of pictures with a canon that was next to the statue.  We were all getting a little antsy by this point and luckily mother nature must have noticed because the sun came out!

While we were window shopping in one of the many jewelry stores the boys asked where to get good cigars; the sales person told us to go to Graycliff.  I somehow missed this entire conversation and was totally confused when we started walking up hill, away from the touristy area.  Kat finally clued me in and we decided not to complain since the boys had been good sports during all the jewelry shopping.  


I wish I had taken a picture when we walked up to this place but I was busy trying to to get run down by the crazy Bahamian drivers.  The entrance is amazing!  It sits back from the street behind a little wall.  We were not expecting the gorgeous hotel behind the trees!  We asked the concierge about cigars and he led us through the building and out into a sitting area, we were already blown away by the landscaping but it just kept getting better.

We were stunned by the beauty of the grounds, it's obvious the hotel is old but it's been taken care of.  When we passed this pool we gasped and the concierge told us we were welcome to stay for the afternoon and enjoys drinks while we lounged.

After a little more walking we were shown the cigar rolling room.  There were three cuban women that sit at old desks and roll cigars all day.  I'm pretty sure this was Joe's favorite part of the entire vacation!

They showed us how they roll the cigars and explained in broken English what all of the materials are.  Joe responded in broken Spanish and tried to ask questions before thanking them for taking their time to talk to us.

The guys then headed to the onsite cigar store and while they shopped, we enjoyed some time by the pool.  While it was tempting to stay and lounge at the hotel all day we were hungry and their prices were steep so we decided to take a walk down to the beach and try to find a "fish fry" some of the locals had mentioned.

The walk to the beach was longer then we anticipated and when we asked how much further to the fish fry we were not thrilled with the prospect of trudging along any longer so we stopped and set up camp by another little stand.  Mark, Kat & Joe decided to order some jerk chicken from one stand but I'm not a fan of spice so I went with a conch fritter platter from another.  I ended up the big winner because my platter was large enough to feed all 4 of us!

After lunch, Joe did some snorkeling while the rest of us soaked up some sun.  Soon it was time to start the trek back to the boat again.

We stopped at the pool when we got back but the sun was already fading and it was getting cool.  We decided this would be our "fancy" night for dinner and went back to our rooms to get ready.  Upon return to our room we found a cute little turtle...

We used Joe's camera to take some pictures of the bunch of us but it was hard to pose with people constantly coming up and down the stairs.

We managed one decent group shot.  It's hard whenever other people use Joe's camera because they don't always focus right and from what he tells me the lighting was hard to work with as well.

Joe regularly has issue with water in his ears.  He says it's been happening since childhood and he can usually clear it up with a little rubbing alcohol.  Unfortunately we didn't bring rubbing alcohol with us.  He went to the doctor's office on the ship but it's only open from 4-5:30!  When we tried the help desk they gave us a couple of alcohol prep pads which Joe then rung out into a spoon and poured into his ear!  Worked like a charm though.

After another yummy dinner in the main dining room we wandered the ship a little, had some tea, listened to some music and then of course, headed to bed early.  This time it was an Elephant!