Hi gang. We spent the day in St Lucia today. Did you know that St Lucia is the first, and only one of two countries in the world, that’s named after a woman (Saint Lucy)? Ireland is too, named after the Celtic goddess of fertility, named Eire. How’s that for your trivia fact for the day?
Well our day started off nice waking up to blue skies and having breakfast delivered to our room. We got going early and were out the door by 8 AM to catch the first tender boat to the island. However we had to wait until the first tender boat left with people on Seabourn excursions. We and a few others were taking an independent excursion. Because of this I was worried we’d miss meeting our group at 8:30 as scheduled. So I emailed them to let them know and they responded saying that was OK.
I had emailed them a few days ago confirming where we’d meet them and they said to walk thru the cruise port arrival hall and meet them right past Diamonds Direct. Well when we got off the ship there was no arrival hall! We were at a very small port in what seemed like the suburbs not directly in the downtown area.
When I asked someone where Diamonds Direct was, he said with the current morning rush hour traffic it would take us 45 minutes to get there! It was already 8:50 and we were supposed to meet at 8:30. Ouch! I didn’t have cell coverage so this gentleman was nice enough to call our tour operator. He handed the phone to me and the tour operator realized he gave us the wrong instructions and was at a different port than we were at and due to traffic and the other passengers they had they wouldn’t be able to pick us up.
Bummer! We were supposed to go do the mud baths, which we were really looking forward to, as well as snorkel at a nice beach. So there we are at 9 AM on St Lucia with nothing to do and nothing really within walking distance. So Michael, the gentleman who let me use his phone, was also a licensed tour guide and offered to take us on a tour of the island. So us and a couple on our ship who were from Belgium went on the tour.
We didn’t end up going to the mud baths but we got to see a smoldering/active volcano, the two “Pitons”, or mountains that St Lucia is known for as well as some nice bays and other lookout points.
When we got back from the excursion we ordered our first room service caviar! Neither one of us had ever tried caviar before but we both liked it. Especially if you add the sour cream, red onion, egg yolks and egg whites on a crisp cracker! The whole caviar thing is big on Seabourn and you can order it as often as you’d like so we’re thinking we’ll be ordering it more.
Our dinner was really good tonight again. Kathy had the garlic shrimp and scallops and I had the roast duck. Both were very tasty! After dinner we found a new musical group we love that play up in the Observation Lounge at the top front of the ship. It’s a man and woman with the guy playing acoustical guitar and the woman singing with the most amazing voice. I think we’ll be listening to them a lot over the next 10 days!
Hope everyone has a great weekend. On to Grenada tomorrow!
The Wandering Italian 