Today we would be stopping at Barbados, which was another new port of call for us. We pre-ordered room service to speed up breakfast so that we could get down to the theater for our excursion for the day. We had selected the Barbados Beach Break, which should have given us four hours (or so) at a nice beach. We arrived at 8:50 am for our 9:00 am excursion, and it was at this moment I should have known today wasn’t going to go well.
The line to enter the theater started between the two shops. It took us a good 10 minutes to just make it inside the theater.
Once we arrived in the theater, we were directed to sit on the left side for our excursion. There were a number of people that were already waiting to leave and not a lot of people moving. I didn’t know what the issue was, but we sat in the theater for 45 minutes. This was 45 minutes into our four hour excursion time.
After 45 minutes, we finally started moving to leave the ship. Once we got outside, we could see what the problem was. We were docked really far down the pier and everyone had to wait for a trolley. The trolleys had to go all the way to the end of the pier to drop people off, then return, which took about 15 minutes. Because of timing, we ended up just missing the trolley because it was full.
So, after an hour, we finally got on a trolley and made it to the cruise terminal building. The terminal building was really a glorified indoor shopping mall. A guide for the excursion met us at the pier and took our excursion tickets. They then handed us off to another guide.
The guide took us through the shopping mall and led us to a small bus.
By the point we made it to the bus, people were starting to get angry. We had already wasted a quarter of our excursion time and we hadn’t even left the cruise terminal. The guide told us we had to be back on the bus by 12:45 pm in order to come back to the ship. Mind you, at this point, it was almost 10:15 am. We realized it wasn’t the guide’s fault, so we decided to hold our opinion until we returned to the ship.
After 15 minutes of travel time, we arrived at Harbour Lights, which is a beach club. I have nothing bad to say about this place. We paid $40 each for the excursion, which included two drinks, a chair and umbrella. The club itself charged $20 for that, but it didn’t include transportation.
After we arrived, we walked through the entrance building, past the bar, and onto the beach. There was a tent that we checked into and we went to find our chairs.
There were about four rows of chairs setup with umbrellas in between every two chairs. Since we arrived so late, we ended up in the last line of chairs. We did love everything about the club though.
The water was crystal clear and the beach was great. The sand was actually cool to the touch and not hot at all. We had a great time for the brief time we were there. We got in the water a bit, but we spent most of our time sitting in the chairs and enjoying our drinks.
After a little while, I went back up to the entrance building to pick up more drinks and some snacks. There was wifi available at the building, but we really didn’t take advantage of it. They had a pretty good selection of food that you could order for an additional charge.
There were restrooms available on the top floor of the building, but there were none available on the beach.
At around 12:40 pm, we decided to head back to the parking lot to meet our bus. Everyone on the bus agreed that the club was great, but they were really upset about the amount of time they had at the beach. We didn’t get to stop in the city at all on the way back to the terminal, so we were reduced to taking pictures from the windows of the bus.
Once we got back to the cruise terminal, the ladies decided they wanted to do some shopping. We found a coffee shop and grabbed an iced coffee for everyone. The shop had free wifi with purchase, so I got the code and had a seat in order to catch up on my email. The ladies went shopping while I rested. After web surfing for a bit, I got a text from Nancy to meet her at a store. The store wouldn’t let her use my credit card without seeing my passport. This was a first for us, but I suppose they might get a lot of credit card fraud from cruise ship passengers.
After the ladies were done shopping, we headed back to the ship. Nancy and the girls headed to the room to shower and I headed to the port excursion desk. I wasn’t angry, but I was highly displeased in our excursion and the amount of time that we spent waiting instead of sitting on the beach. None of the managers were available, so the crew member at the desk took down the details and said someone would contact us.
I left the port excursion desk and went to the adult pool area to rest in the sun some more. My oldest daughter came up to join me and we had lunch together. After an hour or so, I decided to go take a shower as well. The family then all met at funnel vision to watch Princess and the Frog. Once the movie finished, the girls decided to meet up with their friends. Nancy and I met up with our friends as well in the Crown and Fin for Know-It-All Trivia.
We knew some of the answers, but really didn’t think we had much of a chance. Once they started to call out high scores, we realized we had won! We got key chains as prizes!
After the game finished, our oldest daughter arrived and we tried our hand at Music Tunes Trivia, which we failed at miserably. We weren’t even in the top fifty percent. Oh well, it was our first win of anything after 13 cruises, so we’ll take it.
Dinner tonight was at Animator’s Palate.
We were happy to see Shane again! Tonight’s theme for dinner was the drawing show. Just like on the Dream class ships, the Wonder has adapted their Animator’s Palate to allow you to become an animator for the night. You are given a paper to draw a character. Each table is given a number of markers as well. There are specific areas for you to draw each part of the character in. You can also write down your name and table number so your drawing can be returned to you.
As you can tell, I am not an artist, nor am I attractive according to this self portrait.
Nancy’s is much better.
After the drawings are collected, they are scanned and an animated movie is created. It is then showed on the video screens that surround the dining area.
After dinner and a long day of sitting in the sun, Nancy and I headed to bed. The girls went off to hang out with their friends. They were under instructions to come back early because we had an exciting excursion planned for tomorrow in St. Lucia!
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