The port stop for today is St. Kitts. We were not scheduled to arrive until 10:00 AM, it was quite a distance to travel from Barbados to St. Kitts, over 300 nautical miles, so it was a later arrival than normal due to the distance between these two ports.
As I indicated yesterday, I was getting a cold, and it was about as bad this morning as yesterday evening, just mostly a scratchy throat, but I could tell I was not feeling 100%, and did not have a lot of energy.
We had originally planned on taking a taxi to the Shipwreck Bar Beach, located on part of a beach called South Friar’s Beach. We had already planned to sleep in a little, and we were still in the room getting ready when the shipped docked at 10:00 AM. We headed to the buffet for breakfast and discussed a different plan of action for today.
One issue of going to the beach was that we would need to prearrange a return pick up time for the taxi we took over there since taxis do not normally go to this particular beach a lot, at least that was what we had read online as the recommendation to insure you have a taxi to get back to the ship. There was supposed to be some good snorkeling here also, but I was just not up for that, and did not want to be stranded at the beach waiting for our return taxi if I started to feel worse. We just decided to hang out in the small port town Basseterre looking at some of the shops.
In addition, today is our anniversary, and we are scheduled to go to one of the specialty restaurants on the ship, the Crown Grill, at 6:30 PM for our celebration dinner. We both felt that it would be better for me to take it easy during the day so we could make it to the anniversary celebration later tonight. We also knew we would need to be back to the ship early to get ready for the dinner, so it was already going to be a short port day.
We got off of the ship about 11:00 AM and headed into the small town. We had researched going to Catholic Mass here since it was Sunday, but had found out that the only mass is at 8:30 AM, well before our scheduled arrival at 10:00 AM, so we knew that was not possible. However, while we were walking through the town, we saw the Catholic Church, and decided to go inside and say a few prayers to at least make some effort to do something in church on Sunday, even though it was not Mass. It was a nice church inside, but was not air conditioned, so it was very hot. In general, today was really hot and humid, enhanced by some rain we had at about the time the ship was docking, which did not help lower the humidity, especially since it was about 85 degrees outside.
We walked around the town a little more, and headed back to visit some of the stores located near the pier. We bought a couple of items, and at about 12:45 PM, I decided I had enough of the steamy heat and going in and out of the air conditioned stores, none of which was helping my sore throat, so we headed back to the ship.
We knew we needed to do some laundry, and guessing that the laundromat would not be crowded on a port day, we gathered up our load of laundry and headed to the washers. We were correct, and although there were a few people in the laundromat, there were still a couple of available washers.
While the washer was completing it 35 minute cycle, we came back to the room to work on the blog postings since we had gotten behind. There has not been much time to do the posts because we have been stopping in ports the last few days. We have a lot of pictures, but have not been able to process them and add them to the posts, which consumes even more time. So, the next best thing is to at least write the posts and we will try and add pictures later, to both the blog posts and to the photo albums.
When the washer cycle was complete, we put the clothes into the dryer and then we went up to get a beer from the bar on the stern of the ship and enjoy the views of the island while we were waiting for the dryer to complete about 20 minutes of its cycle, and then we could take out some of the partially dried shirts to hang up in the room. We had already sent a load of wash to the ship’s laundry as one of the benefits we get as Elite members of the Princess Captain’s Circle. However, we had a few items that we did not want them to dry all the way, mostly my shirts, and a few of our bathing suits, which prompted today’s washing experience.
After retrieving our items from the dryer, we headed back to the room to hang them up to finish drying, and then went to eat lunch in the buffet. It was already about 2:00 PM, so we did not want to eat too much knowing we would be going to dinner at 6:30 PM. For the rest of the afternoon, we relaxed in loungers up on the pool deck until it was time to get ready for dinner. Tonight is also a full lunar eclipse, starting at 8:12 PM and fully covering the moon by about 10:15 PM. The ship had posted that they were making some of the upper decks available for the lunar eclipse, and were turning out some of the deck lights to make it darker. We initially though more was happening at the 8:12 PM time, so we wanted to make sure we would be finished with dinner by then. However, while we were having a glass of wine before dinner at Vines, and while talking to the bartender, we learned that the 8:12 PM time was just the beginning of the eclipse, so we knew we would not miss anything if dinner went past that time.
We headed to dinner at 6:30 PM, and really enjoyed the experience. We had some champagne with our appetizers, which were pan fried scallops, and lobster bisque soup.
Stephanie had an 8 ounce Filet Mignon, and I had a 12 ounce New York Strip.
These were special aged steaks, and they were very good. We had also ordered two small lobster tails, normally one of the dinner items, to go along with the steaks, making it a special surf and turf. We both ordered baked potatoes and grilled asparagus with dinner. All of the food was cooked perfectly.
We had not intended to get the special anniversary dessert, opting to get items from the dessert menu, but the waiter brought us the small special celebration cake and candle and sang happy anniversary to us. They ended up wrapping that up as a to go dessert, and brought us the ones we ordered, which we very good. The meal was really good and we thoroughly enjoyed the steak, lobster and wine for dinner.
We headed back to the room to change and go out to see the eclipse. It was progressing very slowly, so we headed to the Vines Wine Bar for a couple of glasses of wine to continue our anniversary celebration. Eventually, at about 10:00 PM, we headed up to the highest deck, and watched the earth’s shadow finally completely cover the moon. What remained was the full moon, but it was a dark brownish orange. We waited for the shadow to start to uncover the moon, but after about 30 minutes, we were tired and headed back to the room for the evening. Even though I was a little under the weather, we still had a great anniversary celebration.
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