The port stop for today in the city of St. Georges in Grenada. We are just doing some sights on our own today, using the public bus for transportation. We got up about 5:45 AM (ouch!) so that we could get ready and have our breakfast in the buffet before our scheduled arrival time of 7:00 AM.
We awoke to see some showers and rain over the island as the ship made the approach. The forecast had been for cloudy skies, with a good chance of rain.
We got our breakfast in the buffet, and headed back to the room to gather up our gear, as well as some water and our rain jackets, just in case. The skies over the island’s mountains still looked like rain.
We were able to get off the ship as soon as it was cleared, about 7:10 AM. We headed to the bus terminal which we could see from our balcony on the ship, it was only abut four blocks from the pier. The buses were really vans, holding about 12 persons. Getting out of the terminal was the hardest part, it was a maze of stores that had not yet opened. We finally asked where the exit was and once out of the building, headed to the bus station. We needed the “Route 3” bus, but the signage was not very clear. We could see the Route 2 bus stops, but had to ask a driver about the #3 bus. It just happened that the driver we asked was the route we needed, we knew we were close since we saw the “#2” stops nearby in the terminal.
The bus was partially full when we got on, but the driver waited until it was full, and I mean really full. We felt like sardines packed in a can. We were the only “tourists” on the bus, all of the other passengers were locals, both young and old, the children were heading to school. It took about 10 minutes before we were able to leave, and with the rain earlier in the morning, it was hot and humid in the bus. Once we were moving, the air through the windows felt great.
We made a couple of other stops as we headed up the mountain to our destination, Fort Frederick, which had been built in the early 1700’s by the English, and then taken over by the French. The bus driver stopped at the entrance to the fort, and we gout out. It had only been about a 15 minute ride through some traffic to arrive at the fort.
We were greeted by the local guide/ticket sales person, Alice in Wonderland. She had been mentioned in research we did online about visiting the fort. She was very nice and friendly, and pointed out where we needed to be to get the bus for the return trip into town, once we finished exploring the fort.
There were already a couple of the ship’s tours at the fort, but they only stayed about ten minutes each. We walked around the grounds and read some of the history. The main attraction here is the spectacular views of the city below, including the ship at the pier.
It was still pretty cloudy, so the photo opportunity was not a good as it would have been on a sunny day. The views of the mountains on the back side of the fort were nice, the clouds were hanging over the mountain tops, hiding them in the cloud.
After about 35 minutes, we headed to the designated bus stop and waited for the next #3 bus. We saw a couple of buses pass heading up and away from the city, the same route we had taken to get here. They were all clearly marked with a large blue “3” on the front windshield, we had not seen that on the original bus we had taken to get here. At least we would be able to identify our bus when it approached.
After about ten minutes, the bus came around the corner and we flagged it down. Unfortunately, the driver just waved, we surmised his bus was full, and there was no room for us to get on. We waited another 15 minutes, and along came another bus, but once again, the driver just waved, and we could see the bus was full. It was only about 9:00 AM, so everyone was still commuting to work.
We walked back up to the fort and asked Alice about the buses. She just indicated we needed to keep waiting and eventually, a bus would come by that was not full, and would stop to pick us up. At about 9:15 AM, another bus approached, and we flagged it down, and he was not full, so we boarded and paid out $2 fare, $1 per person.
The bus headed back into the terminal at St. Georges, and we got out and walked back to the area near the pier. There was another fort near the pier called Fort Georges, and we climbed up quite a lot of steps to get there. This was the main entrance, and we needed to purchase entry tickets for $2 per person, the same as the cost at Fort Frederick.
We went into the fort and it was a collection of some usable buildings and a lot of damaged buildings. I think this fort had been bombed in the Grenada conflict in 1992. There were still some nice views of the port and surrounding areas, but the fort itself was not very pretty.
We headed back toward town and up a hill to visit the Catholic Church. Along the way, we passed by two other churches, one an Anglican, and one was another protestant church. They were both damaged, as well as the Parliament Building that was near the Catholic Church. We were not sure if this was also from the conflict, and they had been damaged by bombings or something else, like a storm. However, the damage was not recent, they were quite overgrown.
We then walked back to the terminal and looked in some of the stores that were now open. It was nice to be in some air condition, we were quite sweaty from the walking we had done up to Fort Georges and the church.
After some shopping, we headed back to the ship, it was only 10:45 AM, but it seemed like we had been gone a lot longer than just over 3-1/2 hours.
We decided to go ahead and do some laundry while most of the passengers were still in St. Georges. This will provide us with enough clean clothes to get us through the duration of the trip. The laundromat on the ship was not busy, so we were able to get a machine right away, and put in our load to wash. We returned a little later and put the clothes in the dryer, and headed to the international cafe for a snack.
We got some small sandwiches and a bowl of curried shrimp and took them back to the room so we could enjoy them on our balcony, along with some wine. We finished the snack and went back to the laundromat to retrieve our mostly dried clothes. We had planned on string up our clothes line on the balcony to completely dry may shirts sine I do not like to dry them all the way in the dryer.
With the shirts hanging out to dry, we headed up to the pool deck to spend some time in the sunshine. The skies were not entirely clear. especially over the island, but it was sunny enough to enjoy time outside. Had it been nicer, we would have take the water taxi to a nearby beach called Grand Anse, but at the time we made the call to do laundry, it was just not beach weather. We did see a lot of people returning form there on the water taxis, but we were glad we had gotten the last load of laundry for this trip done.
We left a little later than the designated time, there were some passengers that just did not heed the “all aboard by 1:30 PM” instructions, they were lingering in the terminal stores. I guess since it was such a short stay people wanted to push the limits.
Our next stop tomorrow in Bonaire, and we do not get there until 12:00 noon, so we must have quite a distance to travel to get there since we left here earlier today than normal for a port stop.
We spent the rest of the afternoon lounging in the sun before heading back to the room to get ready for dinner. We are going to another specialty restaurant tonight called Sabatini’s so we can dine with one of the waiters that work there that we had met on a previous cruise in 2011, Georgina.
The dinner was really nice and the food was excellent. We had our last bottle of wine with dinner that we had purchased in Vines from the previous cruise, and enjoyed spending time with Georgina, our waiter we had on the Sapphire Princess in 2011. We also met some other couples at the two nearby tables who were nice to talk with.
At anther table close by were two couples we had met on the Dominica Tour, they had ridden in our same tour van, so we talked with them a few minutes before we left to go back to the room. We changed into some more comfortable clothes and headed to the Princess Theater to watch the 10:15 PM illusionist show that we had missed on the first cruise. Even this late show was packed, and we had to stand in the back. The first part of the show was not very good, so we did not stay, we were tired from all of the hill and step climbing we had done today, and did not want to stand for the entire show.
We just headed back to the room and called it a night.
We will try and post some pictures in the next day or two, internet service on the ship has had issues, and is not always available.
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