Bridgetown, Barbados

Today, finally, after seven days at sea, we arrived at our first Caribbean port of call, Bridgetown, in Barbados.

On our last visit here, over Christmas and the New Year, we were amazed to find ourselves the only ship in port. It wasn’t quite that quiet today, but there was only one other ship in port (a Regent ship – Seven Seas something…), which meant the cruise terminal wasn’t overly busy. The walk into town only took us 20 minutes or so… and it was hot.

Barbados doesn’t change much, although there are a lot of new developments in progress along the waterfront and we noticed that ‘Trafalgar Square’ is now known as ‘Heroes Square’ (Nelson’s Column has gone), although I don’t know how recently that happened because the last time we were here, we didn’t walk into town.

Signs diverted us around what seemed like quite extensive building work, where the harbourside bars and restaurants used to be, onto Carlisle Beach where we proceeded to find ourselves somewhere to settle.

The first place we came to wanted to charge us an eye-watering $40 each. I asked him to repeat that and confirm that he was asking for $80 just for the use of two loungers… and told him I’d get back to him.

I didn’t.

A little further along the beach we came to a place where we could have two loungers and a parasol for only $15 …. Needless to say; that’s more like it – and I couldn’t pay him fast enough.

For the next few hours we swam, snorkelled and relaxed exactly as we’d planned the day to be.

I finally got to try out my new underwater camera, although the water was very sandy and murky and there didn’t seem to be that many fish, so the results were a little disappointing. Not that I’m particularly worried, as there will be plenty more beaches to come.

On our return to the port, Tracey bought me a brightly coloured Caribbean shirt, which I wore in the evening to dinner in the Grill. After dinner, we enjoyed the deck party on the Lido, where brightly coloured Caribbean shirts were the norm. A local Steel band kicked the entertainment off, followed by the Ukrainian dancers and a band who had literally only joined the ship today, who played some banging 50s and 60s tunes.