St John’s, Antigua

Today, we arrived at our final Caribbean destination, St John’s in Antigua.

We had originally planned to take a taxi to a beach, but decided in the end, to opt for a super easy day. We’ve enjoyed some great snorkelling and visited some lovely beaches – exactly as planned – but today just felt a little different. Maybe we’re experiencing a sort of beach fatigue – whatever – a quiet day’s mooching around the town seemed the better option.

After a leisurely breakfast, we headed ashore, successfully missing an earlier rain storm. There were three other large cruise ships alongside us, in one direction, and on the opposite side of our quay was an interesting ship called the Logos Hope.

It turns out The Logos Hope is the world’s largest floating book fair, operated by GBA Ships, a Christian organization. It was originally built as a ferry in 1973, and became a book-selling ship in 2004. Crewed by volunteers from over 60 nationalities, who live and work on board for up to two years at a time, it travels to different ports, offering thousands of affordable books and engaging in community outreach programs focused on literacy and education.

Our meandering took us to the big statue known as the ‘V.C. Bird Monument’, a colourful, 33-foot-tall statue of Vere Cornwall Bird, the first Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, who was also known as the ‘father of the nation’.

There are several markets, which we wandered through, and puchased a few bits and bobs, after which we gravitated back towards the touristy part of town, designed to appeal to the millions of cruise passengers that pass through each year. The one that captured our attention most of all was the Zemi Art Gallery, which features the vibrant, diverse work of local artist Stephen Murphy.

Eventually, we found ourselves back on the ship, just in time to miss our second tropical rain storm of the day. Many folks weren’t quite so lucky…

We left port at around 5pm, to a magnificent sunset and rich evening light.

Ahead of us we have 6 sea days as we cross the North Atlantic Ocean towards our final port on this cruise, Ponta Delgada in the Azores. That’s 12 classes (2 per day), and four time changes.

We’re heading home…