Tuesday 10 April

We awoke to find we were docking in Nassau – the landscape was all fairly flat.  We had breakfast in the dining room, followed by a lazy spell by the pool (most had gone out on excursion) and a lunch snack in a rather nice sandwich bar at the top of the ship – paninis and tuna melts – very agreeable.

I was reminded that the Duke of Windsor (who had abdicated only a few years previously) was sent away during the Second War to the Bahamas to do a spell as Governor-General of yet another British possession far away – another tough assignment along the lines of being in charge of Tortola – except that I imagine that the party scene will have been better on the Bahamas, so no doubt Wallace Simpson will have been pleased about that!

Then it was excursion time and we chose the line of least resistance as usual and took the easy tour.  We were treated to tours of two very similar forts, plus a visit to Paradise Island.  The contrast between Paradise Island (a lush development with the 5 star Atlantis Resort Hotel and mega private residences) and the main parts of Nassau was fairly stark.

Once again, as on other islands, we were given to understand (in the nicest way) that this was a proud nation, glad to have shaken off the shackles of the beastly colonial British and a nation which has made great strides since independence.  The trouble is – as always – they do seem to have a long way still to go, so what it must have been like in the bad old days of colonial rule, I dread to think!!

One big plus about Nassau was that we suddenly realised that there was free wifi in the shopping centre on the dockside.  We couldn’t get on to it from the ship, but it was OK once in the centre itself and I was able to blog.  Photos took a long time to upload on to it, but it was better than nothing.  The only downside was that it was now 5pm or so local time and everyone was returning to their ships.  We were one of 4 ships moored up and they had two people checking passengers off the dockside and towards the ships.  They also insisted on checking the photo ID of each person which made for very long queues.  Trust me to be right behind an English family on one of the other ships who had decided to go ashore without their passports – considering how the ship’s staff are always telling us not to do that, this pretty much beggared belief!  That delayed me further and it was a bit of a rush to get sorted in time for the only formal evening on this short cruise.

We all turned out in our finery with one of us betting that we would be the only guests we would see that evening in DJs – and we were, except for some of the ship’s staff!  We enjoyed the captain’s welcome reception – strangely held in the theatre – and Graeme managed to get 2 free glasses of champagne out of the event!

The best moment, however, was when we returned to our cabins at the end of the evening to find that we had a very decorative display on our bed with our Royal Caribbean genuine lapel badges – because we were now ‘platinum members’, as we had amassed so many points with Royal Caribbean – wow!!  At the loyalty reception party, they congratulated one American couple who were on their 100^th – yes 100^th– cruise with Royal Caribbean!!  Our cabin steward later told us that there was one chap who lived in Miami who was on our ship in the cabin next door for up to 3 months at a time – and that ship only ever does 3-night then 4-night Bahamas cruises!

Do you like the ladies' hats in the group photo?  Now take a close look!

We stayed there till almost midnight.  CocoCay – our next stop – can only have been round the corner.  The daily newssheet advised us about going ashore at CocoCay – by tender – and we also became aware that we would be sharing the stop with another Royal Caribbean ship – the Enchantment of the Seas, something we weren’t too delighted about as we sensed that it wasn’t a very big place.