ONE WEEK GONE

January 18, 2020

Time sure flies when you are having fun!  Cruising is a lot like waiting for Christmas.  It takes a long time to get here and then it’s gone all too soon.  Our last sea day for this cruise is a week from today.

Today’s stop was Martinique, and your favorite cruisers were not impressed.  It is a French protectorate, and in typical French fashion no one spoke to us in English until someone told us “No.”

As we always try to do, we walked to a big church, this time Fort de France Cathedral.  And once inside we light a candle and pray for the folks back home.  Well, as I said above, Martinique is French and uses the Euro for their currency.  I walked up to the person taking donations for the candles – small ones one Euro, large ones two Euros – and asked if he would take dollars for a candle.  He said, “No!  Only Euros!”  How rude!  But we still prayed for you.

And we walked back to the ship, quickly looked at the souvenir/junk dealers and were back on board an hour after we left. 

As for Martinique – been there, done that, couldn’t buy the t-shirt.

Tomorrow’s stop is Barbados, one of my favorite islands, but we’ve been here on Sunday before and much is closed – stores, historic sites, etc.  I appreciate the observance of Sunday, but we dock so far out of downtown that it leaves little to do.  Maybe there will be a free shuttle.  I’ll let you know.

We had pizza for lunch.  Mom won at cards – the score is now 4-3 her favor after a see-saw struggle this afternoon.  And that is my part of today’s blog.

Here’s Bonnie.

Oh, I did get one piece of good news from one of my sports correspondents.  The Dirty Purple Birds of Baltimore will not be playing for the league championship tomorrow, having been defeated by Tennessee 28-12.  The only thing better would have been if it had been the Steelers who handed them the loss.

TTFN

We were up and at it about 8. I was awake about an hour before. WE got washed and dressed and headed to the Lido for some breakfast. He had an omelet and I had a piece of toast and some yogurt. I took some coricidin with my usual pills because my sinuses felt stuffy. We went back to the room and headed for shore being sure to take our passports because we were told we had to have them to be able to return to the ship. Well, it was a short walk down the pier and through the gate and off we went.

We had seen the large church while we were walking so we headed toward it. It was big and very busy. Many people going in and out. But not as inviting as some of the churches we have been to earlier on the other stops. After being rebuffed by the candle salesperson we walked outside and looked in several shops but for the most part you couldn’t buy anything unless you had euros or a credit card. Neither of which we had. If they had told us before we got off the ship they wouldn’t accept our dollars but would take a credit card we could have taken ours. Oh well, there wasn’t anything of interest.

On our way to the church we passed a McDonalds.  There were some children with their parents from the ship around us and they were very excited to see a Mickey D’s. We don’t know whether they would take dollars or not we didn’t stop. 

As we got back to the gate to reenter the pier I had out my passport and the first guy said no just ship card. When we got under the tent at the next guard they also said they weren’t interested in seeing a passport just the ship card. In fact the young woman who looked at my card only looked at the dates and nothing else. As we got under the tent a blowing rainstorm started. Driving blowing wind and rain. I had our ponchos in my bag and after struggling we finally got them on. He got wet from the knees down. I got a little less wet. We finally made it back to the ship and got on board. Of course I set off the alarms and had to be waned again.

We went to the room and decided to go to the Lido to eat and play cards. My pizza was way overdone. Way to hard and crunchy. I like thin crust but not like that.

After playing for a while we headed back to the room for a nap. The out door movie today was “Downton Abbey”. Ivy you would have liked it.

Supper was okay and the show was good too. Tomorrow is Barbados and we will more than likely only get off and look in the shops on the pier. We will have a slow day.

Well, I have my diet coke and my kindle so we will play games and read for a while and then head off to bed.

Love you all. Mom, Granny and Bonnie