Princess Cays

A crackle over the loudsystem proceeded the captain’s announcement that a US Military ship would be towing an iceburg past the starboard side of the ship and should be within view in about 5 minutes, and would take about 15 minutes to pass by. It would be accompanied by some other ships to help tow it… Well! You couldn’t have gotten Carm out of bed any quicker. And I’ll have to be honest I got myself ready to go out on deck as well. I was just combing out my hair when the Captain mentioned the date… April 1st!!!! We were truely pranked :-)

About the same time the iceburg was due to pass us, the rumble of anchor chains let us know that we were here - Princess Keys, a private island in Barbados. We’ve been here before and knew what to expect. We took enough time for a quick breakfast (lots of smoked salmon for me), then with a slather of sunscreen on our winter weary skin we boarded the tender.

We were early enough that we found a couple of lounge chairs in the shade which gave us a good resting spot between swims. The water here is a gorgeous turquoise blue and very inviting, although getting into the water is a bit tricky as there is a lot of sharp coral hidden in the sand, and big rocks placed to stub a toe.

Once we had our fill of sun and sand (and before we got sunburn) we boarded the tender back to the ship. An iced coffee and a shrimp and shaved fennel salad was our lunch. Carm had a Greek salad with a bresola & brie salad with tons of arugula.

You’d think that would be enough fun for one day, but no :-)  We did take a rest in our room to watch a movie in the afternoon. ‘First Man’ was a great movie about Neil Armstrong - I think it won an Oscar.

We dolled ourselves up a bit for supper and then headed to the dining room. We met the couple from Edmonton on our way there so paired up with them for a lovely meal - it was Italian night, which is just one way of saying way too many good things to choose from. I had eggplant parmesan as a starter, and scallops & shrimp for my main course. All very good.

After supper we had just enough time to run to the room to stow our shot glasses and then it was time for the show. Beatlemania was great fun. I think they had the sound system turned extra loud to drown out my singing, because as it turns out, I know all the words to all the songs and somehow can’t help but sing along!

After the show we headed to the stern of the ship to the Vista lounge to catch the ‘Regal Princess ship band’. They were great, with a particularly good horn section, and yeah, the other players were pretty good too.

So here it is now, almost 10:30, and time for bed. Tomorrow is a sea day so no need to get up early, and I don’t expect there will be any more iceburgs!