14 October 2008

Cruise Ship Season Begins!

Actually, it started last week... but we missed seeing the "Arcadia" at the pier. The Grenada Board of Tourism has a posting of the cruise ship schedule on the internet, so we knew there would be another one arriving this morning. Today's visit was from Holland America's VEENDAM, and has a capacity for 1,266 passengers... not so large compared to some of the newer cruise ships. We decided to go to town to get some photos and to see the city come alive! Of course, there is a hazard to us in walking around town on a day when the cruise ships are here... because of our skin color, we are constantly approached by the locals with offers for taxi rides, spices, and other souvenier items. So our answer to this dilemma was to stop at a hardware store to buy a gallon can of stain! (No one seemed to bother us after that.)

We thought there might be a good number of Americans on this ship, and we noticed that many of them seemed much older than us... I saw a few being pushed around the streets in wheelchairs, and one even was pushing along her oxygen cart... not an easy feat if you've seen the streets & hills in the city! I finally stopped a couple walking past our car and asked them from where the ship departed. They told us they were Canadians (from Vancouver) and this ship is on a 5 week trip which began in San Diego... through the Panama Canal and they were headed to the Amazon! (That explained the reason for all the senior citizens we saw! A younger crowd usually has more difficulty getting that much time off work.) Our neighbor at Bay Gardens said he had a group (from the ship) in this morning to tour his gardens. In case you're interested, here's a link to the itinerary for this trip: Veendam Itinerary

While in town, I took another little video clip while driving on the city streets. I know you'll enjoy this one! FYI... the red van in front of us is what they consider a taxi, and we stop for a moment at a traffic signal (look for the box where the traffic cop used to stand to direct traffic here). Further along this one-way road, we come to a speed hump. Now... fasten your seatbelts! (There's not much audio to go with it... sorry.)