Nassau Again

We spent the day at “Atlantis”yesterday. It’s a resort and casino located on Paradise Island in Nassau. The resort was created by South African hotel magnate Sol Kerzner and it was interesting to compare it with Sun City (just outside Johanensburg, SA)

It’s enormous – wonderful gardens full of flowering bougainvillea and oleanders. There’s also a huge aquarium which houses over 50,000 marine animals .One can walk through underwater tunnels surrounded by sharks, stingrays, moon jellies and piranhas. There are 11 swimming pools, various waterslides, dolphins, boating, a beach, casino and several restaurants. It’s an amazing place to visit but certainly not our scene – maybe we’re just a little old for all the crowds and noise! It’s a bit too much like Las Vegas to us – very glitzy!

Today we explored Nassau - visited the Queens Staircase which is a set of 65 steps carved out of the natural limestone wall. The Queens Staircase is 102 feet tall, and was named in honor of Queen Victoria. They were built to provide British troops a protected route to Fort Fincastle, and the slaves used were local peoples from the island. Fort Fincastle was built on the highest point of the island as a lookout by the British captain Lord Dunmore in 1793. The Queens Staircase and Fort Fincastle were apparently inspired by a desire to watch for encroaching marauders and pirates, however, none ever attacked and the fort is now a lighthouse that tourists can view. Very interesting. We’ve just come back to the boat and watched the remainder of the students board. (65% females and 35% males). The noise level aboard has certainly risen but we’re looking forward to meeting to them all.
We leave Nassau tonight to sail across the Atlantic to Spain. Glorious weather – temps in the upper 70;s
(A piece of interesting/useless (?) info is that the Bahamas is about the same size as Connecticut with a population of 305 655!) See what I’m learning from Semester at Sea already!