Vacation - Ultimate Cruise

Premium Stateroom with Veranda
Celebrity Cruise Lines- What the best time can be!

Barbados

Summary Fairly flat island, cave is a highlight.A good time, good driver. Not enough time to know more about.




above: What we assume is middle class housing, fairly typical along our drive to the cave.

left: Our Driver and John.
As noted throughout, the personal driver adds alot to the experience. Any question is answered with pride for the island, detailed to their best knowledge, and sheds much more insight to this unique experience. Granted, the drivers personality and yours will determine alot about what kind of experience you will have. If both are extroverted, and honest, it makes the island experience very enjoyable. After all, this is exploring, you've never been here before. Meet Luciens and the only left hand drive classic Buick on the island.

The Cave.

Essentually here is the deal. You get there and fairly quickly you are in a room where you see a tourist video on a 35" monitor. This lasts 15 minutes. Then you are given hard hats and napkins to place on your head for health reasons, nice touch. You board a trolly. Next, the trolly follows a road through the caverns with stops for stepping out to look and take pix. Very good commentary from the tour guide during the ride. You also can ask any specific question about the nature of things when stopped. For example, I asked,"what was sacrificed in this cave to create the road?" Answer: "Very little, we followed the natural channels and removed as little as possible".

This is a very inexpensive tour (as I remember, $7.00US). If you like this kind of thing, it's worth it. It's also VERY safe.

Leaving Barbados

left: view of pilot bridge looking forward from our viranda shown immediate left, center.This room, the most forward is 9073 (port side)

This is what's it's all about, especially if you love to watch the process of moving this huge hunk of metal to and from docks, and navigating in general. Sailors love this, and they should get these rooms.

The captain in the bridge view, is using a "joystick" at the console to his right, to control the thrusters and main engines to move the ship very slowly away from the dock. (I had the good fortune to be on the bridge on another cruiseline to witness this).