Freeport – Bahamas

Freeport is the main city on Grand Bahama, an island in the northwest Bahamas off the Florida coast. It’s best known for the oceanfront Lucaya district.

Tuesday 14th – we found land!!

We docked in Freeport early hours of the morning – a little earlier than planned due to another medical emergency. The previous morning there was a tannoy request from the captain for any specific type blood donors who had their cards to help someone who was critically ill. It was quite a spine chilling announcement as you may imagine and one of those moments where you wish you could help but can’t. We didn’t hear anything more until the theatre show that evening where, included in one of the acts introduction, was the fact that he had donated blood earlier. Obviously he got a big round of applause regardless of his act! We can only assume that a successful transfusion was carried out as the person was being taken off as soon as we arrived in the early hours hopefully for a successful outcome – amazing!

It was very exciting to get off the ship after so many days and from the port we took a 20 minute open top double decker bus ride across the island to The Grand Lucayan Resort beach where we spent most of the day. The sand was typically caribbean, beautiful and white and the sea gorgeous blue and clear – but a tad on the chilly side! The weather was partially cloudy but hot and very hot when the sun broke through. We had a good hour or so swimming in the sea – “it was lovely when you got in” – and got chatting to a couple from Peterborough.

So happy to be on the beach and in the sunshine that we forgot to take many photos. Will try harder in future.

Back to the ship and with a bit of time before setting sail we had a couple of cocktails at a bar on the dock with our Peterborough friends before dinner back on the water.

A lot of the entertainment acts disembarked here and some new ones arrived. There is usually a show in the theatre at 8.30 and if you want to watch you have to get there fast as there is a steady stream of people leaving restaurants to bag their seats. We saw a young girl singer with a wonderful voice, probably the most talented person we’ve seen so far…but we were so tired after a day at the beach we were both struggling to keep our eyes open. I hope she didn’t notice!

Lack of photos so here’s one of our second formal night which was a couple of evenings ago.

We’ve had a sea day today which started off raining but brightened up and became quite warm, the sea’s calm still so all is good.

We have the busiest part of our trip coming up over the next three days with consecutive stops so need to get an early night tonight!

The general mood on board seems good now with only the odd KIAC moan heard now and again. However I had to record this.. the buffet is a regular, free for all with lots of food counters, as most standard all inclusives are. There are definitely no arrows showing any direction of traffic… This morning at breakfast I was happily minding my own business, putting bits and pieces on my cereal in no particular order when a man behind me said “oh we’re going right to left this morning are we!” He just got a hard stare and I hope he knew what I was thinking!