Its main claims to fame are that Charles and Diana came here
for a holiday in 1982 and it’s apparently where Prince Edward proposed to Sophie
Rees-Jones.
We were surprised that, after more than 36 hours of sailing,
we didn’t actually arrive there till 9am.
Then it was tendering to the shore which always takes up time. At the other end of the visit, the last
tender back to the ship was at 3.15pm, so those avid water sports fans had to
work hard to cram it all in during the relatively short time we were there.
The day proper began in nervous fashion for us – and we
believe, most others on the ship. The
toilets started to go out of order mid-evening yesterday and pretty well stayed
off. They finally came back on line –
much to everyone’s relief, I’m sure – at about 8.30am.
We had our last balcony breakfast, the sun was up once again
as the ship approached the shoreline of Eleuthera.
We had a leisurely move towards getting on one of the
tenders as it was clearly very busy with people wanting to get off as soon as
they could. Although we had docked at
9am, nobody got off much before 9.30am.
We waited till 10.50am when we felt that it was all getting a bit more
civilised and went to the dining room to get our tickets. The PA said we had come at the rush hour and
that it would take a while to get us away.
We finally got on shore at 11.40am, so it took us 50 minutes from start
to finish. On the way back it was to
take us 25 minutes, so overall and hour and a quarter to get off and back on
the ship – not good.
Princess Cays was lovely and more organised and developed
than on CocoCay. There were lots of
sunbeds and plenty of shady structures to sit/lie under, although we never saw
the hammocks. As before we felt that the
shore excursions were expensive, e.g. $35 for 30 minutes in a glass-bottomed
kayak for two. A bungalow for the day
(or rather for only a few hours in reality) for four people cost a lot of
dollars.
A rare occurrence for us, but we’ve filled in forms to
recognise outstanding service on the ship, as some of the staff have been truly
lovely – from our cabin steward Marcos from the Philippines to the lovely diminutive
Yennie from Peru who is always cheerfully there in the Outrigger Bar at the
back of the ship and who remembers what we like to drink to the super Indian
lads who served us so well and so cheerfully in AnyTime dining yesterday evening.
An Indian cabin steward from along our corridor whom we spoke to said he
always likes it when he gets passengers from “The Mother Country” to look after, as they leave the cabin - and
particularly the bathroom - so tidy and suggested to us it was a reflection of
the way in which Brits were brought up. Not sure how long that will last now,
then!
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