Day 8, February 8th, Castries, St. Lucia

A partly cloudy sky welcomes us to Castries, St. Lucia.  While we worry about showers, Philadelphia is bracing for its first real snow storm of the winter.  I would rather be carrying an umbrella than manhandling a snow shovel.

Here is the view from our cabin this morning.

That’s the Magica on the left and the Zenith on the right.  The Zenith is a Pullmantur ship, a reincarnation from its original fame as the Celebrity Zenith.  Old cruise ships never die, they just change their flags!

We’ve been here many times before.  Even still, it’s always fun to walk around the town and see things you missed before even though you were looking straight at them.  Our first stop was the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.  Here is a photo of the garden outside the cathedral.

This was our first time inside this church and it’s quite an extraordinary site.  Here are a few of the photos I took:

The Cathedral is adjacent to Derek Walcott Square and is only a three block walk from the ship.  We walked around the square and back on Bridge Street in the direction of the ship.  Here are a couple of pictures from around the square:

Of course, I made my mandatory stop at the post office to purchase stamps for my postcards.  I have been sending postcards home, mostly to myself, as a form of creating a travel journal, for the more than 25 years that JoAnn and I have been traveling.  After leaving the post office, and continuing in the direction of the ship, we stopped so I could take a couple of photos.

One I especially like is of the two of us in shadow.

As I stopped to take the picture my hat blew off and I chased it down the street.  It hopped the curb and flew into and stopped in the middle of a busy intersection.  JoAnn was worried I would be hit by a car, bus, truck or other form of motorized transportation and I was worried my hat would be lost, crushed or otherwise mutilated.  Nothing happened and, as you can see from the picture of our shadows, my hat was firmly back on my head.

Following this excitement, we decided to walk around the harbor to Pointe Seraphine, a shopping area which we’ve visited a number of times before.  The walk is a little more than a mile from the Riviera and affords one a nice view of the ships in port and the mouth of the harbor.  Here are a couple of photos from that walk.

Returned to the Riviera, following our taxi ride, to refreshing showers followed by cocktails in the Martini Bar.  We were able to find seats in this very popular place.  People like to come here, listen to the piano player and wait for dinner.

Tonight we dined in Toscana, the Riviera’s Italian restaurant.  The place was very busy when we arrived and the Maitre ‘d had just seated a twosome at the table we immediately coveted.  It was by the window, overlooking the sea (it was dark so that view out of the window didn’t really matter).  Our turn to be seated; we were ushered though the dinning room, past lovely “four tops,” toward the rear of the room to a table near the kitchen entrance.  My seat was facing a wall (an attractive wall, but a wall none the less) and JoAnn’s en banc seat was facing outward toward the windows at the stern of the ship.

Well, that just wouldn’t do!  We politely asked for a change and suggested, what I thought was a better choice, a “two top” in the window which our first table looked at.  But sitting there, looking at the darkness, was out-of-the question.  So I did what any person in my position would do, I asked that the table be reset, facing the dining room.  Viola, we had a delightful location with a view of the busy room, watching the comings and goings of the waitstaff and sommeliers; it is interesting to see what others are eating and drinking and to just people watch.

My idea, for the table, was attractive to the next couple they tried to seat en banc as they asked for the table next to us and that it be reset according to our design.   Apparently, my approach to redesign was a winner with someone else.