Today was a great day!  We woke up and after our exercising (my walking around and taking pictures and Angela’s running) we ate breakfast and left the ship to explore Nassau!  What an interesting city!  We took a self-guided walking tour of the city and it was very interesting.  We are very lucky that we didn’t get hit by a car because when you are outside of the main shopping and tourist area, there are not many sidewalks!  😐

A very interesting part of the walking tour was the Queens Staircase.  It a set of 65 steps carved out of a natural limestone wall by slaves between 1793 and 1794.  The Queens Staircase is 102 feet tall, and was so named in honor of Queen Victoria. It led up to a fort that overlooked the city and the bay.

We also saw Fort Fincastle, Parliament Square, the National Art Gallery Museum, and a bunch of other sites with very different architecture and color.

After completing the walking tour, we checked out the downtown area and did some shopping.  The Carribean is known for it’s sale of gems and jewelry.  We They have very good prices, there is no sales tax, and everything is duty free!  🙂  In addition to some miscellaneous souvenirs, we picked up some gemstone bracelets and necklaces.  We also purchased a set of Tanzanite earrings and a necklace for Angela.  Tanzanite is a very precious and valuable stone that is growing in value every year.  There is only one mine left (in Tanzania) and will be closing soon.   The blue stones look wonderful on Angela and she is very happy.  It took awhile to talk her into getting them, however…  Happy Anniversary!  🙂

After shopping, we were dead tired and so we went back to the boat, had lunch, relaxed a bit, and then went back out to the Straw Market to haggle on some more gifts!  It’s really tiring to walk through all those rows of people selling their wares and have them not let you alone!  🙂  Everything is “hey pretty lady” or “hey daddy” or “how much you want for my stuff!”  Angela is really good at haggling and got the things we wanted for nearly 80% off of the original price!  🙂

We then relaxed for awhile downtown, got back on the boat and had dinner in the Palace Main Dining Room.

After dinner, we were entertained in the theater by ship’s production c0mpany, where the production of the night consisted of a list of Broadway hits.  They were REALLY good!  After we listened to that, we laughed at a game of Family Feud in the ship’s lounge.  It was funny to see complete strangers come together as “families” and see what they had to say!  🙂  After that we went to bed, completely exhausted!  What a GREAT day!