Nassau

Off to explore Nassau today, compliments of our courtesy car.  First, we drove along the waterfront road from our marina westward to Nassau.  Beautiful, clear water and warm temperatures remind  us of exactly why we're here!  12 inches of snow at home yesterday....

Our first stop was at Ft. Montagu, built in 1741 to guard the eastward channel into Nassau by the British in an effort to stop the Spanish from taking the city.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Montagu

The parking lot had some of the large trees found all over the island.

Plenty of entrepreneurs in the parking lot...

lunch?

Car wax while you play tourist?

The fort building itself is largely in ruins but you can see the relatively small size of the fort. There is Luke, hiding in the shadow on the right side.

A replica of one of the 23 original cannons still stands guard, with the busy Paradise Island (home of the Atlantis Resort) in the background.

The view from behind the cannon shows how it protected the channel.

And there is a lot to protect these days!  Look at the busy  port and city here in Luke's panorama of the area.

By the time we left, we were ready for one of the little conch shacks.  This is where Luke and Pete indulged in conch fritters (deep fried dough balls with bits of conch inside....how greasy can you get!) At $0.25 each, they bought a dozen.  Little bags of water hung from the fellow's green canopy - to keep the winds from blowing away the top?  Oh, no!  Much better than that!  Fly deterrents!  According to the owner, the sun shinning on the water bags gives a large reflection of the flies --- no fly likes another fly bigger than he is, so they avoid the area.  It must work - there were certainly no flies around his little stand!

 
My diet coke ---maybe I haven't bought a can of it in the USA lately, but do they all say THIS?

Smile!
Next, off to Ft. Fincastle.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Fincastle  This fort was to protect the city of Nassau and Paradise Island.  according to the placards, no cannon here was ever fired in self defense - only for ceremonies.

 It's an odd shaped fort, like a paddle steamer.

The walls are amazingly thick.

The view from the top gives you the real story --- a tourist trap.  lines of small gift shops, all having exactly the same trinkets, line the walk to the fort. Tourist buses from the cruise ships crowd the narrow street and parking.  The city's old water tower stands nearby, no longer in use.

You do get a great view of Atlantis Resort from here.  See that little walkway between the buildings?  That is actually a room --- $25, 000 per night.  yulp, $25,000.  We hear the likes of Tiger Woods has stayed there, but we don't know with who...

We did make it to the main shopping area on Bay Street -lots of diamond shops and high end shopping here.  Very near the cruise ship terminal for some strange reason...

But only 2 blocks away...store front after deserted store front.  Very sad for the economy.

The weather will be getting worse for sailing soon, with winds picking up to more than 30 kts.  It looks like we'll be here until Monday.  No trips into town tomorrow - we'll be relaxing, maybe hanging out at the little beach, waiting for laundry, and other such easy tasks.  More sailboats have come into the marina today to begin waiting out the bad weather later in the week.