Terry's birthday! The ship docked at Georgetown, Grand Cayman, early in the morning. We had previously signed up for an island tour. We weren't sure if we were going to be able to take Robbie ashore. When the time came for us to go ashore, we still weren't sure, so we left him aboard.

After breakfast in the Alfresco Cafe:

...we boarded a small boat, or "tender," that took us to shore (the ship had anchored farther out to sea):

Here's a picture showing the wheelhouse of the tender, including a lovely view of the pilot's back:

And here we see the ship as seen from the departing tender:

As it turned out, in the confusion we had take the wrong tender, and we had to wait for more than a half hour on the dock before our tour began.

The first thing that we did was to board a coach tour that took us around the western side of the island while the guide pointed out various sights along the way, and told us some facts about the island. We then came to a point where we boarded a boat which ferried us out to a spot in the middle of the large bay on the north side of the island:

Terry on the ferry

There we transferred over to a glass-bottom boat, from which we watched divers feeding and displaying several large stingrays:

And here we see what stingrays eat for lunch - squid.

Upon returning to the land, and the coach, we went straight to Hell. That's right, there is a village on Grand Cayman called Hell. It's named for its black volcanic rock formations, like these:

We can now say we've been to Hell and back!

The next stop was a turtle farm. We saw turtles in all stages of development, from eggs to full-grown turtles of various sizes, including some almost as big as humans. The turtle posing with us in this picture:

...was distinctly displeased at the indignities to which he was subjected - he started beating on me with one of his flippers! (I could just imagine him saying "Put! Me! Down!")

Here's another, much larger, turtle:

After the coach tour was over, we had some free time. We stopped in a small restaurant and had conch burgers for lunch. A conch is a shellfish - it's pronounced "conk" by the locals. We had hoped to get some turtle, but they didn't have any where we were, and we didn't feel like walking around. We also saw another restaurant advertising alligator ribs. I wanted to try them, but that place was too far away. It would have been interesting - but then, I suppose that with enough barbecue sauce, anything would taste good.

We then spent a little time shopping before going back. Terry bought some perfume, and we went into a liquor store and picked up a liter of Caymanian 150 proof rum!

A couple more miscellaneous pictures:

Waiting for the tender to take us back


Georgetown as seen from the tender

After we got back to the ship, we discovered, to our chagrin, that we could have taken Robbie after all! Not only that, but if we had waited and taken the right tender in the morning, we would have been notified in time! We were very apologetic to Robbie.

Monday's chocolate event was Chocolate Bingo! This was not, as I had expected, a bingo game using pieces of chocolate as markers. It was just an ordinary game with various prizes donated by Nestle's and Tia Maria. We didn't win anything.

Before dinner we had a drink in the Piazza Navona Grand Bar:

I also took a stroll around the deck before dinner, and took this picture, an attempt to show the size of the ship's smokestacks:

The picture doesn't really capture the scale -they tower over you.

At dinner that night, Terry got a birthday cake in addition to the regular dessert:

And here's the way our cabin steward laid out Terry's nightgown every evening. Muy elegante: