Monday, January 18, 2016

Monday-Day 9: Princess Cays

(Warning:  this a picture intensive blog post.  Pictures may be of lower quality...as in Point & Shoot.  Taken with Nikon AW-130).

I have an announcement to make:  I'm feeling so much better!  I have the last bits of antibiotics to take and it's been working like a charm!  I am so thrilled to get rid of that nasty congestion/coughing.  A big thank you to Dr Ranier on the Regal.  Now we can resume our regularly scheduled blogging post.

We were waiting for the sun to come out and then decided at the last minute to go ashore.  We headed down to deck 6 to get tender tickets.  We were the last two on the gangway to be scanned.  Nothing happened.  No "gong" sound to acknowledge us.  I heard a crew member yell to the tender captain to hold the tender for us.  The security personnel had to manually scan by looking up our stateroom number.  I saw our two mugshots appear on the screen.  Security approved us.  For 30 seconds I felt like a scolded child.  Then we entered the tender and set a course for Princess Cays.

The 8 minute ride was not bad except for the last 1/4 mile when the tender started to rock and roll.  Pretty neat feeling.   We were dropped off at the Princess dock and proceeded to the right towards South Beach.  That's when the sun came out in full force.  



There are two beaches here with the dock/pier being the dividing point:  North and South Beach.  North Beach is the larger of the two which also translates into crowded areas and long lines for lunch.  So South Beach made the most sense today.  I was able to capture a few shots of the Regal anchored in the water:  


A BBQ lunch was being served at the beach along with some food and beverage trucks.  





I think folks waited on the ship and then went ashore for the beach lunch.  We walked from one end of South beach to other end of North.  Here, we came across the cute cabanas: 




Each cabana has indoor furniture and storage areas to put personal things away.  I also saw an A/C unit for those really blazing hot days.  There are also colorful shops to purchase suntan lotions and snorkel gear and beach wear:


We came across a private residence.  Princess has a "caretaker" who lives on their island and oversees the maintenance and upkeep.  I think they do a great job:


A map in case we get lost....



Where's Hubby?


Where should weigh next?


After seeing all that we could on the beach and melting from the hot sun, it was time to leave and tender back to the Regal.  Once onboard, we had issues with our cruise card not scanning and once again held up a line of folks wanting to board the ship.  Security told us we needed new ones.  No need to remind us.  We went directly to the Passenger Services desk and received new cards.  Whew!  We didn't mean to be the bottleneck...twice today.  

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