Today we visited St Johns, the capital of Antigua, it is about the size of Newtown but rather more congested as there are no car parks and the streets are narrow. Like almost all West Indian towns it is ramshackle, there are wires everywhere (all telephone and electricity wires connections are overhead) and because of the very heavy rain the camber on the roads is severe with a big drain down each side. None of the pavements are safe to walk along at night as they are full of holes and shopkeepers obstruct them. The streets are scruffy, very busy but there is a workmanlike atmosphere but pretty it is not.
A Caribbean cruise sounds very romantic I am not sure what the punters expect but I think St Johns might be a bit of a disappointment. Today there were three cruise ships in port, if they were full it would have been over 7,000 people as it was there only seemed to be a few hundred being escorted through the docks from one of the ships (Emerald Princess 3,600 passenger capacity).
Of course the locals have organised ways to relieve the cruisers of their money, a 3 hour electric bike ride £100, a tour of the island £80 and there is a shopping area right by the cruiser port but that only has about 30 little stalls. A nice restaurant we have visited a couple of times seems to offer collection from the port, sun loungers on a wonderful beach and lunch with a range of cocktails, they had 8 Americans today so one minibus load.
So, if the ships were full, 7,000 people would need 700 minibuses (there are no coaches on the island and if there were they could not get through St Johns narrow streets) to take them on tours. There aren't that many buses and even if there were it would be gridlock so the unlucky passengers will either stay on board or mooch round the scruffy town.
To cap it all a new jetty is being built and a channel dredged so that bigger ships with 6,000 victims can visit. It will be awful.
Now I have that little rant off my chest, St Johns has a nice little museum where we learnt a few interesting facts which we will drip feed into the blog over the next few weeks and a very large cathedral which inside has a nice gallery almost doubling the capacity to 2,000. It is made of pitch pine and was quite attractive and a bit of a surprise when we walked through the door.
"Please do not Indiscriminately Relieve Your Self" does this mean that if I am careful where I point my "willy" I won't get fined?