Vacation Pix

There are so many photos - I find it difficult to wade through them all

But they are all beautiful - and these are just a few - I'll try to post more soon

And they depict some, if not most, of what we experienced during our cruise

As I said earlier, we sailed on a wonderful ship called the Monarch of the Seas owned by Royal Caribbean Cruise Line

The people who work on the ship were just lovely - very nice and so accommodating

The color of the water was beautiful and came in every shade of blue

The sky was clear and also blue but not as variable as the sea

We visited Atlantis (the resort, not the mythical sunken city) and they would not let anyone inside unless you were a hotel guest - we were only allowed to visit the casino, which none of us cared about

We drove around Nassau in a van and saw some sights (including this interesting parking sign)
In case you can't see it, it reads: Princess Parking Only All Others Will Be Toad (that's right, toad - get it?)

Here is some data, courtesy of Wikipedia:

The Bahamas officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is a country consisting of 29 islands, 661 cays, and 2,387 islets (rocks). It is located in the Atlantic Ocean north of Cuba and Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti), northwest of the Turks and Caicos Islands, and southeast of the United States (nearest to the state of Florida). Its total land area is 13,939 km² (5,382 sq mi), with an estimated population of 330,000. Its capital is Nassau. Geographically, The Bahamas lie in the same island chain as Cuba, Hispaniola and the Turks and Caicos Islands; the designation of Bahamas refers normally to the commonwealth and not the geographic chain.

Originally inhabited by the Lucayans, a branch of the Arawakan-speaking Taino people, The Bahamas were the site of Columbus' first landfall in the New World in 1492. Although the Spanish never colonized The Bahamas, they shipped the native Lucayans to slavery in Hispaniola. The islands were mostly deserted from 1513 to 1648, when British colonists from Bermuda settled on the island of Eleuthera.

The Bahamas became a Crown Colony in 1718 when the British clamped down on piracy. Following the American War of Independence, thousands of pro-British loyalists and enslaved Africans moved to The Bahamas and set up a plantation economy. The slave trade was abolished by the British Empire in 1807 and many Africans liberated from slave ships by the Royal Navy in the were settled in The Bahamas during the 19th century. Slavery itself was abolished in 1834 and the descendants of enslaved and liberated Africans form the bulk of The Bahamas's population today.

By the terms of GDP per capita, the Bahamas is the fourth richest country in the Americas (following Bermuda, the United States and Canada), the richest one that lies south of the Mexico - US border, as well as the richest one in the world whose population is predominantly of African origin.

The people were very sweet and friendly and didn't seem to mind sharing their country with thousands of tourists on a daily basis

There are lots of places to visit during a lifetime and the Bahamas is definitely one of them