Our trip on Irish Mist to Florida 2014: The Bahamas and Nassau

First let me explain the delay. I had hoped to keep the blog up as I went, but the cost of wifi on board was very high per minute and the amount you could actually complete within a minute was very small.

All four of us had a wonderful time and would recommend Carnival to anyone. The crew was excellent and even in a storm the ship was very smooth. As I have said this is not a complaint, but the food was not as good as I thought it would be. By this I mean it did not consist of a lot of cream sauces and other fancy but fattening stuff. The food was in fact excellent just not too fancy.

This was a test cruise to see if Trish and I could go on expensive cruises when we return from our year long trip this August. Porter and Carnival passed with flying colours. Our next trip on a ship will most likely be through the Panama Canal. We would like to be on a smaller ship perhaps 1500 passengers rather then 3000.

We spent no time at a beach. While in Port Canaveral we rented a car and started to drive to Fort Pierce to check up on friends. We had just started out and decided to turn back. We could just see the road with the rain and were not sure the Mursels would still be in Fort Pierce. As it turned out they started their trip the day after we would have been there. They are headed to the Bahamas. We will hopefully hook up with them next winter.

Nassau was good but very run down between the cruise ship docks and the bridges to Paradise Island. Once we reached the bridges things looked up. We went into Starbucks were they refused American Express. The reason for this was so as they could receive American Dollars and give Bahamian Dollars back. At a store later Trish asked for American change and was handed American change which was covering Bahamian money. On our way out of the terminal we were told by several taxis they would take us to Paradise Island for $5. This let us to believe there was some kind of control or pricing system. On the way back we were tired so when a taxi stopped and offered to drive us back we said yes. After a 2 minute drive substantially shorter then a trip to The Island we were charged $12.

If you go to Nassau be very careful. You are going to be ripped off this is for sure if you get off the boat, but try and minimize the damage. Also be careful. When we got back to the ship we read the warnings from Carnival concerning the gangs in Nassau going after tourists. I guess they are good enough to have seen that Trish had taken all her jewellery off. We had checked out the marinas East of the bridge anticipating a stay next year, but after the actions of one cap driver we may give it a miss.