Sail Brunelle: St. Patrick's Day Nassau style

Rose checked her email when we got to Nassau and a friend recommended going to Ardastra Gardens, so we decided to start our tour of Nassau there and catch the early flamingo marching show. We took a taxi to the western side of town and had plenty of time to view the animals and birds before the 10:30 show. Rose got chosen to be the flamingo imitator and did a fine job. We watched and wandered among the flamingos after the show before going into the aviary to feed the lorry parrots. Only Betty and I were brave enough to have birds crawling all over us, and we enjoyed it immensely and I think we amused the rest of our crowd. John had remained back on the boat to wait for an electronics guy to come fix their radio, so he missed the fun! Pekabu III headed over to Atlantis for the weekend and missed out too.

The flamingo "master" was not the same older guy we had seen two years ago and I didn't think he was quite as good. I asked after the older guy and it was just his day off, he's been doing it for over 50 years! The Lorry parrots were fun to feed.

There were all sorts of flora and fauna to view at the Ardastra Gardens and Zoo. The peacock just wanders around among the visitors strutting his stuff. We learned that the flamingo walks on its tiptoes and the joint we see on the spindly legs is actually the ankle, as witnessed by the one that chose to come down off his toes.

The franklin palm has interesting red berries when ripe. The hybiscus is the national flower of the Bahamas. I didn't get the names of the other two plants.

We left the gardens just before noon and walked over to the fish fry to grab a bite. We tried a different establishment and enjoyed more than just a bite so decided to walk back toward town and find the straw market. The original building that housed the market burned several years ago so they have been working under a large tent since then. It was hot, crowded and prices were not very exciting, but we did get a few things for gifts before completely frustrating the guys. We continued our walk into town and realized we had hit town just in time to see part of the St. Patrick's Day celebration. Their was a band that was somewhere between the Philly Mummers and the Bahamian Junkanoo paraders. We searched in vain for a green shirt for our very own Patrick but had to settle for a six pack of Guiness for cocktail time!

Patrick and Rose pose under the banner at the St. Patrick's Day festival.

What with a misunderstanding about which bus would take us back to the marina, we took an hour bus ride out to Cable Beach and back and got to see all the fancy hotels that dot the northern shore of New Providence island! It turned out to be a rather inexpensive tour on one of the few air conditioned buses we have encountered - and we didn't mind sitting down for a while!

We ended our full day with dinner at the Nassau Yacht Club. We had met the couple on another Catalina (a 34) who had had dinner there (club reciprocity) a few nights ago and invited us all to join them. It was a great setting and the food was reasonable and very good.

I also enjoyed looking at all the old photos on the walls and found several familiar names, but the biggest surprise was spotting a picture of the '56 Sydney Olympics where the Bahamians won their first (bronze) Olympic medal in the Star class. Watching the event were the gold winning US team of Bill Lyons and Larry Low. Larry's daughter, Joan, has been one of my best friends ever since 4th grade. (He always reminded me of Phil Silvers - Sgt. Bilko).