Tuesday, 21 April 2009

Nassau and Atlantis

The weather dictated that we stayed in Nassau for a couple of days before heading out to Florida so we did some sightseeing. The famous Queen’s Steps and the Fort were our destination. We walked: even though this meant considerable GBH of the ears by the youngest member of our party. This was memory lane for Chris and I who had stopped over in Nassau on the way to San Salvador. The fort is miniscule after Old San Juan and the view is unfortunately ruined by the cruise ships. L I’m sure it was bigger, better and more beautiful when we went there first...

We then walked – accompanied by more whinging – to the main part of town in search of a good souvenir. No dice – furry or otherwise. Finally we gave up and went provisioning.

In the afternoon, I took the kids back to Atlantis. The weather was execrable so we only went for the Aquarium armed with some research ideas for Jamie’s fish project. Chris took us in the dinghy through the Atlantis marina – a lesson in how the other half live and once again, we all wished we had a lovely expensive rib rather than our beaten up old dinghy.

Because we had specific fish movement we wanted to observe, we elected to take a 10 minute guided tour so we could ask some questions. Our guide was on her way to qualification as a teacher and had done some marine biology and she spent about 70 minutes with us and engaged the marine experts to answer the kids’ questions. It was a great experience -- we learned about movement and adaptation and behaviour and more besides. People are very impressed with the idea of home schooling and have always been very generous with their help. They were also impressed with fish the kids could accurately and the amount they already knew. It was excellent.

We rounded off the day with a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.