"Sailed Off to Antigua . . . It Took Us Three Days on a Boat" - January 7

Listen to Jimmy Buffet to get in the mood for the beach: Fins

Today we arrived at St. John's, Antigua. There's not much here, but Antigua is known for having 365 beaches. That's really all you need to know.

We got a cab from the port to Dickenson Beach. (Add link to previous visit). Our driver, Joseph, was very nice and offered to come back for us whenever we wanted to leave. 

The beach was lovely. We rented chairs and an umbrella from the same Rasta man who was there last time. The water was only cold for about five seconds and then it was great.

There were all kinds of interesting things to see at the beach:

Here is my campsite:

The weather was so-so. It was overcast off and on and almost hot, but not hot like beach weather should be. It rained a couple of times while we're at the beach. 

I find it very amusing that people will go to a beach to get sun and then sit under an umbrella. They go into the water, but if it starts to rain, they come running out of the water and and get under their umbrellas. (Sometimes you might want to leave a beach when lightning is a concern, but that was not the case here.) 

After the ship sailed the water got a little rough. Since we are in a cabin on the very aft, we could really feel it. We took ourselves down to the piazza and it was very nice there.

For dinner we decided to try the new gastropub, The Salty Dog. It has been developed by Ernesto Uchimura, a well-known chef from LA. It is wonderful that Princess is trying new things and adding variety to the dining experiences available onboard. It is past time they updated some of their menus.

That being said, this new restaurant needs to be tweaked a bit. It is innovative, but it is confusing, and not everything is good. It is too similar to SHARE, the other new restaurant.

First the waitress brought out three things. One tray had three breadsticks with a small container of cheese dip.

The next item was a bowl of super garlicky French fries.

I am not a garlic fan. She had previously told us we could have either the standard fries or sweet potato fries. Due to garbled communication we got the standard fries without being able to order the sweet potato ones. 

The third thing that came out was a salad on a small tray. It came with three little bowls on the tray - ketchup, barbecue sauce, and garlic mayonnaise. It was not clear what the sauces were for. The salad? Apparently they were for the fries, though they were on the salad tray. The salad had prosciutto and a thin slice of brioche on top and artichokes underneath, again in threes. It is always a little awkward when two people are served three of something. The salad was very hard to eat. I tried to put some of it on my tiny little plate using my fork and knife (all I had) and it was almost impossible. It was also almost impossible to get the pieces of lettuce onto my fork. The whole thing was weird.

We could order three main courses each from a list of about 10 or 12. I ordered a crab cake, asparagus and some kind of broiled cheese, and cauliflower with a mild curry and raisins. The crab cake was terrible. The asparagus and cheese was quite good. The cauliflower was too spicy for my wimpy spice tolerance level. I don't think the menu described this item well.

A person - maitre d'? - expressed concern and offered to get me something else but also seemed to imply that it was my fault for ordering the cauliflower.

I will try to upload some photos tomorrow. It's kind of late now.

After dinner we saw the new show that just opened a couple of weeks ago. It is called Magic To Do. It was developed for Princess by Steven Schwartz, who wrote the music for Wicked and some other Broadway shows. This new show was far superior to anything we have seen on Princess before. The performers were very good, and all other aspects of the show were impressive. I would love to see it again.