Princess Cays

Friday March 21, 2025

Today we stopped in Princess Cays. This is a new stop for us and it is a private tourist resort at the southern end of the island Eleuthera in the Bahamas owned by the Carnival Corporation which owns Princess Cruise Lines (among others). It is about 80 KM from the capital city Nassau. We have been to their other nearby island - Half Moon Cay when we were on a Holland America Cruise and I have to say I much preferred Half Moon Cay.

This is a stop you have to tender to. That means your boat anchors out in the ocean and then you take a smaller boat in to the dock because the island doesn’t have the capability of docking the giant boats. This isn’t typically problematic for me… it just involves waiting for your turn. The only downside is there is a much higher probability of me getting seasick on a little boat.

Princess Cays was just a beach stop. They had a few craft tables set up to buy things, a restaurant where the crew from the boat made us lunch, and of course a bar where you could buy tropical drinks. Later, one of the staff said they had to bring out extra alcohol on a later tender because they ran out… but who knows if that is true?

There was a Bahamian craft market that you could go through a big gate a security guard had to open… but neither of us felt the need to do that.

So we headed to the beach and enjoyed the sunshine. There were plenty of chairs available right at the front of the beach.

After a few hours of lounging and eating, we decided to take a walk along the water (which was way colder than we expected) and noticed a very large ominous black cloud in the distance with definite rain falling. 

It doesn't look as ominous in the picture... but it was a DARK cloud!

We decided to try to get a tender back to the boat before being stuck out in the open in the rain. We did make it back but the wind picked up considerably and the boat was bobbing something fierce. We just kept staring at the horizon and hoping we’d make it back before one of us fed the fish… success! We did make it back with all of our delicious BBQ lunch still intact!

When we arrived back on the ship, we stopped for a little snack. There is an endless parade of delicious food here!

Then we spent the rest of the afternoon lounging around the ship… you know, napping, watching movies, eating snacks… regular vacation type stuff.

In the evening we decided to have a cocktail before dinner, which I somehow promptly knocked over and spilled all over the carpet… I’m still waiting to outgrow my clumsiness… at 56 years old! I’m wondering if it is actually going to happen. Nobody that worked on the ship seemed too worried about it and Steve and I cleaned it up as best we could. 

Me feeling happy, moments before I spilled my drink all over the carpet!

After spilling my mudslide all over the lounge we decided to head to the dining room for our dinner.

Side note: This ship is weirdly laid out. Steve and I keep trying to get to places and getting cut off. For instance our dining room is on the 5th floor at the back… you can go down to the 6th floor on the aft stairwell… but not the fifth. You have to go back to midship and down the stairs there… so far two nights in a row we’ve ended up in the wrong stairwell. This isn’t the only weird place… we’ve had to backtrack several times and it just doesn’t make sense.

At last we made it to our dining room and had a lovely dinner. After dinner, we watched another tribute show in the the theatre (this one to Whitney Houston) and then watched a late night comedy show in the lounge. 

We also had a nice time sitting out on the deck with hardly any people... I guess we found a secret deck!

All in all we had a very nice evening and this reminded me that when I don’t have to go to work, I am not too tired to do fun things!