Easter in Nassau

Nassau has to be one of the most well-known destinations in the Bahamas. I had visited once on a cruise with my family when I was young. I remember that we went to the straw market where I purchased a bright blue, tropical flower print hat and a packet of Bahamian money (that cost me more than it was worth). That visit left me with a generally warm feeling about Nassau. Our most recent visit, not so much – but Nassau is what it is. It still has some charm and advantages.

Entering the Nassau channel

In order to get to the city of Nassau (by boat), you have to go through the large channel – the same channel where all the mega yachts and cruise ships travel. Generally speaking, we have a large boat – a yacht, if you will. Whenever I’m on our boat, or especially when driving our boat, it feels humongous! When traveling next to cruise ships, it feels like we’re smaller than a baby ant. The perspective is just unreal. How does anyone ever dock a cruise ship? Obviously, better sea men than us.

We motor our way past the cruise ship terminal which has 5 cruise ships docked at it, and make our way over to the anchorage in front of some marinas for normal (still very large) sized yachts. There are several sail boats anchored all ready, making it feel quite crowded, but we try to carve out a spot for ourselves. We then try a few more times. The depths change quickly and drastically from 6 feet to over 20 feet. There is a large difference in the amount of chain we need to have out for these different depths – and we definitely prefer the shallower depth (less chain). We also find that the bottom is a mix of mud and grass which doesn’t allow us to get a good hold on our anchor. And then, there are the sailboats which are facing in crazy directions, not into the wind as they should. We were a bit nervous to be next to one of these. After about our fifth try, we are able to drop right over a small patch of sand, get a strong set on our anchor and be just far enough away from any other boats. That’ll have to do.

No paradise for us at Atlantis

I’m sure everyone has heard of Atlantis Paradise Island or at least would recognize the infamous photos of someone coming down a water slide from the top of an Egyptian looking pyramid into water with sharks swimming nearby. It’s a total tourist destination where they built up an elaborate island such that there is no reason to leave or to even know which island country you’re vacationing in. So of course, we wanted to visit. It has a fancy marina attached to it and we were going to splurge on staying one night since that would get us access to all the amenities including the water slide. Unfortunately, they were completely booked for the next few weeks – so that was out. Maybe we could just pay to visit the resort for the day. That cost more than a visit to Disney World and more than the marina slip would have cost. No Atlantis Paradise Island for us. We did at least dinghy by to try to get a glimpse at it, but there was no where to tie up or really much to see. Maybe next time.

Exploring downtown Nassau

We dropped anchor in the Nassau channel around 1 pm, so by 3 pm I was chomping at the bit to get going. I wanted to explore. All the sailors say to avoid Nassau and how terrible it is, but we’re such newbies that I still feel like a tourjist! I wanted to go see all the colorful buildings and shops built up around the cruise terminal. So that’s what we did. Monster was first to the dinghy at hearing the words “let’s go.” We load in and head over to a wobbly, unsafe looking dinghy dock at the nearby marina. For $6 we are able to tie up and leave our dinghy there for as long as we want while we walk around and see all the sites.

Our first stop is the Rum Cake Factory. Can you really visit the Bahamas and not get some rum cake? Matt picks us out two flavors while Monster and I hang out in the shade outside. Note that we ate one of these the next day for breakfast. Not our best decision. It’s really more of a later in the day dessert – the rum flavor was almost over powering for me. I know there isn’t enough alcohol to feel it, but there was enough to taste it on your breath. Not the most ideal at 9 am.

Next we make it to the tourist shopping area. You know – the classic, right off a cruise ship, Diamonds International (two, actually) next door to another jewelry store and dozens of souvenir shops advertising their t-shirt prices. We knew this was to be expected though, and I was looking forward to it! I enjoyed it too – for about 5 minutes. Then I was exhausted and Monster was tired of having to “say hi” to everyone who passed by, commenting on how cute she was.

We continue on until we see the glorious golden arches. That’s right, McDonald’s! Trying local food is great, and grilling while at anchor feels very satisfying, but there’s nothing that quite fills the void of American fast food. We had planned on ordering (and eating) an embarrassing amount of food when we arrived. However, it was a weird time of day and we just weren’t hungry enough to make fools of ourselves. Instead, the three of us shared a Big Mac and fries, and ordered two quarter pounders to go which would be our lunch another day. If you haven’t tried it – McDonald burgers heat up in the microwave very well! After enjoying our snack, we head back towards our boat.

Provisioning

The next day we head over to a local grocery store, hoping that they will be open given the Easter holiday weekend. The only groceries we have purchased since leaving Stuart, FL are a dozen eggs and a head of lettuce. We were running very low on anything fresh as well as bread. Luckily for us, the store is open and it looks like a typical American grocery store! We take Monster back to the boat, grab a bunch of bags and head right back over. We are able to buy everything we have on our list – including the specific brand of Greek yogurt that we eat in place of sour cream. Amazing.

Tangent: Provisioning is just a concise word used by sailors to mean stocking up on groceries and other things that you might need. This is important (obviously) since if you’re out on the open water, you can’t just run to the store to buy milk or eggs. It’s also important, because even if you’re at an inhabited island, you may not always be able to find such a luxury as milk. Before we left Florida, we stocked up on provisions that we thought would mostly last us for our entire trip (March – July), with the exception of fresh produce and bread. Those we would need to buy every few weeks whenever the opportunity was available. This also saved us a lot of money, because as you would imagine – prices in the Bahamas are much higher on even basic groceries.

We also found a few things that weren’t on our list. Matt picked up a tub of his favorite snack – Dean’s French onion dip. You may recall that this was what we chose to eat to celebrate landing in the Bahamas at Bimini after crossing the Gulf Stream. The find of the day – scratch that, of the year – was my egg, cheese, and jalapeno breakfast burritos! Seriously, we have searched countless stores in the US – across multiple states- and online to find these silly burritos which were my breakfast 90% of days last year. According to our extensive searching, it appears that they have been discontinued (ugh!). They were still hiding out in this Nassau grocery store, though – 6 of them! I bought them all of course.

Easter dinner

We didn’t decorate any Easter eggs this year – although we didn’t the past couple years either, to be honest. We did however think that we should cook a semi-traditional Easter dinner. While doing our grocery shopping we picked up some small ham steaks. In a perfect world, we would have baked a large spiral cut ham, but this is boat world where our oven is “fun size.” We grab some polish sausage (traditional for Matt’s family) and the ingredients to make my favorite cheesy potatoes (a staple for my family). I had planned to also make some asparagus (so there’d be something green on the plate), but that was the one thing the grocery store didn’t seem to have. No biggie.

Later that afternoon, instead of beginning to prep for our Sunday Easter dinner, we were looking up the menu for Dominos 242 (that’s Bahamian Dominos). Yep – that’s right, we ordered Dominos delivery to celebrate Easter instead, and I couldn’t be happier about it. Absolutely delicious – and felt like “home.”

Hope everyone had a great Easter holiday with family and friends!