Great Stirrup Cay, St Kitts and Cunard's Queen Elizabeth

Norwegian Cruise Line's private island, Great Stirrup Cay, keeps changing. Despite a hurricane last fall, Norwegian continues to make noticeable progress on its ambitious plans to develop this Bahamian island into a vacation paradise. New beaches have been created and landscaping has been done to the finished sections.

More is to come but the changes that have been made already call for an update of our profile of Great Stirrup Cay. Indeed, we have added another page to this section of Beyondships. The tour of GSC begins at http://beyondships.com/NCL-GreatStirrupCay.html

We have also updated and expanded our coverage of another island - - St. Kitts. We have added some additional places of interest and taken a look at the Frigate Bay area. We have also re-arranged material in order to make it more reader-friendly and more consistent with our recent cruise destination profiles. The St. Kitts section begins at http://beyondships.com/Ports-StKitts-1.html

Finally, we have updated our profile of Cunard Line's Queen Elizabeth with anew menus page http://www.beyondships2.com/queen-elizabeth-menus.html and a new daily programs page. http://www.beyondships2.com/queen-elizabeth-daily-programmes.html

Explorer of the Seas Dining Guide; St. Kitts Cruise Destination Photo Guide

  

          Inasmuch as Explorer of the Seas is a very large cruise ship, you would expect it to have a number of places to dine.  However, as Hotel Director Xavier Matthias explained it to me, the different venues on Explorer are not there just to distribute the passengers around the ship.  Rather, each venue is designed to give the passengers a different experience that when taken together add up to a memorable cruise.

            To find out more about the dining on Explorer, I sat down with Mr. Matthias, a 17 year veteran of Royal Caribbean who started as a steward, and Executive Chef Patrick McCabe who has been sailing with the line for 10 years, and asked them to talk about each of the dining venues on Explorer.  From that I have put together a dining guide to Explorer of the Seas.  It is posted at http://www.beyondships2.com/explorer-of-the-seas-dining-guide.html

            One of the destinations that we went to on my last cruise on Explorer was St. Kitts.  St. Kitts is one of the most scenic islands in the Eastern Caribbean.  It is growing in popularity as a cruise destination but it still has a quiet atmosphere and the people that I’ve met on my various voyages were quite friendly.  

            One of St. Kitts attractions that I found particularly interesting was the Brimstone Hill Fortress.  The forts on most of the Caribbean islands that I have seen have not been terribly impressive.  However, Brimstone Hill is quite a different story.  It occupies a volcanic dome that towers some 800 feet over the sea and the surrounding countryside.  The sides of the dome are almost vertical.  At the top are the defense works consisting of a citadel with great stone walls and a number of defensive bastions that overlook sheer cliffs.

            As I was walking around the fortress, I couldn’t help but think what an incredible task it was to build such a structure at a time when horses were the primary means of power.  It was quite a feat of engineering.  Unfortunately, it also must have been a source of suffering for the slaves who actually performed the toil.

            Today, however, Brimstone Hill has lost any sinister atmosphere it may have once had.  The views from the ramparts are simply spectacular.  St. Kitts’ coastal plain stretches out below and you can see miles out across the blue sea.  In the other direction are the mountains and a verdant mountain valley.  Punctuating the scene are stone ruins that would have enthralled the 19^th Century romantic poets.

            Brimstone Hill is one topic covered in our cruise destination photo guide.  It is posted at http://beyondships.com/Ports-StKitts-1.html