Our Nassau Adventure

Day three of our vacation found us walking around the capital city of the Bahamas, Nassau!  Setting foot on Nassau was different from Coco Cay because our ship could dock right at the port here at Nassau, so we just walked right off the ship!  (These pictures were all taken on 11/28/12.  Disregard datestamp.)

Wikipedia provides the following facts:  "Nassau is the capital, largest city, and commercial centre of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas. The city has a population of 248,948 (2010 census), 70 percent of the entire population of The Bahamas (353,658)....Located on New Providence Island, Nassau has an attractive harbour, a colourful blend of old world and colonial architecture, and a busy port. The tropical climate and natural beauty of the Bahamas has made Nassau a popular tourist destination."

We are interested in the pirate history of this area, so the Pirate museum was our first stop.  We were able to walk from the port, along several streets and through quite a bit of road construction, to the museum.

We learned all about the pirate period of Nassau in this neat museum.  Wikipedia, once again, does a good job sumerizing some of the things we learned: 

"By 1713, the sparsely settled Bahamas had become a pirate haven for pirate chieftains Thomas Barrow and Benjamin Hornigold. They proclaimed Nassau a pirate republic, establishing themselves as "governors", and were joined by Charles Vane, Calico Jack Rackham, and the infamous Edward Teach, known as "Blackbeard", along with women pirates such as Anne Bonny and Mary Read."

We met a real live pirate!  This costumed interpretter did an amazing job staying in character and making us feel like we were really back in the age of the pirates.

 

 

The exhibits were very well done and informative.  Here are just a few pictures of some of the exhibits:

Here we are in the room about the women pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read:

They made the section about Black Beard very dark, but Christina still got a decent picture of the attack with a flash. 

There was a courtyard in the middle of the museum with tables and chairs and a few interesting photo ops.  The cut-out-faces pictures were fun!

If you put your head all the way through, it may get stuck.  Be careful Simon!

I'll take care of you, matey!

Off to the stocks for getting your head stuck in the pirate cut outs!  You won't be smiling after you're there for a few days!

At the end of the museum, our pirate friend posed for some pictures:

And then we headed off to find some of the historic forts that are in Nassau.  There were two that we wanted to see, but ended up only going to one. 

We started to walk the several blocks and up a hill to Fort Charolette, but decided to take a cab instead.  Here we are at Fort Charolette:

 

There was an incredible maze of underground passages and rooms!

The top was very spacious with cannons all around.

I found a neat aerial veiw of the fort on the web:

There were good views of the surrounding area from the top of the fort:

We decided to walk all the way down the hill and through part of the city back to the port.  You can get an idea of the distance from the photos.  That hike was an adventure all by itself!

This one was taken on our walk back toward the harbour:

Before we hopped back on the ship, we stopped at the straw market and picked up some souveniers:

This was the view of Nassau from our cabins that night.  I am glad we had port side rooms!  The ship left the harbour at 11:00pm.  Our next day was a day to enjoy the ship all day at sea.