Ausflug 35

Back to the Beaches of Bermuda

June-July 08

Day 6: St. George and Leaving Bermuda

I was still pretty tired the next morning and really wanted to sleep in, but the realization that this morning was our last shot at seeing St. George motivated me to get up and throw myself together for one last foray onto the island. Breakfast came first, of course, as this army marches on its stomach, but then the three of us disembarked once more to wander around the town on our doorstep. We really did like having St. George a stone's throw from out ship, by the way, as it was a very pleasant town with interesting things happening on a regular basis.

Our first stop was the local City Hall, where we were surprised to find no one home and even more surprised to find the crown jewels of England sitting in a simple glass case. Trusting people, these Bermudans! Moving around the town square we visited the Bermuda Memories art shop where we purchased a large watercolor print of the Majesty docked at St. George. It was even autographed by Jill, a local artist and photographer who lives in St. George. I thought the print captured the cheerful spirit of the cruise ship docked next to the Customs House at the town wharf, and I thought the print would look nice when framed and hung up back at home.


 


 

Continuing uphill we walked around the old, central section of St. George while waiting for St. Peter's church to open at 10 a.m. That gave us the opportunity to see many nice old cottages, some dating back to the 1700s, that populate the oldest section of the town. Many of the houses also had flower gardens out in front, and those gardens were ablaze with the flowers of summer.

Finally getting into St. Peter's, we once again enjoyed the curiously shaped but very warm and cozy church. Unlike our previous visit, the sun was shining and that made the photography quite a bit easier. But since we were in the middle of the tourist season and two cruise ships were moored at the town pier, there were also a lot more people visiting the church, and that made the photography more difficult. Still, we waited for gaps in the human traffic, so to speak, and managed to take some good shots of the charming interior of the church.

On this visit we even had time to visit the graveyard surrounding the church that I hadn't even noticed on our last visit when it was pouring cats and dogs. Some of the graves were above ground vaults, but many graves were of the normal type marked by headstones. One section had been set aside for slave burials. It turned out that England had outlawed slavery in 1834, well before the U.S. Civil War that settled the slavery issue in our country. In a typically civilized (and far less bloody) approach to the matter, the British Parliament had simply bought the slaves' freedom to fairly compensate their masters.

But at last we ran out of time since we had to be back on board at 10:30 a.m. For our last act, we decided to pay tribute to Bermuda's piratical past by smuggling spirits on board the Majesty, something that is, of course, strongly forbidden as selling alcohol is one of the major profit margins of the cruise lines. Monika led us to the local grocery store where we had purchased her a beer on our previous visit during Wanderung 17. There we found some really cheap Gallo white wine that looked something like yellow-tinted water, at least if you didn't look too closely at it. So I emptied out my two water bottles and carefully poured the wine into them hoping that it would look enough like water to allay any suspicions when I waltzed back on board through the metal detector. I carried the water bottle in one pocket where it bulged out a bit disconcertingly but I was reassured by the fact that on our many transits through security I had always been carrying a water bottle and never had any problems. If the ruse failed and the wine was discovered in my water bottle, my final plan was to fall down on my knees and shout in a loud voice, "Hallelujah, Brother! The water has turned into wine! It's a miracle!" I'm not sure if they would have bought that pitch or not.

Meanwhile, Monika had taken a more conventional and mundane approach to smuggling by stashing the second water-wine bottle in Lois's purse in a large, miscellaneous clutter of things that she hoped would discourage a thorough investigation. In the event, we all passed through security without any untoward events, and Monika and Lois were able to enjoy wine before dinner on our last couple of days on the ship. I don't drink, of course, so my role in all this was strictly as a "mule" for the ladies' illicit liquor. Ensconcing the water-wine bottles in our cabin refrigerator (Gallo wine apparently doesn't age well), we returned on deck to watch our departure from St. George. Monika circulated around the ship getting pictures of various events while I stationed myself in the bow and hoarded the remaining 12 shots in my camera for the passage through the narrow channel out into the ocean. I wanted to get a picture of that at the exact moment we went through the narrowest part of the "cut" in the ridge of land surrounding the harbor lagoon.

Once we were out in the open ocean, we all took lunch at the buffet on deck 10, after which Lois and I settled in for an afternoon nap while Monika explored the ship some more. I spent the remainder of the afternoon catching up on the journal until 5:00 p.m. when we attended a one-hour lecture on the S.S. France given by our cruise director Ered. The S.S. France was arguably the last real ocean liner built for transatlantic service. Ered told the long and interesting story of its development, construction, and use by the French in the transatlantic trade until that became no longer profitable, whereupon it was sold to the guys who founded Norwegian Cruise Line. After remodeling, it was a huge hit as a cruise ship and served that way for another couple of decades before being sent to the salvage yards in India for destruction and recycling (India apparently gets 17% of its steel from recycled ships!). Focusing on the history of one ship like that made for a coherent and very interesting story.

After gussying up for dinner, we went to the fanciest dining room on the Majesty, called the Four Seasons. The ocean was as calm as a lake so we watched the blue water slide smoothly by as we had another excellent meal, after which we watched an eminently forgettable performance by a magician/comedian. We then returned to our cabin for the evening where Lois and Monika read while I wrote until it was time to turn in for the night, at least for me. Lois and Monika tried to go to a special disco session in the main lounge, but the place was packed to the gills and the sound level was amplified so high that it hurt their ears even back in the very last row. They finally gave up and returned to the cabin although I was blissfully unaware of that fact as I was already sound asleep.

Copyright 2008 by Robert W. Holt and Elsbeth Monika Holt
Prolog
Day1

Leaving Baltimore

Day2

Sailing to Bermuda

Day3

Docking and Swimming

Day4

Snorkeling

Day5

Helmet Diving & Crystal Cave

Day6

St. George and Leaving Port

Day7

Sailing Home

Epilog

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