Nassau photos.

Swiftwing
Wed 29 Apr 2009 23:00
We have now spent so long in Nassau that we have joined, The Nassau Yacht Club. For a small membership fee we are able to use their dinghy dock, swimming pool, excellent restaurant and other facilities.  It is twinned with, The Miami Yacht Club so we use their facilities too.
The front of our new club.
 
The crew of this Star dinghy won a gold at the Olympics.
 
A couple of the local racing workboats. One of this class sank at the turning mark when leading the pack at the George Town Regatta last week.
 
Looking across towards Paradise Island, a bit like Disneyland for adults. The Atlantis Hotel has  2,500 rooms, 17 restaurants, 11 swimming pools, a casino and a huge aquarium. The island was originally called, Hogs Island and was used by the locals for picnics, but when it was sold for development  I suppose that the original name would not have endeared itself to American tourists.
 
Looking down on Potters Cay, from the bridge. All the imports for the Bahamas (35% import duty thank you) come in here by ship and are then transferred to smaller ferries and cargo boats for the smaller islands. This is looking down on the fishing quay which was really busy and reminded me of Peterhead in the seventies. 
 
Looking East from the top of the bridge - paid for by the developers of Paradise Island- towards our anchorage at Montague Fort.
 
Looking across towards the hotels and condominiums on Paradise Island. We didn't bother going much further and returned to historical downtown Nassau.
 
Parliament Buildings with Queen Victoria to the front.
 
Public Library in the grounds of the parliament buildings.
 
War memorial to the fallen of WW1 and WWII. All the buildings in the city centre were colonial and have been lovingly maintained.
 
Looking back on the parliament buildings from the library.
 
Looking towards the courthouse from the library.
Glad to see that the Royal Bahamian Police Force still transport their own prisoners. They are kept pretty busy here. The island is 21 miles by 7, is home to 700,000  people, 2,000 of whom are Scots,  250,000  vehicles and a healthy drugs trade. They have had 23 drug related murders so far this year and like Campbeltown the neds hang about outside the court.
 
Walking up Parliament Street my stomach thought that my throat had been cut, when we came upon an oasis, I thought I was hallucinating with hunger, it was the Taj Mahal Indian Restaurant. We went in and found the George Hotel from Inverary transported to Nassau. The young girl who served us was excited that we were Scots and rushed through the back to get her dad. He came through and stayed with us for about half an hour. He was a really interesting guy who had gone to Glasgow University in the late sixties and worked as a clippie on the busses during holidays. After a couple of years as a clippie they put him on a bus drivers course and he became a bus driver working out of Partick Cross bus station. I said to him that Glasgow must have been a violent place in those days and he said, " oh aye, the worst by far was the women who came out of the bingo, they were mental". He finished his degree in business management, married a girl from Nassau and returned here where he became second in charge of a supermarket chain. On retiring from there at 65 he bought a traditional English pub and turned it into an Indian Restaurant. The Scots community are frequent customers having Burns, and Kilt and Curry nights. He said that on these nights they turn the air conditioning right up till everyone is chittering with cold then they light the coal fire. The Scots love it. We then proceeded to have the best curry we've had since leaving Scotland in November.
 
Took this photo for Bev's Dad, Stanley, who worked for as an engineer and latterly worked for  Courages.
 
Another of Bev's collection of Azalea photographs. We'll be heading off for West Palm Beach, USA in a couple of days.