Despite my vocalizing last weekend that we were going to utilize each day to the fullest, we spend most of the morning recovering from our late night airport and food fiasco. After catching up on everything, we headed out around noon to check out some things that would suit being out in the overcast. We picked Nelson's Dockyard.
Lord Horatio Nelson is legendary in England for his maritime exploits. He had a British naval station built here in Antigua in English Harbor. The site of the station and fort has been nicely rebuilt. Though parts of it are being used for commercial purposes, they've taken care to maintain the period look. The museum is a very nice stroll through history, but my favorite part to see was "LORD NELSON'S LEGENDARY BED". Now, I'm not exactly sure WHY it was legendary, but I have a pretty good idea. You don't conquer the navies of the world without a huge ship. If the thumbnail on the left was large enough, you would read that they restored his Legendary bed not once, but twice. You go, Lord Nelson.
After basking in the glow of Lord Nelson's greatness, we had lunch at a wonderful beach bar called "Bumpkins". We ran in to the student archeologists from Betty's Hope (this island is getting smaller and smaller already!) and had a delicious lunch. Cohen found two starfish on the adjacent beach. The beach here is called Pigeon Beach and was packed with locals. We will visit again when the weather is better.
After lunch we headed to Galleon Beach, the beach by the house we stayed in during our 10th anniversary trip to Antigua. This beach was pretty quiet, but we enjoyed the water and collected some really nice shells. Somewhere, there are hermit crabs lamenting the loss of their homes. Hayley and I did some swimming and diving off a platform in the bay. Jenn and Cohen explored and Cohen swam briefly in the pool of the closed-for-the-season resort there. It was very strange using the pool there, but it was OK by the management, apparently. Imagine the liability if that was allowed in the US?
