24/03/2024 – Today was our third and final visit to St Lucia (for this cruise) and it was to be a busy day.
Today was the day when we would take an excursion to Hotel Chocolate, see how chocolate is made, make our own chocolate, eat some chocolate and most likely buy some chocolate, mainly for Ninja, our cabin steward who it seems to just love chocolate.
Two other ships were in today. One was the Viking Sea (very nice) while the other was the Freewinds(!) – it looked a bit like the Navasa from the 1960’s (Podge went on the Nevasa in 1968 as part of a school trip – My First Cruise) and wasn’t listed. Seems it’s a ship owned by a Church of Scientology-controlled company. No big deal but I needed to know as she kept popping up wherever we were 🫣. It felt like we were being stalked. 🥹
As planned, we had a very early start, for us, as we had to join the queue for our tour bus to Hotel Chocolate at 08:30 which meant breakfast for 07:30 which meant up at 06:30: As far as we’re concerned, even the cows don’t get up that early, especially early when on Holibobs.
For those that have been to St Lucia you’ll know, but for those that haven’t, driving round the island is like one continuous rollercoaster but hey, it’s the Caribbean 😎
Having reached the Hotel Chocolate Estate, we were immediately set to work pummelling raw ingredients to make ourselves a bar of chocolate- Jeez, that was hard work. It took me close on 15 minutes before I had the [almost] right consistency before I could add the butter and sugar (to taste) before pouring it into our moulds for setting, labelling and saving.
We both subsequently tasted our handiwork. Be assured, we are not chocolatiers.
As a reward for all our hard work we were invited to the on-site restaurant for some yummy food including plantain chips which, were indeed yummy (Interestingly, we had no chocolate but we were able to visit the shop to buy some proper chocolate for the Ninja). Then it was time for lunch before our roller coaster ride back to the ship passing Orlando’s Restaurant where, on a previous visit, I offered to help with the vegetable chopping (blindfolded) forgetting that I was on anticoagulants thus causing Tubbs to go into meltdown (hence no picture of me in a blindfold); all was ok though, (we will be back sometime).
As luck would have it, we reached the ship with just enough time for a quick Pitons Beer at the Pink Papaya before re boarding: Just in time as it happened, to settle ourselves down on the balcony to make sure that the Captain manoeuvred the ship out of port and into open seas and setting course for St Kitts.
The evening took us to The Limelight for an evening meal and a show by Mary Mac. As per our last meal here, the food was just to die for served by an excellent service team and all washed down with a nice bottle of fizzy pop (Prosecco) and a rather nice glass of port. Then of course, there was Mary Mac.
We weren’t sure how we were going to get on with Mary: We’d seen La Voix before in the Limelight and wondered if Mary would come up to scratch.
Our inner questions proved rhetorical. She was absolutely brilliant 🤩.
I won’t go into detail of the show, that’s not my job, but I will say that if we could have got a table for the following evening, we would have done so without a second thought. The next evening, as with all the evenings was a sell out.
From the off, she had us in fits of laughter at her one liners, recounts, and mickey taking of the audience, and admiration for her singing – she can certainly belt out some great Shirley Bassey and Tina Turna numbers and many others.
Her penultimate number, a mash of songs, was something else and one to watch without prior knowledge of what was to come: The rehearsing to get the timing right must have taken some commitment and ‘commitment’ was what we all got. If you get a chance to see one, or more, of her shows, you must. 🫣 – We most certainly will
Following the show, we needed, yes, needed, to relax in the Glass House for a couple of wind down drinks 🍸 before retiring not, the same day we got up 😴.
Step Count: – 9173 🥴
The Adventures of Podge & Tubbs 
[…] #52 St Lucia – Day 31 (Day 3 of Week 5) […]
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[…] #52 St Lucia – Day 31 (Day 3 of Week 5) […]
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