Junkanoo Tourists

A few months ago my boss called me and said the newspaper decided to send me to the Bahamas to cover the Florida basketball team in a pre-season tournament. Ok, I guess I’ll take that assignment. I mean, if someone has to go, I’ll step up and take one for the team.

So the week of Thanksgiving, Laura and I took a 50 minute plane ride from Orlando to Nassau, Bahamas (where I got my first passport stamp!) for a week of basketball and being a tourist. We stayed at the Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island, a few miles from downtown Nassau. The resort was pretty amazing, but there’s nothing local about it. It’s filled with tourists like us and there’s nothing really Bahamas about it other than the employees. Still a nice place though.

We went into town a couple of times to get away from the resort, only to run into even more tourists who stop in Nassau while on a cruise. So unless you have a boat or a plane to get to another island, you’re going to be surrounded by tourists while in Nassau.

That being said it’s still an awesome place and filled with classic paradise scenes of blue water, soft sand and palm trees.

Here are a bunch of snaps and a few videos from around town and the resort. I’ll post the basketball photos later.

On a “chilly” Saturday, we took a ride along the Lazy River. Except it wasn’t so lazy. It was in the 70’s but really windy. So getting wet then sitting on top of the water made for a lot of shivering. Totally worth it… and totally worth the price of losing a pair of cheap sun glasses. (moment of the loss seen in the video below)

I went down this thing… once. And that was enough.

One evening while looking for a place to eat, we came across a Junkanoo parade. Very similar to a New Orleans second line parade through the French Quarter. Junkanoo is a street parade with music, dance and costumes. Boxing day and New Year’s Day are when the biggest Junkanoo parades happen in the Bahamas.