Today’s port-of-call on the cruise was Nassau in The Bahamas.  This morning, we got up early enough to go down to Tritons for a table-service breakfast.  I ordered french toast and bacon.  The french toast was very thick and rich with a dusting of cinnamon and powdered sugar.  It was really very good.

As always, the service on the ship is a big part of the experience as well.  The syrup for the french toast was served directly by the wait staff.  They also had someone circulating around the restaurant with a big plate of various rolls, danish, croissants, and other similar treats.  My son and I each had a cinnamon roll and really enjoyed them a lot.

Of course, one of the advantages of dining on a cruise ship is that there are a lot of choices and it is generally possible to have as much or as little food as fits your appetite at any given meal.  Most of us had fairly good size breakfasts, including my french toast, eggs benedict for my father, an omelette for my mother, and pancakes for my sister.  On the other hand, my wife and son each decided that they really only wanted a bowl of cereal and some bread or a roll and they were easily able to accommodate those requests as well.

Prior to the trip, we had booked the "Discover Atlantis" shore excursion for today.  This excursion included a 15-minute bus ride/city tour as transportation over to the Atlantis Resort and Casino and then a walking tour of the fairly extensive aquarium at the resort.  While we definitely enjoyed ourselves, I’m not sure it really was worth paying for a specific excursion.  If we were to do the same trip again, I think it would be wiser to simply arrange for a taxi or ferry boat directly to Atlantis and then explore the resort at our own leisure.  The tour guides were very friendly and knowledgeable, but the information they were conveying wasn’t particularly interesting or enlightening.

The complex itself is pretty impressive, although very reminiscent of the kind of casino complex that we are already pretty used to from trips to Las Vegas.  It does make good use of the island setting, including an extensive filtration system that captures and recycles ocean water for use both in private swimming areas and the aquarium.  The whole resort, including the aquarium, is themed (somewhat lightly) with various artifacts and architecture that is supposed to originate with the lost continent mythology.

The aquarium is very nice, with a pretty decent selection of marine wildlife.  Some of the highlights included enormous groupers, various rays, and an exhibit of sharks.  The shark exhibit includes an acrylic tube walk-through that is kind of similar to the one that they had at Sea World (although without the moving sidewalk). One nice touch is the inclusion of a small "Finding Nemo" section where they have entire tanks full of clownfish and blue fish (I can’t remember off-hand what species Dory is…)  That’s a nice accommodation for the high demand to see those fish, particularly among kids.

Right now, we are taking a bit of an afternoon break in order to get a load of laundry cleaned and catch our breath a bit before dinner.  Dinner tonight is at Animator’s Palate and we also expect to catch the stage show "Hercules – The Muse-ical" later this evening.  Dinner is about 15 minutes from now, although I’m writing this offline and who knows when I will actually get a chance to connect and post it. 🙂