Always On the Move: Another day, another island----Antigua!!

I'm really excited about this post! This was the site of the most beautiful breathtaking place Michael and I have ever seen! Are you excited now?? Read on my friends, but be forewarned---it's a SUPER LONG post!

Welcome to Antigua! (Correct pronunciation is AN-TEA-GUH, just so you know. It took me all day to learn that!) Again we arrived pretty early in the morning. Michael and I decided to rent a car and spend the day driving around the island ourselves. It was wonderful! We had booked through the Internet about 3 months before the cruise but that didn't seem to help much. We waited just around 2 hours to get our car. That was a little frustrating but it did give me lots of time to look in the diamond and emerald shops right there on the pier. :)

Hertz gave us a map of the island with fun/interesting stopping points on it. So that is what we did. Here's Michael in the car.

Yeah, that is just wrong! The steering wheel was on the wrong side as were all of the cars on the street! I was a little freaked the whole day. Got a little sick to my stomach winding through the mountains in this little car (Mike drove a little too fast for me!!!). But it was wonderful all the same! We started out right by the airport and discovered there was an US Air Force base on the island. Michael and I talked about being stationed here. That would be crazy! We went to the gate but the guard would not let us in. I was a little bummed but what can you do? He said we could ask the base commander (who is a MAJOR by-the-way----Mike will be a major on March 1st!) but of course we didn't. It was cool that we have one there though. Think ABMs are needed on Antigua??? We started our map journey and the first stop took us for a loop. We left the pier and drove up some hills to the airport area, got the car and then drove on a pretty gradual incline for about 20 minutes or so. When we got to the "top", the place where the road dead-ended we figured we would be at a lookout on the cliffs. We ran into this instead....

Pretty cool huh? Again the water was just spectacular. We didn't swim or anything that day. Just took some wonderful photos. We were not expecting to leave a dock and drive "up" to a beach. Awesome. Next we stopped at "Betty's Hope", it was a sugar plantation that started way back in the day (don't remember for sure when it started). It was interesting and very sad. Of course there was a slavery issue (British island) but the coolest part was a copy of the letter from the British Prime Minister abolishing slavery and telling the owners to let them go. (which reminds me, if you haven't seen the movie AMAZING GRACE, then SEE it and SOON. Wilbur Wilberforce---quite the soul!)

You would see these windmills all over the island. Lots of sugar production in Antigua's history. We were driving around and saw a lookout through the trees. It was beautiful! The red tiled roof (we learned from our map) was Eric Clapton's rehab center where he wrote the "Crossroads" album. Interesting, huh?

Another pull-off lookout. We had to stop!

Here, we just stopped for a quick sec in the middle of the road for this shot. How unbelievable is that water??!!

We now are our favorite view of the whole cruise!!!! We drove to the top of the mountain to a National Park called "Shirley's Heights". The map said we would arguably see the most beautiful view of the whole island. And it was SO right! It was a panoramic view. It started here and went like this. BREATHTAKING, I tell you!!!

I have video but it will not load right now. Sorry about that, but at least you can look forward to seeing that later. :) Here are some more shots of us to prove we were there. That is the famous Nelson's Dockyards behind us. We actually didn't make it down there because of time constraints. That was a bummer.

Next we went winding through the rain forest. That was awesome! We saw some people doing the zip lines--man, they go fast!!!

This view was just after one of the most popular beaches on the island called "Jolly Harbour". Michael was so proud he got a little of the wave break. Nice photo, huh?

I warned you it was a long post...I'm kinda sorry about that. I just had too many good photos to share!!! We got back to town around 3:30, turned the car in and walked a few blocks over to this beautiful (and huge) church, St. John's. (from the 1800's)

Our boat from the church steps:

We went back to the boat and took a few shots before leaving. This one is especially for James (Mike's brother---inside joke, you don't have to get it!)