Daily Archives: February 19, 2026

Guadeloupe….a very dangerous place!

Posted on February 19, 2026 by julieallen36

Our final day would be spent in Guadeloupe, somewhere that I don’t think we even touched on during my studies. Our tour guide today was Gianni who was my favourite tour guide on the trip. He was extremely knowledgeable and enthusiastic about his island and it made this an excellent field trip! It wasn’t surprising that this island isn’t on many peoples radar, as it was until about 20 years ago that tourism started to develop here. And…there is one big reason for this. 20 years ago the BBC and the Development Department of Guadeloupe agreed that filming for a new TV series could take place here. That programme is ‘Death in Paradise’, now in its 18th season!

Death in Paradise is why we were here today and we haven’t even really ever watched it! However, our lovely friends ‘The Party People’ (you know who you are! ) LOVE it and watch it all together as families and love to sing along to the theme tune and wave their arms about. Der Der Der Der Der, Der Der Der, Der Der Der….

So, we were off with Gianni and 6 coach loads of would-be-detectives to visit the very dangerous places on this island!

We drove through the island which is shaped like a butterfly. Our port was Point A Pitre on Grande-Terre the coral part of the islands where most of the resorts are located on the perfect white beaches. We drove over to Basse-Terre the more mountainous and volcanic part of the islands. It was immediately obvious how different this Guadeloupe is. Gianni explained that Guadeloupe is still a Department of France ie it is France and their currency is the Euro! Driving through, it looked like France. Neat and tidy, French road signs, Renault dealerships, modern buildings, Lycra clad cyclists and we even drove speedily along a motorway. What a contrast to the road in Tortola!

Gianni took pride in telling us that the islanders were still very close to nature and that no one need ever starve because there was so much food to eat just at the side of the road. Papaya, coconuts, bananas, mango, avocado, breadfruit. He seemed particularly keen on eating the roadside chickens which he said were way tastier than those in the supermarkets! Lots of French people retire here because of the healthy lifestyle and the islands has the highest number of people over 100 in the whole of France. The people here benefit from French social security support if needed and he described the people as ‘comfortable’.

The other big difference here is that Guadeloupe has never become dependent on tourism. There’s some series agriculture here and they’ve focused on Agricultural transformation. For example instead of abandoning their sugar cane industry they’ve worked out how its waste products can be used to produce electricity , bottles and tissue. There were very few of the shacks that we seen people living in elsewhere…these were modern homesteads made to withstand the hurricanes that are regular visitors.

Anyway, enough of the geography lesson…let’s talk murders! There have been more murders on the fictional island of St Marie than on Shetland and now we were about to visit all the famous TV locations. First stop the beach where ‘The Shack’ is located during filming. But much to everyone’s disappointment the shack gets packed away at the end of filming to protect it from hurricanes! Gianni also confirmed that the little lizard 🦎 Harry is not real- he’s AI. Shocking!

The beach, however, was lovely. Beautiful golden sand back by palms, sea grapes and almond trees. We saw the hotel where many, many murders have taken place before driving into the village of Deshaies (real name). This is where much of filming takes place including scenes of the police station which we were hilariously allowed to tour round and have photos sitting at the police desks and in the cells! We visited the church and then made a beeline for Catherine’s Bar. This is the shack-like bar from the TV series that overlooks the beautiful bay. It was very popular but we had a couple of beers and enjoyed the view and a little sketch. The emerald colours of the water here are stunning.

Luckily, nobody got murdered on this trip and we made it back to the ship in time for us to have our Musical Afternoon Tea in Gallery 47. Just when you didn’t think you needed anything else to eat..you find you’ve booked a special Afternoon Tea! Help!!! I need to get off this ship!

We had a quiet evening doing our packing ready for them to collect our suitcases which we will next see in Brum. We watched the early evening show ‘ABBA- The Life Story’, then caught The Collective in the atrium followed by the ships crew saying farewell to us all. This was our chance to say thanks to the wonderful 700+ crew. With a tear in our eye we went to bed for the last night on board.

What a fantastic trip it has been. We have both absolutely loved it and I don’t think it’ll be long before we’re looking at where our next cruise might take us…..

Jane interviews Gianni about Harry the AI Lizard

In the cell for crimes at the Silent Disco

Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: Caribbean, Cruise, Guadeloupe | Leave a comment

Antigua, a big tick and a bit of a surprise

Posted on February 19, 2026 by julieallen36

Islands are coming thick and fast now….this morning we woke up in Antigua. Jane joined me for the sunrise on Deck 10, on what would turn out to be our cloudiest day yet. We docked next to 3 other absolutely huge cruise ships including the Celebrity ‘Ascent’ which appeared to have a restaurant on an exterior lift mechanism that took it up and down the outside of the ship. The Norwegian ‘Epic’ on the other hand had the water slides on the top deck!

I’ve always wanted to visit Antigua and it was on my very original Top 10 wish list that we created when Jane and I first me, over 25 years ago. I think the desire to visit had come from when I studied Geography at Uni over the 30 years ago. Leera and I had done a term of study called ‘The Caribbean’ and the guy who taught us really just showed us his holiday slides. When it came to exam time he realised that he hadn’t actually taught us anything so basically gave us the questions in advance so that we wouldn’t fail. The pictures that had stuck in my mind were those of the famous English Harbour.

So today’s trip would take us to see the ‘Heights and Sights’ of Antigua. Our guide described it as a ‘Liquid Sunshine’ day as we set of on our little tour bus around the island in the rain. Eek …this isn’t what we’d planned. As we drove our guide pointed out the old sugar mills, the old cotton industry and how people used to farm for themselves but no longer bothered. Tourism, that was the big thing now. It probably had been ever since the 80s when we studied it.

We were also shown the hospital built by the Chinese, the Viv Richards Cricket Stadium, a gift from the Chinese and the biggest supermarket on the island XPZ , owned by the Chinese. Interesting. Our guide didn’t really comment on this but I got the feeling he wasn’t too happy about it.

As we left the urban area of St John’s we began to drive through rural villages. It was colourful and a bit of a visual overload with the candy pink church, the sky blue laundry, the lime green barbers and the red Lee Fung restaurant. There was even a cute purple police station. But it wasn’t exactly pretty. It was chaotic, messy, ramshackle and in need of a jolly good tidy up. There was corrugated iron everywhere, wrecked cars just left to decay in the lush vegetation and houses made out of old shipping containers. Hm…..more of this later but for now we’d arrived at the viewpoints for English Harbour up at Shirley Heights.

We made two stops and luckily the cloud had partially cleared and the views were absolutely stunning. The view is down to the numerous coves, harbours and sandy beaches. There are loads of big sailing boats moored and today several ocean going yachts out racing on the water. There were little plaques around telling us about the history but we didn’t really take it in as we were so busy taking our photos. We didn’t have time to visit the little souvenir stands either.

This contrast between the wealth and poverty of the island made me very thoughtful and it came even more into perspective as we tried to drive through a tiny village called ‘Suid’ but pronounced ‘Sweet’, I think. Here we got badly held up by the ‘Total Gridlock’ caused by a funeral. Cars were parked up everywhere along the narrow street and all of the people had come out dressed in their finest. The tour buses could hardly get through and as we were stopped some young guys walked past being very rude about us folk on the bus. They were spitting feathers and clearly not in the camp of ‘tourism’ is good for the island….hm. This got me thinking again. Why are the islands that we have visited sooo different in terms of their development? In particular, WHY, if Antigua has had tourism as its main industry for 30+ years with the super yachts and luxury hotels, hasn’t that helped lift the local population out of poverty? Discuss. As our old exam question would have asked.

Meanwhile, back on the island our next stop would be one of the 365 idyllic Antiguan beaches. Hurrah. We drove past some absolutely gorgeous empty white sand beaches but sadly got taken to one which was over-crowded with US cruise ship passengers being very loud. Jane and I grabbed a beer from the noisy, colourful bar and escaped the madness a little way up the beach. I had a quick dip and it was lovely but Jane and I agreed that Antigua wasn’t top of our list to revisit. This made me feel slightly guilty as surely what they need is for us to visit and spend some real time and money locally on the island rather than what we’d done today.

Back on board ship, there was a lot of honking of ships ‘whistles’ and cheering as the passengers on Epic returned late from their catamaran trip. This would never happen on our little ship. The logistics, organisation and service have been impeccable. The staff are so friendly and our 3 cabin crew, Riba, Kevin and Jay have looked after us brilliantly freshening up our room twice a day and creating our lovely towel art animals for us! Every trip we have done has been great, good value for money and v well organised.

In the evening we were going to go to the BBQ on the pool deck but it had an absolute downpour and so this had all been packed away. We couldn’t get into the Italian and so we settled for a lovely meal in 47 Degrees and an early night. Tomorrow would be our last day….and what a contrast we’d see in unknown Guadeloupe.

Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: Antigua, Caribbean, Cruise | Leave a comment

Bobbing Along in St Maarten

Posted on February 19, 2026 by julieallen36

I don’t know what’s wrong with me but again today I was up and ready to see the sunrise at 6-20! It wasn’t quite as beautiful as the previous day as the ship sailed into St Maarten, the Dutch side of this tiny island state. Once again the ship sailed right into the heart of the capital, Philipsburg. It’s a big port and there were two other cruise ships in dock when we arrived. There seemed to be a lot of modern development and to our left a huge turquoise bay of water called Great Bay. There was no historic town like we’d seen elsewhere but there were plenty of super yachts bobbing about in the bay.

As our trip today was once again in the afternoon, we sat in our new favourite place on The Venranda! It was very noisy with the sound of trucks, buses, drills, motorbikes, loud music, ships horns, construction, airplanes, trolley car bells etc. There was absolutely nothing natural about this place even the white sand seemed to be being imported.

In the afternoon we were booked on our 2nd catamaran trip. The Golden Eagle. This was a slightly smaller vessel than the one in St Lucia and the crew all seemed somewhat surly and unsmiley.

The first stop after about 10 mins of skimming across the turquoise waters was the snorkel spot. I chose to get into the water at the back of the boat. I didn’t want to slide and hurt myself so there is now a video of me sitting down and then face planting into the water with a huge ‘smack’ ! Ouch it hurt but I braved it out.

The snorkelling was v average as they were feeding the fish to attract them. There was a sunken submarine and apparently a helicopter which I didn’t seen. Everyone seemed very impressed that I’d seen the shopping trolley, however.

Next we sailed past lots of modern development and houses of the rich and famous, before we sailed into a picture perfect bay where we would be able to spend 40mins on the beach. The only problem was you had to swim to the beach. Hm…..in the adverts for this trip they’d shown the boat actually landing on the beach. Fair play to Jane, she stood up and asked how she was supposed to get there as, of course, she’s currently not swimming still. The crew were great and when Jane confirmed that yes , she did want to go ashore, they made it happen via the rib and a rubber ring on a rope. Don’t get me wrong this wasn’t a thrill ride but a slow careful chug with Jane smiling away behind. They were brilliant and got her ashore with no effort and no stress. I meanwhile swam ashore, it was absolutely beautiful.

This made us very happy and the beach itself was soft, soft white sand and sea of turquoise blue. This was Simpsons Beach. Not too crowded, just perfect.

Once we’d safely returned to the boat we sailed along until we reached the famous beach where the planes land right overhead at the airport. It was very exciting as the planes were coming in every few minutes and flew right above our heads as we cheered from the boat.

As we started our journey back , it once again began to rain. We took shelter inside whilst a few mad Rum Drinkers carried on the party outside in the rain. On previous boat trips our favourite song had become ‘Big Bamboo’ a very questionable song from 2014! By now the crew had all cheered up and joined in the fun with everyone as we sang along to YMCA and of course, Sweet Caroline, at the tops of our voices.

In the evening we went back to Islands for their Caribbean themed night, the food was excellent once again. Afterwards we scored 20/20 in the 70s quiz night but lost out on the tie break again. The question was how many copies did Mull of Kintyre sell back in the 70s?

After this we decided to go to the Live Lounge again to check out The Collective’s Country Night. We were a bit early and when we arrived the screen said we were listening to a pianist called Andrei. Indeed we were listening to music but there was no one on stage. Very odd business. We decided that perhaps Andrei was tiny little pocket sized pianist that we just couldn’t see.

The Collective were again very good singing a range of country tunes and there were a handful of people up line dancing. At 9:45 we retired to bed, once again exhausted!