Great Stirrup Cay - Saturday

    I had setup alarm to watch the sunrise. I walked out of the stateroom alone and went to the deck. There were a few others like me who had come to photograph the sunrise, a few folks had come in couples to be romantic , a few had come to offer prayers to the sun god. It was not that great a sunrise with all the clouds but it is the best that I had seen in a very long time. The sunrise from the ship is only slightly different in that there are no waves in the ocean and for the first time I noticed the clouds get a golden lining.If all the gold  I saw was real gold, then it was indeed a very expensive sunrise. 
    8 to 5 is the stopover at Great Stirrup Cay and Ideally, we should have been in the island at 8. With all the heavy food and the general vacation chaos, we were done with the breakfast by 9:30 10. A tender, technical word for a boat took us on the greenish blue waters to the island.
    The weather had been good all through the trip - sunny. We were prepared with jackets packed.The white rocks of the cay is the first sight as we reach the island. Photographers from the ship are ready to take our snaps for selling back on the ship.
     So we walked to the closest beach. The island is privately owned by NCL and is just about 250 acres. Nice blue easy chairs were placed on the beach for us to use. We sun-bathed our feet and face and watched the excellent blue color of the ocean. Set Niya free and Niya embraced the ocean - picking up white stones from the water.She was quickly attached and we could easily see that taking her to the next spot was going to take some effort.
    I picked myself up from the chair and started photographing her while Divya photographed me photographing her. Other friendly visitors offered to shoot our family pic and we got a few pics taken and took a few pics in return as well.Niya found another friend and they connected quickly and started playing.
     Next we moved to another section of the beach. It is just a beautiful island - no civilisation here - no history to be learned - just greenish-blue waters and no, we did not do snorkelling.Well, we missed it and we still don't know what we missed.NCL had organized a barbecue lunch at the island - I was still not well and did not want to push my stomach too much. One pistachchio cake was the highlight and all of us had one extra each.
     After lunch, we had a nice little sleep at the beach - again at the beach easy chairs but at a different section. When there is so much to see, how can you sleep? That is one challenge with vacations - you want to see everything and you want to do nothing. When I woke up , I consulted the life guard and he advised me to walk down to the man-made lagoon further down.
    This was the best part. This was even more private - It was just the three of us as this is quite far from the rest of the crowd and this section was the prettiest with the rocks on the sea. So we just relaxed there till it was time to go back to the ship.
    Back at the ship , suddenly I felt the temperature getting very cold and my feverishness returned. So, I decided to treat myself with Tylenol and that gave me an excellent sleep that was in itself something to  cherish.

http://cnatatlanta.blogspot.com/2012/11/miami-great-cay-nassau-ncl-cruise.html