Emerald Princess Cruise Day 5 – Barbados

Today we arrived at Barbados early – at about 7:00 am. My excursion was scheduled to begin at 8:35 am so I made my way off the ship at about 20 minutes early. It was a good thing, too. There was about a half mile walk from the ship to the cruise terminal where the excursions left from. I made the walk and met Sue and David and lo and behold – evidently the tour company had forgotten about this particular excursion and had to send for buses and guides. The good news is that the tour left only 10 minutes late so no harm, no foul. Plus I find that on a cruise I'm just better at rolling with things and not letting them bother me. It's an attitude that I would like to take back home with me.

The recursion was to the Foursquare and Mt Gay rum distilleries with tours and tastings at both. Foursquare is a relatively new distillery and uses very modern techniques – everything is computer controlled, they recycle the CO2 created during fermentation and sell it to soft drink manufacturers, all there waste is used as fertilizer and to water crops etc. It was pretty fantastic. Barbados is a big sugar cane growing island and we learned about how its cultivated etc. You plant this goes on for 5 years until they plow the field over and plant a different crop. We saw cotton. Then the whole cycle starts all over again. After the tour there was a tasting. Anyone who knows me will know how odd it is for me to be sipping rum at 10:00 am but it really did happen (only in Barbados). I must say that there general brand (cheapest) was pretty harsh. It burned all the way down. The sipping rum was a bit smoother but I still didnt care for it very much.

Mt Gay was the first rum distillery EVER. They were the ones who figured out that you could take the waste from sugar production (molasses) and instead of dumping it in the ocean turn it into rum. The rum paid for the refining of the sugar. They are a much more “hands on” operation. Not a lot of computer control here. They actually have a master taster who is in charge of blending the distilates to get the best tasting notes. This tasting was a little more involved as the guide explained the different notes we should find in each rum and showed us the “legs” and color. The lowest brand (only for mixing) was again pretty harsh. The middle bottle called Black Barrel was smoother and could still be used for mixed drinks. The last was their “extra old” aged 8-15 years, It had carmel and smokey notes and a much thicker mouth feel. Over all I liked the Black Barrel best so bought a bottle because “Hey, I'm in Barbados, the birthplace of rum” The x.o cost like $60-100 dollars a bottle, this is from the manufacturer, tax and duty free. The one I bought only rann about $20 a bottle – I'm looking forward to some tasty eggnog next Christmas.

An interesting fact about Barbados is that my dad was stationed here while whe was in the navy. I didnt get to see the base but it was fun to see the island that he's told me so much about.

After the tasting/tours it was pretty much the same drill. Lunch, a dip in the pool, trivia and a wonderful dinner. Not much in the way of entertainment tonight because tonight is the Ultimate Deck Party which is code for line dancing on the Lido with music that is way too loud (God, I'm getting old). Just got back from checking that out and having fun. It's hard to believe that the cruise is half done. Heavy sigh – but hey I still have half to go :-)