January 4 – Kingston, Jamaica

Weather – 25º, sunny, lovely

Steps – 7,408

I woke up around 5 this morning to what I was sure was the sound of the ship dropping anchor. I was POSITIVE we were docking today. Sure enough, there was a problem with the dock, so we would be tendering again…ugh. No problem though - I get that ‘ship’ happens; I appreciate that we were given an explanation today.

Thankfully, the tender ride was only 5 minutes and took us to a hotel right on the water. As soon as we stepped foot off the tender, the DJ was spinning Bob Marley! It was 8:00 in the morning and already the party was started.

Kingston gets very few cruise ships and is not much of a

Bob Marley

tourist destination. Only 1 ship visits in January, 2 in Feb, and 2 in March. Compare this to Ocho Rios, for example with 23 in Jan, 18 in Feb, and 15 in March.

Emancipation Park

Kingston is the capital and business centre of Jamaica. Our tour was titled ‘Kingston Sightseeing’. One other offered was about Bob Marley and the third was about coffee. Having never been here before, we thought sightseeing would give us a good feel for the city. I’m not sure if it did, or maybe it absolutely did. We definitely SAW sights, but little else. Part of the tour description was “3.5 hours of walking” There was in total about an hour of walking, but nothing to accompany the walking. 

We’ve been on MANY tours described similarly. Drive to various spots, follow the

guide as they describe what we are seeing and tells stories, and have some free time. This is what the description had us expecting.

Sports Wall of Honour

The guide shared info on the bus, but once off the bus we were pretty much abandoned. I think part of the issue, was that the guide (and maybe her tour company and Regent) didn’t want to leave us anywhere unsafe, and most places were unsafe. Who knows?? The places we did get off of the bus were enclosed and guarded – even the park we wandered a bit in…fenced with a guard. I certainly don’t want to get off anywhere unsafe.

our ship in the background

We were able to take pictures the Bob Marley statue from the bus of, the statue in Emancipation
Park (where the guide was determined to take our pic in front of) and that’s about it. She didn’t mention a word about slavery – obviously, not a pleasant subject, but we’ve been to a few places where slavery was part of its past and we heard about it.

Bob Marley playing DJ

We also drove past the sports ‘Wall of Honour”. We heard about Usain Bolt.

We stopped at Devon House, a monument to Jamaica’s first Black millionaire. Here we wandered the grounds a bit, weren’t able to go in and had an $7 ice cream. We weren’t exactly interested in the ice cream, but there wasn’t much left to do.

Lastly, we stopped at a handicrafts market that was more keychains and bikinis than handicrafts. We were at least hoping for somewhere to sit for a beer…nope, we were corralled within the fence of the market with no beer at the food stall.

Back at the hotel, before getting on the tender, we had a $5USD Red Stripe, Jamaican beer. We paid about twice what Google said a beer goes for, but we were at a hotel, and we were a captive audience.

Jamaica flag cake

All in all, Kingston was a bit of a bust. I think we picked the right tour for us, and we can’t say we didn’t SEE it but hopped for a bit more – this happens
occasionally.

Lunch was back on board before a party for anyone who has been on Regent for more than 200 days. This was nice…especially the DJ playing Shaggy, Bob Marley, and other Jamaican tunes.

The rest of the evening played out as per usual. Tonight’s show was a ‘piano 

Jamaican sky

virtuoso’ from the UK, he was good. One of the pieces he played was David Foster’s “Winter Olympics”…that one tugged at our heart strings!!