Meg and Richard Go to the Bahamas!

I took so many pictures that there's no way to display them all on a website. It would take forever to load. But you can click on each of these descriptions and see them all!

This is the trip I won on Jeopardy! in March 2000 (show aired June 16, 2000). It was an all-expense-paid vacation to the Atlantis-Paradise Island resort. Airfare, lodging, and food were all paid for. The only thing we had to pay for was gratuities for our meals (which wasn't exactly cheap, because the meals were pretty expensive). But it was a fabulous trip that we never could've afforded otherwise.

Click here for a map of Nassau / Paradise Island, and here for a map showing where we were in relation to Florida.

Around the Atlantis ...

• Entrance to the Atlantis
• The Atlantis is divided up into three different towers: the Coral Towers (where we stayed), the Beach Towers, and the Royal Towers. The Royal Towers was definitely the ritziest tower. The arch in between the two wings is a suite that supposedly goes for $25,000 a night! Here's the entrance to the Royal Towers.
• The different towers were connected by corridors filled with very expensive shops (like Gucci and Versace). Check out the map for the layout. The casino was between the Coral Towers and the Royal Towers, and we must have walked through it a dozen times on our way to various restaurants. Here's the outside entrance to the casino, all done up to look like it came from the Lost Continent. And here's the casino from across the lagoon.
• There were lots of fountains. This one looks like flying fish, and this one like Pegasus and his pals.
• Our room was really pretty ordinary, especially when you consider it cost $417 a night! It was comparable to a Hampton Inn. But the surroundings were considerably more lush! Here's the view straight out the sliding-glass door, and slightly to the right (you can see the ocean in the distance).
• The landscaping was lush, as you can imagine. Here's some hibiscus. They also had this humorous sign to discourage littering!
• Lagoons meandered all around the property, and they were full of marine wildlife. This lagoon was full of rays and sharks! They had manufactured some supposed ruins of Atlantis, called The Dig, which you could walk through and look at through windows. Swimming around in the ruins were lionfish, lobsters, and piranhas (oh my!). These sharks just hung out during the day, but were supposed to get more active during the evening. I liked to watch the rays swim around. It was sort of like watching underwater airplanes. They would lazily move up one of their arms, or fins, or whatever you call them, and then just float off in another direction. They got pretty excited when they were being fed, though. Then they'd splash their arms on the surface. They reminded me of my dogs begging for a treat! The sharks got fed after the rays did. You could see what they meant by "feeding frenzy"! Seagulls always hung out too, hoping to snatch something when no one was looking.
• We weren't sure what this critter is -- a shark? A swordfish? Whatever it was, we didn't want to swim with it!
• There was a tunnel that went through one of the lagoons, which you could walk through. This fish was checking us out as we walked through.
• Lots of waterfalls all over the place. This one was near our room, and this one near the Royal Towers.
• The most bizarre thing on the ground was a life-size replica of a Mayan temple. Bizarre because there were no Mayans in the Bahamas! And if its mere presence wasn't bizarre enough, they put five water slides in it! Richard went down them all, including the near-vertical 60 foot drop into the shark tank (you shot through a plexiglass tube -- it's not like the sharks could get at you). I went down the one in which you rode on inner tubes. I wouldn't have done it if I'd known most of it was through dark tunnels. It was pretty claustrophobic. But at the end you drifted through another plexiglass tube, and it was pretty cool to see the sharks swimming all around you.

On the beach ...

• Of course you must spend a lot of time strolling on the beaches! And they were beautiful, white sand beaches, to go along with the perfect weather (low 80's, clear blue skies, gentle ocean breeze). Here's a view from the west of the resort, looking out toward the ocean. The Atlantis dominated the skyline when you looked back from the beach. This view gives you an idea of the size of the resort.
• Here's the view to the east (pretty much looks the same as the west view, but fewer buildings and people). This view shows the different colors of the ocean. Here's the quintessential beach photo: the palm tree in the sand! Most of the palm trees were pretty good size, but they'd planted a lot of young trees near the golf course, and you could see what immature coconuts look like.
• Lots to do on the beach. You could look for seashells (although the pickings have been pretty slim since the hurricane last year), you could build sand castles (this one incorporated a conch shell into its design), you could ride jetskies (we decided that wasn't for us), or you could go parasailing (we decided that really wasn't for us!). In fact, parasailing looked really dangerous -- this guy looked like he was going to crash into the rocks (but he didn't). A lot of the locals made their living taking the tourists parasailing. They were lined up by the beach with their boats.

Tropical sunsets ...

• Here's a series of pictures as the sun sets into the Atlantic. Going, going, going, almost gone! The sunset over the marina was pretty impressive too. Actually, the marina itself was impressive. It was full of yachts that were bigger than our house!

The Atlantis was pretty inside, as well as outside

• Lots of sculpture in the lobbies and corridors between the towers. There was this crystal one, and this minotaur one. They had this big elaborate throne, so of course we took pictures of Meg and Richard sitting in it. This really cool mural was painted on the ceiling of one of the restaurants. Here's a closeup. Beautiful paintings too. I particularly admired this one.
• The restaurants were all opulant, and the food was wonderful (but expensive!). My favorite was the Cafe at the Great Hall of Waters, because the back walls were of glass, so you could look into The Dig and see all the marine life swimming around. Here I am in front of one of the walls, and if you look close, you can see a ray swimming behind my head.

So what else was there to do? Well, we took a tour of Nassau ...

• Our guide picked us up at the hotel, and took us to several historic sites. We went to Fort Charlotte, built to protect the people of Nassau from pirates, but since the pirates lived in Nassau, no one ever attacked them! The fort was fortified with cannons, of course. There was some 19th century graffiti carved into the stone too. One of the neat things about the fort was this stubborn little tree growing out of the wall. The view from the roof was impressive -- you can see the Atlantis in the distance. Here's a view from a different angle that shows one of the big yachts going by. A lot of the island is still wild and overgrown, and you could see that too from the roof.
• We also went to Fort Fincastle, which was closer to the ocean and to the Atlantis. There was a very tall water tower at Fort Fincastle. It was cramped and smelly, so we decided not to climb up. Also at Fort Fincastle were the Queen's Stairs, so called because Queen Victoria walked down them after slavery was abolished (the stairs had been chiseled by hand from the stone by slaves). There are 66 steps, one for each year of her reign.
• Several statues in Nassau. Columbus (who also discovered the Bahamas) was in front of the British Colonial Hilton. And Queen Victoria was in the middle of town.
• Lots of churches throughout Nassau -- Catholic, Methodist, Anglican, and even this Southern Baptist Seminary!
• We think this was the American Embassy, but I wouldn't swear to it, because I could only understand about every third word out of our guide's mouth!

  ... And we went to Blue Lagoon Island and had a "Dolphin Encounter"!

• We took a 15-minute boat ride to the island, and saw some of the rich people's houses along the way. This house belonged to some Saudi sheik, who was rumored to have a seven-car garage so he could drive a different car every day of the week!
• Here's the entrance to the island.
• This dolphin was swimming around a pen before our "encounter" began.
• We interacted with a 600-pound, six-year-old dolphin named Andy. Who would have ever thought Richard would hug and be kissed by a dolphin? Of course I hugged and kissed Andy too, and loved it!

  Our last day there we just wandered around Paradise Island

• There's another exclusive resort called The Cloisters that looked like a beautiful place to stay. On the other side of the road was this garden.

  And then we bid a fond farewell to the Bahamas

• We were looking forward to getting home to Joey and the dogs (not to mention my parents, who stayed with Joey while we were gone) as I took this shot out the plane window.