Jess awoke early, but read until the alarm woke Jer up. We slowly dragged ourselves out of bed, the promise of breakast a powerful motivator. While getting ready, we discovered that the chambermaid had splashed bleach on a number of our clothes, ruining Jess's crepe beach pants, Jer's nice slacks, new t-shirt and a pair of socks. We went and spoke to the desk clerk, who advised us to speak to the manager, Terry, the next morning.
The El Greco hotel serves a continental breakfast on the patio beside the pool. Jess had cereal, a cinnamon raisin roll and tea. Jer chose an orange, a hardboiled egg, a cinnamon raisin roll, tea and Sunny D. Thus fortified, we headed out to see if the Pirates of Nassau Museum was open. It wasn't. So we wandered around a bit, past mostly-closed shops (though we did buy postcards in one of the open ones). Eventually, we found ourselves on the Parliament Square, with the Parliament, the Supreme Court and the octagonal Library and Museum, all in pink stucco with white trim. We even saw the parking spaces reserved for the Speaker of the Assemby, the Justice of the Supreme Court and various other officials. We walked around a bit more before heading back toward our hotel. We settled ourselves on the Western Esplanade beach and wrote out a few postcards. Then it was time for an early lunch at Coconuts, next to the El Greco. Jer had "boil fish" with johnnycake; Jess had scrambled eggs, bacon and johnnycake. "Boil fish" is grouper, potatoes, onions, hot peppers and lime. Jer reported that it was pretty filling, tasty and bony -- Jess couldn't wrap her head around the fact that this was supposed to be a breakfast food!
After we waited in front of our hotel for a while, the Bahama Divers van picked us up and drove to the Nassau Yacht Haven. There was some delay as we all checked in and got fitted for fins, but eventually we all boarded the Dreadnaught VI and set off. We rode out past Paradise Island (seeing Atlantis in all its Vegas-esque glory), past the tiny island where the opening scenes to "Gilligan's Island" were filmed (according to our captain), to Canonball Reef. Once we dropped anchor, the crew helped the scuba divers into the water and the snorkelers just jumped in off the side of the boat...except Jess, who waited to use the ladder. The crew was clearly amused, but quite solicitous (since she'd warned them it was her first snorkel trip).
The snorkeling was amazing, at least to novices like us. Some of the other snorkelers bought dog food from the crew to feed the fish, which brought whole schools swarming around us. At one point, some of the sergeant majors bumped into Jess -- they were cold and slippery. We didn't know the names of most of the fish we saw, but Jess recognized some tangs and parrotfish (her favorite). The top of the reef was only 3 feel below the surface, though the bottom was about 20 feet down. Jer eventually borrowed a weight belt from the boat so he could stay down longer for better views; Jess stayed at surface level. After her mask got water in it for the second time, Jess got out. Jer stayed in another 10 minutes, until the crew called everyone back to the boat.
Once back at the dive shop, we were loaded back in our van and driven to the El Greco. We took showers and vegged out for a bit until dinnertime. Then we headed west along West Bay St., watching the sun set. We soon found ourselves at Arawak Cay ("Fish Fry") again, where we settled in at Twin Brothers Seafood & Steakhouse for dinner. First, Jess had the best virgin strawberry dacquiri she'd ever had, and Jer had a Goombay Splash. Then, Jer got another conch salad (good, but not as awesome as the first one), and we split cracked conch with french fries and salad (i.e. tomatoes and iceberg). The cracked conch is breaded and fried until crunchy, like fried clams only bigger. Dinner was good, albeit not amazing (other than the dacquiri!), but it was nice to eat outside, surrounded by more Bahamians than tourists.
After dinner we walked back along the beach toward our hotel, watching lightning flash in an offshore thunderstorm and seeing the outline of Atlantis across the harbour, lit to be eye-catching even at a distance. Once we reached our hotel we talked about the next day's activities, then crawled happily into bed.