NEXT STOP: GRAND TURK ISLAND

After a day at sea, our next cruise stop was Grand Turk Island in the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Here is our boat docked...

And across the pier was the Carnival Pride...look how much bigger the Breeze is!

A very short walk from the ships is the main attraction on the island, the Grand Turk cruise center. Built by Carnival Cruises in 2006 it features one of the largest swimming pools in the Caribbean...

and a Flowrider...

Of course there is the usual Dufry duty-free shopping which is always positioned so you have to walk through the store in order to get to the rest of the island's attractions...great marketing!

There are also the usual shops you find in Caribbean cruise ports...

Of course, the beach is the other main attraction.

And what is cool is that the ships are docked directly in front of the beach as you can see below.  It was so hot and humid that day and the water was so refreshing!

There are a couple of other "attractions" located near the cruise center. One is a large sculpture of two humpback whales "breaching" through the sand.

Another attraction in the cruise center is an exhibit commemorating the splashdown on John Glenn's Mercury 7 space capsule off the island's coast in 1962.  It was opened in 2012 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the splashdown.

In addition to a replica of the actual space capsule...

there was John Glenn in his spacesuit...

and storyboards depicting the accomplishments of the NASA space program.

I have to be honest and say I was very disappointed with Grand Turk Island.  It seems like it is still a starter cruise port stop because many of the buildings were empty and the few open stores had limited inventories of the usual merchandise you see for sale in cruise ports. It was strange to walk into a jewelry store and see half the cases empty.

   
Other than water sports there is not much to this island.  It has some of the most beautiful water you will ever see...

But unfortunately when the cruise ships depart, it is a ghost town until the next ships arrive...

All photos in this blog post were taken by me during our cruise in May, 2013.