Our hotel/condo, the Alexandra Resort, is right on the beach at Grace Bay. Grace bay was voted the best beach in the world this year by Conde Naste, the big travel magazine. And it certainly is lovely. Our room looks out on the beach, and we have a nice sized balcony with a table and chairs and a lounger. We can watch the sunset from our balcony!

We had our first snorkel today, a little ways up the beach from our hotel, and a place called the Coral Gardens. It was a little windy, and so the swimming was a little bit of a challenge, but we were up for it! It was really something. Lots of great coral, all in very good shape. We saw a lot of fish we hadn’t seen before. One of the special things we saw was a stingray! That was a nice start to the vacation. We saw lots of grouper, which makes Pam very happy. Some really nice sized Nassau Grouper, in lots of sizes, and a cool red one.

The parrotfish we’ve seen in the past have been very skittish, taking off as soon as we got close, but here, they don’t seem to swim away like in the past. We saw lots of really good sized ones, and several in colors we don’t often see.

There were lots of barracuda. One was really really really really big! There several big ones, and lots of medium to small ones. We saw some fish we couldn’t tell what they were. But the waves were kinda large and made it difficult to get good shots. We’ll do better next time!

We only lasted a couple hours at best. It was tough swimming, and we’re still a little tired from the long flight. We’ll definitely be coming back to this sight.

For dinner, we wanted to try Baci Ristorante, but of course, it’s closed on Sundays, which we discovered after we’d driven over there! Beside it was the Sharkbite, so we decided to give it a try. It is right on the water, and we got to watch the sunset as we dined. Food is NOT cheap on this island, but Sharkbites was reasonable. We started with a conch fritter appetizer. Conch is a big specialty on this island, they even have a conch farm, so we had to try it. The fritters were good, tasty, with a tangy sauce. Ten fritters were $10. Pam had a strawberry daiquiri, $8, and I had a Turkshead Beer, the local beer here on Providencials $4.50.

For the entree, we both had the ribs, for $17. It was as good serving size, with fries and coleslaw. The rib meat fell off the bone, and the sauce was thick and tangy. For dessert we split a slice of carrot cake and vanilla ice cream. Total bill including the forced 15% gratuity was $93. The service was good, and three or four waitresses kept everything flowing nicely.

Tomorrow we are thinking of going to the other side of the island, but we’ll see what happens!