Daniele Somenzi's Bahamas

Bahamas Anita, Donato, Giorgio and I hire a small car in Nassau; here you drive on the left of the carriageway. We set off in bright sunshine in search of a beach.

We find it and all throw ourselves into this warm, clear water; the white sand framed by tropical plants forms the setting of this splendid panorama.

Shortly after we get back in the car and continue to a shopping centre where we eat and then to the post office where I buy stamps to send the usual postcard to Vicini Gilberto of Casalmaggiore.

We then go on to visit one of the most luxurious hotels in the world, the Atlantis. We park in the big car parks, and enter from the back through a little service door; here at once we see a SPA pool with bubbles; I strip down to my costume and try to get in, but the water is too hot, impossible to enter, so, as if I were a guest, I report it to the staff in the gym area: it looks like a pot to cook a chicken in.

Entering from the back we missed the entrance hall, but as we made our way in, walking towards the pools, we realise why this hotel is among the top in the world: tanks left and right with sharks and rays inside, fabulous fountains and giant pools, surrounded by palms, with even a long tube where the tourist is thrown down into the shark pool, so that when I went in I was surrounded by the sharks, but protected by fibreglass.

The building, about twenty floors high, pink in colour, very wide and visible from the sea, has its presidential suites on the highest floors; we don't dare ask the price per night. It's known that the Bahamas are already on the pricey side.

303 thousand inhabitants; here they have the Bahamian dollar, but the English influence is very high, just like Bermuda, which isn't far. It's a tax haven like the Cayman Islands.

In the evening we take the car and cross in the opposite direction one of the 2 bridges that go from the little island where the Atlantis is located to the mainland; strange, 2 bridges both one-way, you never know if one might collapse.

We return the car near the port, and set off again with the Monarch of the Seas.

Bye