March Break - St Thomas

Our next port of call was in the US Virgin Islands at St Thomas. We had a longer stay than in the Bahamas so it gave us a chance to visit without feeling rushed. We started off by taking a taxi to the beach at Magens Bay. This was an absolutely beautiful beach that put the one at Nassau to shame. The weather was beautiful, the water was calm; it was the perfect place to relax.

Here, the gang poses (if what Adam is doing can be called posing) on the taxi ride.

One very valuable lesson we learned on this cruise is that visiting places without using the ship-associated excursions is MUCH cheaper. I think the total cost for the three of us for the taxi ride to and from the ship was under $50 ($8 each, one way). In comparison, the excursion cost around $40/per person! This won't work in all cases, but if you're just looking for a beach, going with the locals is the way to go.

There's not much else to say about the beach itself so here are the photo highlights.

The taxi ride back had some good opportunities for pictures of the harbor and our cruise ship. Being a mediocre photographer, I didn't make the most of the opportunities, but you should at least get an idea of what it was like.

We had lunch at a restaurant that the taxi driver recommended. I can't complain since they had jerk chicken, and that's one of my favorite seasonings. We also spent a bit of time in the shopping district, but I didn't think to take a picture of anything. The highlight for me was buying a 1 liter bottle of Absolute Mango vodka for $15. We then poured it into our water bottles and smuggled it back on the ship. It was pretty good stuff, but by the end of the trip, I'd had about enough mango-flavored drinks.

Before we got back on the ship, we got Lucas to pose in front of it.

This last picture was actually taken in the morning, before we left the ship. I wanted to included it since it shows one of Lucas's favorite features of the room: the porthole. The way our room was set up, the porthole was recessed and had about 2-3 feet of ledge space. Not only did it give Lucas a place to sit and play with his action figures, but he and his buddies had a blast jumping off of it onto our bed.

Next up: the last port of call, St Maarten!