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Day 5: St. Thomas- US Virgin Island:

Everyone on the ship was up early on day 5 of the cruise. This was necessary because the entire ship's compliment, including all passengers and crew, were required to clear U.S. customs before anyone would be allowed to disembark for activities ashore. For those of you who aren't aware, St. Thomas is a United States territory and therefore all the rules and regulations for entering mainland USA apply to the island of St. Thomas as well. The ship docked at Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas at approximately 7:20 a.m. and customs clearance started shortly after. Since we are Canadian citizens we had to go to the Hudson Room, and since there weren't that many Canadians aboard the ship, this process was rather quick, so there was lots of time to enjoy a nice breakfast with the whole family. After breakfast, we prepared for our day in St. Thomas. We had a busy day planned... first there was a gondola ride up to Paradise point, then some shopping, and since we missed out on the Jet-ski excursion at Half Moon Cay, it was our intention to seek out a private beach to find some rental jet-skis.


Pulling into St. Thomas
Pulling into St. Thomas

Carnival Cruiseline's Victory
The Vitory pulling in behind us

We were finally given the "all-clear" by US customs at about 9:00 am and we slapped on more sunscreen and headed ashore. As we were disembarking, we saw the Carnival ship- Victory pull into port and take up the spot behind the Zuiderdam. It was again a beautiful sunny and HOT day in the Caribbean... about 31°C actually and getting hotter by the hour, so we headed for the air conditioning. The shopping in St. Thomas is almost legendary... and very rewarding since there is no duty or sales taxes in the USVI, jewelry and gemstones are very inexpensive when compared to prices at home! (This was of particular interest to Angie...) . There is a huge shopping district right off the main dock area where the cruise ships are. Havensight Shopping Center is made up of a number of pavilions and each one had a wide selection of jewelry stores, liquor stores, camera shops, small electronics stores, fragrance & perfume stores, music stores, sunglass shops and of course souvenir and clothing stores. We only had about an hour or so before we had to meet for our tram ride up the "mountain" so we browsed around for a bit. We couldn't believe the prices on jewelry! Liquor prices were also very tempting, but we had to contend with the importation limitation for alcohol when arriving back in Canada so we had to restrict ourselves to one bottle each. Angie found a beautiful tri-gold bracelet but later decided against it in favour of the 2 carat diamond/ gold tennis bracelet for which I paid a fraction of what it would have cost me back home.

We had to pry ourselves away from the shops to head over to the tram, since we had previously arranged to meet up with Mom and Dad. Paradise Point is a Lookout at the top of a mountain on the Island of St. Thomas. One could drive there, but it was much more fun and a lot faster to take the Gondola tram to the top. The views from there were spectacular and there is also a bar where one could get some refreshments... and a parrot show, but I got in trouble with the woman looking after the parrots. I wasn't allowed to take pictures, because she wanted to sell me hers instead which were way over priced in my opinion and they also didn't include my children, so I didn't see the point. Anyway, the tram ride only took about 5 minutes and in no time we were overlooking the port and town of Charlotte Amalie in St. Thomas. Here are some pictures:


A steel drum ban greets us in Charlotte Amalie
On our way up (The red roofs are the shopping pavillions)

A Fujifilm Moment (Sorry Kodak!)
The view from Paradise Point

The view from Paradise Point
Our Ship as seen from Paradise Point

Cool drinks overlooking Paradise Point
Cool drinks overlooking Paradise Point

The Monkeys overlooking Paradise Point
Talking w/ the parrots (Just before I got in trouble!)
 
From here we all split up into several groups; Jim, Rebecca, Angie and the girl's wanted to do some more shopping, Mom and Dad had booked a tour of the Island, and Joe, Wendy, Robbie and myself went in search of jet-ski’s. We learned from Michael (who's from Milton, Ontario) and Stefani (both from the ship's excursion personnel), that Coki Beach, a small private beach on the other side of the island near Coral World would have what we were looking for, so we enlisted the help of Clarence a local taxi driver to take us there. Clarence was approved by the Cruise line- you have to make sure you don't just hire anyone, because this could cause big problems...  Clarence said he knew exactly where to go, and he even knew the people that ran the small jet-ski rental business, so we definitely got the right guy. It took about 20 minutes to get there and he hooked us up with the guy with the jet-ski's, but that there would be about a 45 minute wait since they were already booked. No problem, so we paid Clarence and asked him if he could come back in a couple hours. We made arrangements to meet back at this spot at 3:00 pm.

By this time it was extremely hot, about 35° or more... so we set out on the private beach in search of a cold beer and a quick bite to eat. We found a small restaurant named "Crab Shack" which as it turns out was very appropriately named since it is quite literally not much more than a shack on the beach, but it had just what we were looking for: cold beer, a shaded seating area overlooking the beach and a couple of hot dogs, except Robbie got a coke! The beach was very picturesque and we could see the people out on the bay swooshing along on their jet-ski's... man did that look fun. Both Robbie and I were very excited, since neither of us had ever been on one before. After our refreshments we headed back over to the jet-ski "dude" (He really was a "dude" in every sense of the word!) and took care of the formalities and basic operation and rules etc. We hopped aboard, Joe on one and Robbie and I on another, while Wendy stayed ashore to catch some rays and take some pictures... We headed out of the marina area slowly since we were in a "no-wake" zone. Once we were out far enough we opened it up and had the time of our lives. We had to be careful not to kick up too much spray, because the salt water stung our eyes, but we got the hang of it fairly quickly. I even let Robbie drive it for a bit, even though the "dude" said he was too young, I figured what he didn't know... and I was right there with him in case something happened. The half hour went by in no time and we had to go back in. Back on shore we went to have a look at the pictures, but Wendy wasn't fully aware of the intricacies of Joe's Fujifilm camera, and when she thought she was taking a picture, the camera was just beeping to indicate that the lighting/ focus etc was OK. She didn't know that the button had to be held down for a split second longer... as a result we didn't get any pictures of us actually on the jet-ski's :(. Oh well, she felt bad, but we reassured her that it was OK, because that just gave us an excuse to do it again some other time! 

Clarence showed up exactly when he was supposed to, and since we had some time before we had to be back at the ship, we asked him to take us for a tour of the island and show us around a bit. He gladly obliged and off we went to see St. Thomas. He took us all around the island and through the areas that were damaged in the hurricane a couple years back, explaining that most of the buildings and homes have been rebuilt since then. He showed us the business district and an upscale neighbourhood explaining that a number of famous people make St. Thomas their vacation home since it is a U.S. territory. He explained the history of St. Thomas and when the USA bought it along with St. Croix and St. John from the Danish in 1917 for $25 million in an effort to improve there military positioning during WW-I. He also showed us a number of exclusive resort hotels and the vacation destination of former U.S. President Bill Clinton. He also pointed out all the Mango trees and those beautiful red-blossomed trees called (appropriately enough) Flamboyant Trees. We stopped along the way for a cold Rum drink, with some wickedly potent Jamaican Rum. I can't remember the name of it, but it was mixed with some kind of banana smoothie type mix.... It was very good.
 

The Pavillion at Coral World Marine Park
Coki Beach across from the marina where we went Jet-skiing

Our View of Coki Beach from the Crab Shack
Our Jet-skis

The rest of the Marina where we went Jet-Skiing
A Hotel in St. Thomas

Quite a View from up here
Robbie having a conversation with a Parrot

Just 2 cruise ships in port today: Zuiderdam and Victory
Magen's Bay resort in St. Thomas

Yachts achored at Magen's Bay
An appropriately named Flamboyant Tree

After our tour of the island, it was starting to get late in the afternoon and since we were due to set sail at 6:00 pm, and we still had to get ready for dinner, Clarence brought us back to the ship, where we thanked him very much for the tour. Both Joe and I gave him $60.00 which he said was very gracious. I asked Wendy and Joe if they could bring Robbie back to the ship and that I would meet them back at the ship soon as I had one last errand to attend to. Since jewelry is so inexpensive here and since Angie's birthday was only a couple weeks away, I went back to the store where we saw that tri-gold bracelet she liked, bought it and headed back to the ship. Now all I had to do is keep it a secret until her birthday!

I got back to the stateroom just in time to get cleaned up and dressed for dinner. I later found out that Angie had made a few additional purchases herself, a silver chain (it's not a necklace dad!) for Robbie and new watches for each of the girls as well as some souvenirs for some friends back home. Dinner was excellent as usual and we spent the entire time talking about our different experiences that day. The girls had some activities planned with Club Hal, but Robbie said he and some of his friends (which I later found out were all girls), wanted to see the magic show in the Vista Lounge- the on-board 3 storey theater at the front of the ship where they have "Vegas" style shows and other entertainment events. This was fine with us, so off he went. We actually checked out the magic show ourselves and that's when we found out he was chumming with 3 other girls. The one named Astrid was of particular interest... The show ended around the same time as Club HAL so I went to tuck the kids in bed for the night and would meet up with everyone else later in the Crow's Nest. After saying goodnight to the girls I discovered Robbie wasn't back yet either?! I called him on the walkie-talkie and he didn't respond, so I went looking. I eventually found him in the video games room just below the casino! He said he didn't hear the walkie-talkie because all the noise in the arcade and the casino above... at least that was his story and he has (so far) stuck to it.

I finally got him to bed and went looking for Angie, Jim, Joe, and Wendy in the Crow's Nest. (Mom and Dad had since gone to bed after the magic show). Anyway, The Crow's Nest is at the foremost part of the upper most deck and by design, most of this deck is open air... As I came out of the elevator, I saw water flowing into the hallway under the doorway and discovered that we were having quite a thunderstorm outside! I didn't think much of it at the time, and went looking for everyone in the bar. Arnold told me that they had moved to Northern Lights, so off I went. Upon entering the hallway again, I saw that the water had reached the stairway at this point and was starting to flow down the stairs... it reminded me of that scene in "Titanic" with the water flowing down the stairs, only the stairs were carpeted and the water was obviously far less, since it was just rain water... well you get the picture. Anyway, I pressed the elevator button and waited... when it did arrive, 3 teenage girls came out and saw the water... jokingly I mentioned that scene in Titanic and they all freaked out, until I explained it was just rain water! Man, teenagers are impressionable! I will have to remember that in a couple years when my own kids reach that age... could come in handy! I met up with everyone else and we called it a night shortly afterwards having had our fill of excitement for the day.

Forward to Day 6: At Sea:
 
  

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Last modified: September 10, 2005.