St Thomas and cruising

 Saint Thomas and the first Cruise day.

We arrived at Saint Thomas early, had some breakfast and then joined our tour activity, which was Magens Bay, Drake's Seat and the Pirates Museum.

Arriving at St Thomas

We had a guided tour through the town of Charlotte Amalie, then visited the Pirate and Shipwreck museum.  It was really interesting, all the exhibits were authentic and they even had a real size replica of the machine that collects the items from the bottom of the sea.  It has collected over 60,000 coins, one at a time.  There were lots of things there, not just coins.  If they find the bell, then they can identify the wreck, without the bell they are listed as unidentified. 

Some of the bells they found

It was really interesting, we both enjoyed it.  They had lots of interactive parts were you could control the exhibit and zoom or locate things. 

A gun and musket balls found on a wreck

She was going to enclose me in that thing...

They did have their rules to live by

And their own lingo...

Some of the magnets at the pirate museum gift shop, I didn't buy any.

We then drove up the mountain to Drakes Seat. which had nice views, but not sure who Drake was, the guide referred to him as a pirate, but also that he had the queens blessing, so not sure if it is the same Drake, or a different one... No idea, but his seat was boring, just a bench on a hill.

A sticker on the guard rail at Drake's seat, what can I say!!

A view from somewhere, who knows, but it was on St Thomas.

Then we went to the beach, which was a really nice beach, but very crowded and like in Greece, you had to pay for a deck chair and umbrella, $20 please.  We didn't do that, we sat up at bar/restaurant and had a small meal and some drinks. 

So crowded, people everywhere.  I am used to my quiet beach, rarely see anyone.

We met our first Aussie of the trip, she came to us, as she recognised our accents.  They are on a 3 week cruise and she isn't happy, they paid about $15000.00 and they still have to pay for drinks etc, not much is included.  We were horrified, we have to pay for our drinks too, they are not included, but we paid just of over $1000.00 for this one and about $1300.00 for the next one.  We are so happy with ours, I can't even imagine wasting that kind of money on a cruise... The way she talked they do it every year and usually are quite happy.  Not this year though... Some people have too much money for their own good.

It was a nice beach, our view from our bar stools

We came back to the ship and spent some time just chilling, then we went for dinner at the Windjammer, which is a buffet type eatery, on the deck 11, thank God for elevators.  It was really good.  We then played one hand of Pony, before Kearie had to go to get her charm for the day. We still collect charms from the places we visit, but not everywhere has them these days, they normally have the Pandora one's which we do not collect.  Anyway she wanted to do a guess the end of the lyrics game, but decided against it when she found out you had to stand up and sing in front of everyone.  So we decided on another game of pony.  And she flogged me, which was annoying as I was beating her before we stopped for her activities and we didn't count that one, and started afresh.

We didn't head to bed until late and I had an amazing sleep.

Today we head to Saint Maartens Island

Talk again soon

Lones