Wednesday, January 7, 2015

St Thomas in the afternoon!

So.....back to it! We left off with still about 3 or 4 hours of time in St. Thomas and no plan! As I mentioned on our San Juan day, I'm a planner, and this really isn't like me to not have a plan, so we had to come up with something! There was no way I was going back on the ship. I'm not only a planner, but I'm a doer. If you ever read my other reviews, you can see that when we travel, we like to really make the most of our time in ports! So, I mentioned that I had heard about the Banana Daiquiri and the amazing view up on the Mountain Top, so the question was, how to get there and how to best spend the time!

So we found the taxi stand and talked to one of the drivers. He basically told us that for just a little more than the price of a round trip taxi ride up to the Mountain Top and back, he'd give us an island tour, with a stop at the Mountain Top and take us back to the ship when we were done. So, there we have it! We got a nice island tour. I want to say it was about $15/person but can't quite remember. It may have been a bit more or maybe less! 

The downside was that we were exhausted from the snorkeling, so it was a bit hard to stay awake for the drive. I think Keith and Alex fell asleep as soon as we started driving! But our driver drove us around and told us about the different neighborhoods we were going through. He talked about his life, which was colorful! And then we stopped at some stands and mainly just took some pictures. It overlooked an airstrip. Also overlooked the Allure, or maybe it was the Oasis!
















We drove up to Mountain Top and our driver told us we had about 30 minutes or so to walk around the store, check out the view and whatever else we wanted to do. I really liked his laid back attitude. He was pretty much on our time and that was nice!


If you couldn't find a souvenir here, I'm pretty sure you weren't going to find one anywhere on the island! It was a bit crowded, but not overwhelming at all.




There was a bar at the back making the daiquiri's and I decided to get the one with the souvenir cup. Why not! And do I have a picture? No....boy, I was falling down on the photo requirements this trip! I actually had just come back from a business trip to Mexico the previous week and had less than 12 hours at home to unpack, do laundry and re-pack, so I think I was still recovering from the whirlwind turnaround! But still - it's not like me to miss all of these photo ops!

Here we are outside - one of the few group shots of all four of us! Oh, Keith does have the souvenir cup in hand! Whew!




The view was just stunning....






























We made another stop on the way back to the ship. Another photo stop and some more vendors selling things there. Here there was a really nice view of the ships in port.









Our driver brought us back to the ship in plenty of time, but not so much time that I felt like we had time left wasted that we could have spent it in port, know what I mean? 

We really enjoyed our time in St. Thomas and I was glad that we chose to stay in St. Thomas instead of heading to St. John. I'm sure we'll be back here some day and that will definitely be an option, but for our first time here, this was a great port day for us! 

Keith and I went up to Lawn for sail away. Did I mention that the ship has a lawn?  Yes, the top deck has actual grass on it.  I know I mentioned in passing and posted a few pictures of this area, but it's really a pretty unique feature of this class of the Celebrity ships.  The "Lawn" area....

So, we went up to the lawn and watched the Coast Guard boat clear us (I assume) for sailing out. 






This one is through the glass on the deck, so there's a bit of reflection









And now it was time for dinner....tonight would be Qsine! I was really looking forward to this! Keith and I went to Qsine back on our cruise on the Eclipse and really enjoyed it. I knew Megan would love it, but Alex, my picky eater....well, I'm not sure what he's going to think!

No comments:

Post a Comment