2nd Port of Call - Charlotte Amalie,St. Thomas

We arrived at the peer in St. Thomas at 7 am.  Terry and Mark were headed for an excursion on a catamara to go snorkling at a ship wreck.  Joe, Julie, Marc and I signed up for a open bus tour of the Island.  Marc was really sentimental about being back on the island he had once lived on, rode his horse on, gone to grade school.  I somehow put a card in my camera that limited my ability to take lots of pics and after taking 22 pics Marc had to reformat the card and I lost those first pics.  Sad, but after that Joe and I both got some great pics.  The morning was cloudy and foggy.  If we knew better we would have taken an afternoon tour when the weather cleared up and we could have seen the Islands better, but live and learn.  

Sailing into Port.

 Looking down on the shopping district from the bus tour.

 You can see our ship (one in the middle) on the left and the town of Charlotte Amalie

 Our first stop had us looking out on Tu Tu Village in the distance where Marc's family lived.

One of the stops was to look down over Magen's Bay.  Marc knew more about the Island than our bus driver did and the driver often referred people to ask Marc questions.

 One of our stops was at Mountain Top.  This building was full of things to buy and had a beautiful view of the islands.

 Open sided tour trucks we rode on.

We got off the tour truck at this old building and walked over to an open air market.

This is Blue Beards where Grandpa Bill used to play piano for a living.  You can see the castle in the center with blue shutters on it.

We walked beside the water down to where Marc had his picture taken reading the paper on his horse and then down to the airport where a plane was coming in.  Brought back many memories for Marc.

Marc said it was around here that he had ridden his horse the day of the pic.  Here he is 47 years later.

This is BlackBeard's Castle

Looking across the bay we saw this old pirate ship taking some people on an excursion.  Cool!

After walking down the diamond district (where Marc had to keep reminding me we were remodeling our kitchen and still needed to buy a stove)we ate some native cuisine at a place recommended called Cuzzins.  Marc had Curried Conch, others had curried dishes.  We had to be back on the ship at 3 so we started walking back to the ship when a taxi driver bugged us until we finally got a good deal on a ride back to the ship.  Once in the taxi van the driver tried to pull out in front of a lady's car and got behind her.  She drove as slow as she could while he and she kept yelling back and forth out their windows at each other all the way to the shopping mall across from the ship.  We could have walked back faster, but the amusement was worth the taxi ride.

This is the Hotel on the Key where Marc's family stayed when they first moved to St. Thomas.  This pic was taken as we were leaving St. Thomas.