St. Thomas

 Sunday March 23 - St. Thomas

St. Thomas is one of the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea and is a territory of the United States. It is one of three territories in the U.S. Virgin Islands which also includes St. Croix (the biggest) and St. John (the smallest). It was colonized by the Dutch and then the Danish and was purchased by the United States in 1917. St. Thomas does have its own local government but is subject to U.S. laws because it is an unincorporated territory. St. Thomas has a population of about 51,000 people and is 83 square km.

We had originally planned to head to Magen's Bay, which is a beach we've been to before and really like, but the weather was not cooperative. When we arrived in port they made an announcement telling us to bring our raincoats and umbrellas so we decided to walk into the capital city instead of going to the beach. 

Later in the day the weather did improve... we probably could have gone to the beach... but we enjoyed our time in Charlotte Amalie anyway.

The walk from the Havensight Cruise Pier to the town of Charlotte Amalie is about 2.1KM and takes about 30 minutes. It's an easy, flat walk on sidewalks and paved pathways.

When we arrived in town we noticed it seemed cleaner and a little more spruced up since we were last here. We walked through town and looked at the shops (it feels like every second store is a jewelry shop!)

One of the weird things we noticed on our walk is that none of the crosswalk signs worked. As a rule follower I pressed a lot of buttons to change the crosswalk sign to a walk sign... and waited patiently... but the lights never changed. Be careful when you are walking in St. Thomas, drivers are on the left side, pedestrian lights don't work, and pedestrians don't appear to have the right of way!

On the way back to the ship we found a great local book store and I was able to find a book that looked interesting by a local author. Yay books!

Just before we returned to the ship we got a thin mint frosty. It was definitely tasty… but had WAY too much sugar!

For the rest of the day we just hung out and did vacation type stuff 😃