Oh, help me. It is 10pm, and, after four Breeza Marinas at the Most Traveled Passengers (MTP) party, I am just starting this post. Fortunately, while I still had 4G Internet in St. Thomas, I was busy uploading photo after photo to my blog (during dinner. Shoot me.), a most Internet-intensive task, so that all I had to do later was add some narrative. It's now time for that, so here goes...
First of all, I must say (just in case I run out of energy before I finish) that this was a really fun day.
I had set an alarm to get up early, and was in the DaVinci Dining Room for Breakfast with Darko shortly after 7am. I wasn't sure if G was going to make it or not (he was still happily snoozing when I snuck out of the cabin), so I didn't get him a chocolate croissant or his usual four juices. Instead, I sat alone, quite happily interneting with the free, unlimited 4G Internet service we get in St. Thomas. I was checking emails and downloading news, and on and on, until eventually G showed up and, together, we finalized our plans for the day.
Right way, we faced a disappointment. I had phoned the golf cart rental on Water Island yesterday from the ship (For free. Using Vonage. Get the app!) and inquired about a rental for today. Unfortunately, when I turned my phone on this mornng, I had received a text that there were none available.
Well....shoot. We really should plan in advance, but that's obviously not what we're about during our winter at sea. Instead, we decided to check out the wifi available at Crown Bay for $4 for the day. Darko filled us in, though. It wasn't fast, not at all. We want to download more videos from iTunes to watch on our cabin TV...it appeared St. Thomas wasn't the best place to do that. So, with no other plans for the day, we decided to take the 10am ferry over to Water Island anyway, even without a golf cart, and spend a beautiful day on the beach. We returned to the cabin, got ice from Raymond in the metal water bottles, and packed for the day. G fed the iguanas on the way over (one of them crawled part way up his leg, which caused a lady who was watching to shriek...that's MY entertainment).
Passing the Emerald Princess on the Water Island ferry provided a view of what it would look like if encountered head on at sea level...scary, and huge.
Wow. How things have changed on Water Island, just since we were last there in November. The bar tucked in on the end of the beach (it used to be called Joes), is now called Dinghy's. It's been bought by a guy from South Beach in Miami, and it's definitely changed things. There are umbrellas and loungers for rent ($20 for the day), and they have a shuttle that meets passengers at the ferry to pick you up and take you up the hill and down to the beach for free. What a way to draw in customers.
Well...how big time of them. We chose to walk, and to settle in on our same end of the beach, with our blue tarp and our Princess towels.
Our first view of Honeymoon Beach:
I love the shadow of the palm trees on the beach when we first arrived:
My view overhead:
More changes: a rope handrail to help swimmers climb out of the water:
The new umbrellas and loungers at Dinghy's:
Eventually, I made my way into the water for some not-too-impressive snorkeling (but the coral is slowly getting better):
Afterwards, I sat on a Swimways float and listened to an audiobook on my iPhone, one of my favorite things of the entire winter to do. My view as I did that:
Eventually; I saw the Fly Board, which can be rented at Dinghy's and strongly resembles a jet pack. It was quite entertaining to watch it, and I recorded a video that I uploaded to YouTube today.
What I didn't know is that, while I was doing all this, G had struck up a conversation with a couple on the beach. They were staying on Water Island for a week and were a military family. The next thing I knew (Grant and Cariol, Jan and Phil this won't surprise you in the least), Rick was offering us a tour of Water Island in his golf cart, and said he would afterwards take us to meet the 3:30pm ferry back to Crown Bay.
This was quite a thrill. We had never been beyond Honeymoon Beach (this falls into our "When was the last time we did something for the first time" type of thing to do), and it was quite interesting to see the rest of the island. It's very small...maybe two miles long by a half mile wide, which is why golf carts are the primary mode of transportation, but it's also very hilly and irregularly shaped.
View of St. Thomas from Water Island:
Typical toad condition on the southern end of the island:
Fort Segarra, built during WW II to protect the submarine base at Crown Bay:
The Virgin Islands campground features tents on elevated platforms for $175 per night:
The photo of the day...the view from Rick and Beth's rental property:
Rick and Beth's lanai. Their rental costs $2500 a week. Water Island is gorgeous. It is not cheap!
The northern coast of Water Island:
I was the keeper of the the clock; every 15 minutes I'd update G and Rick on the time. This whole personalized tour was not without its risks: we didn't really know Rick other than he was a marine for 28 years; we HAD to get on the 3:30pm ferry or miss the Emerald Princess; in the end, Rick's golf cart was so low on gas that he called his wife to follow us in their second golf cart in case he ran out; and if the 3:30pm ferry was full, we didn't have the option of waiting for a later one. But, as we always say, if we won't remember it 10 years from now, or if it will make a good story, it's not worth stressing over today. And so we didn't stress, just went along with whatever the day brought, and we arrived at the ferry dock just as the ferry arrived.
Whew.
I plugged in my iPhone the second we returned to the cabin; I was down to 2% battery level. It was a remarkable that I hadn't run out on our tour.
So, in the end, we had a great beach day, a snorkel day AND a golf cart tour of Water Island, even better because it was led by someone who's vacationed there for years.
We showered and dressed for the evening (there is no way to describe how stinky/ salty/ sweaty we were) and watched sailaway from the Promenade Deck.
The Water Island ferry dock:
Honeymoon Beach, as seen from the Emerald Princess at sailaway:
We were tired, thirsty and hungry, and started the evening at Dinner with Darko, and then went to this cruise's Most Traveled Passengers (MTP) party. The cutoff numbers are dropping a bit, just as they did last year at this time: 464 Princess days. We sat with friends Steve and Peggy and Jackie and Dave, and friend Alice, who we've also cruised with for years eventually joined us (I love the cocktail parties, because we can mingle), and, unsurprisingly we closed the party down again. Honestly, the socializing is one of the best parts of cruising, and I'm not usually a highly social creature.
It was 10pm before we returned to the cabin; 11:07pm as I finish typing this. I have recounted our entire day, albeit in a Readers Digest version. It was a wonderful day, one of the best of the entire winter, not least because I have a husband who will (and does) talk to everyone, and who, when we were disappointed that there was not a golf cart available for rent today on Water Island, found us an even better alternative. He's a keeper. (Although, when we were on the ferry back and he was explaining to some fellow passengers that he wanted to find me a job on the ship so he could cruise for free, and this guy looked at me and asked, "This is going in one ear and out the other, isn't it?" and I said, "Not even. After 30 years it skips right over my head.") He's a PITA, but he's still a keeper.