The trip down was fairly uneventful. We flew from Boston to San Juan and had a 3 3/4 hour layover. Not much fun. The worst part of it was having to eat dinner at the airport. They have nothing good and needless to say our hotdogs were filling but ... ick.

They put us on a little shuttle bus to the plane. Then made us stay on the bus parked at the plane. We couldn't get out until the last flight attendant showed up. So we waited packed liked sardines, with most people standing getting tired. Our driver started an announcement, first in Spanish. Some rude person shouted that they wanted it in English. They could have just waited, they always did English afterwards. Ah well. We finally got on the plane. It was quite a short hop to St. Thomas. In a couple of minutes we had our bags and were out.

Then we got in line for the taxi. Taxis are slightly different than in Boston. They are all vans and they pack as many people in as they can. We had four couples in ours. The man sitting next to us said he was staying at the Marriott, at Frenchman's Reef. This was the same resort we stayed at last time, but we stayed at the Morningstar, on the beach. Since we had been there before, he quizzed us on what to do on the island. We told him all the things that we had done.

Once in Charlotte Amalie we saw a small party going on at the flea market area. It looked like lots of people drinking rum. Our hotel was just up the hill from the flea market area, but the driver forgot that he had to drop us at Hotel 1829 so he had to turn around and come back.

Hotel 1829 is, as the name suggests, an old historic hotel. There was a nice man that met us at the gates and knew exactly who we were without asking. I guess when the hotel is so small it is easier to know who is who. He took us up to our room, room #2. It was described when I booked it as a Deluxe Harbor View Room. And indeed there was a nice view of the harbor. Our room had character. It was not just another hotel room. The walls were brick and rock, and very old. The ceiling was quite high and didn't have your typical white paint. You could see the beams and wood of the roof. There are no windows as such in our room. We had two doors that opened out onto our balcony. There is no glass on the doors; they have slats with screens behind the slats. Though the wood in places was obviously not as old as the building it preserved the nature of the old building. It however doesn't let in any light, so if you like a lot of natural light, you wouldn't like this room. Our bed was a bamboo platform bed with mosquito netting over it. It gave a very exotic feel to the room. The only thing that seemed very out of place in the room was the air conditioner. It was noisy and didn't' match the decor. If I thought Joel could sleep easily with the air conditioner off, I would have shut it off and opened the doors.

The inside of the hotel had character too. The stairs going up to the pool twisted around. There we pots of plants going up the stairs. It was all really quite lovely and had an old but well loved feel to it.

The pool is in the upper courtyard. It is very small, but I wanted a quick dip before bed. We had it all to ourselves, which was good since it was as I said, small.