Our last day :<. We lazed about in bed reading. Then decided to have our first sit down breakfast of the trip. We ate at Tavern on the Beach (at the hotel). I had the French toast and Joel had the waffle. They were both good.
We contemplated what to do with our last hours on the island. We hadn't been up to the hills yet so we took a tour. As we were waiting for our driver to come, I noticed some of the same paintings that I saw last night. The artist, Mitch Gibbs, was here selling his prints. He was quite nice and I ended up buying two, both of which he signed for us. One of the paintings was of our beach at the resort. Joel liked that one the best. I liked the one in town the best, because I liked the style he did it in. The artist said he also liked that style the best.
Our tour driver waited about 5 minutes for me to pay the artist, and then it was off on our tour. We stopped at three places. The first was an overlook of town, probably the most beautiful of the overlooks. The second was Drake's Seat, which had the best view of Megan's bay. The third was Mountain Top. At Mountain Top, the driver dropped us off for about half and hour to look around and go through the shops. It had good view of the other Virgin Islands, but the haze kept it from being quite as spectacular has the harbor overlook.
We asked the taxi driver to drop us off in Charlotte Amalie, instead of returning to the hotel, so we could eat lunch. We went back to Glady's to have more chowder. It wasn't as good this time as last. That is not to say it was bad, but now it was just good, not great. Then we went to a little hole in the wall (literally) and bought a meat pate to bring back and eat at the hotel.
We just made the 1pm ferry. We were the only ones on the ferry and our captain was quite nice. When we got off the iguanas were lined up on the rocks sunning themselves. We got in our Kodak (now Canon) moments. Joel was trying to take photos of the surf crashing against the rocks. I stood in the shade (I had no suntan lotion on and a sleeveless top) and tried to keep from burning. I ate half the pate waiting for Joel to get his photos then went down to the hotel lobby to have a drink. I ordered a bushwhacker, but the hotel version was awful compared to the one I had at the Wahoo last night.
After our drinks it was off to the airport and zipping through customs. On the way to the airport, Joel asked if I could live here. I told him yes, but where would we get a job? He said we could create a company down here. I thought it would be hard to find employees, its not like Boston where there are programmers everywhere. We figured we'd have to go on talent hunts on the mainland and find smart kids in the high school and train them ourselves. Ah, such dreams, it is hard to leave paradise.
When we got home our driveway was icy and a storm was on the way, but we found two stowaways on our lawn. The two pink flamingos seemed to be quite cold!
I recommend the taxi tour of the island. The drivers are very nice and it is the best way to get to the top of the mountain for the best views. Yes, I know, it seems like a very touristy thing to do. But, we were tourists after all.
Our trip to St. Thomas was very nice. With the stress of possibly changing jobs, I really needed this vacation. It was great to just relax and not worry about anything other than whether we would run out of compact flash memory for more pictures. I would not have minded a few more days, but we had the kids to worry about.
I love traveling with Daphne and without the kids. Don't get me wrong; I also like vacationing with the kids. It's just more of a vacation without them. I want to thank my mother for watching them over Christmas. I hope she is still speaking to me.
Gould Home Page | Travel Index
Text and images © Copyright 2000 Joel and Daphne Gould. If there are any problems or questions email Daphne Gould.