I was up and in the gym around 9 AM on our St. Thomas day, and thankfuly it wasn't crowded at all. Unfortunately, when we headed to the breakfast buffet on the Lido at about 9:40...it was VERY much so (crowded, I mean). The pancakes were good but the butter was rock hard, so much so that there was no chance of it melting enough to be edible. Sad. They also had this little bacon-and-egg "flan" thing (it seemed like more of a quiche to me, though when I removed it from its little cup I saw from the bottom whey they called it "flan") that was really good.
We decided to debark around 10:45 or so, though we weren't meeting for our excursion - the St. John Champagne Catamaran Sail - until noon-ish. I wanted to wander around the port area a little bit. Surprise surprise...there was a Senor Frog's right off the ship...
Now, we were able to pretty much get right off the ship, but we met some people who had an earlier excursion and said that trying to debark earlier was a nightmare. I can't speak for exactly what happened other than to say that apparently there were some problems, though.
The Valor was in port with us this day! Second time I've been on a Carnival cruise and ended up in port with the first Carnival ship I ever sailed :)
Just past Senor Frog's and around the corner (about a 10 minute walk from the ship) was a shopping area. Though I'd been to St. Thomas before it was nearly 12 years ago so I"m not sure how long this shopping area has been there, but I didn't remember it. However, it wasn't quite as touristy as the new shopping areas that you walk into when you get off a Carnival ship in Grand Turk (more on that later) or Mahogany Bay on Roatan.
We met for our excursion and boarded open-air van/truck things for a 20-ish minute drive to the harbor. Parts of the drive were pretty crazy/harrowing! I hadn't seen anyone comment on this before and I'm honestly surprised about that.
Anyway, we were told to take off our shoes as we boarded the catamaran, and they had sodas and water if we wanted it (the rum punch/mimosas/champagne were for after snorkeling, of course). Our catamaran was the Adventuress and our crew was Garen, a girl whose name escapes me (maybe Dani?), and the captain, Cody/Cory. (Yeah...I'm not good with names, especially if I only meet people once, haha)
We motored TO St. John and I want to say it took a little over an hour. Throughout the trip the crew told us about St. John, St. Thomas, pointed out other little islands, etc.
Approaching St. John:
The female crew member, Dani or whatever her name was. haha.
The captain:
Honeymoon Beach, St John: FINALLY!
Garen pointing out the resort off to the left (well, our left, the beach's right) of Honeymoon Beach:
Now, once they anchored the catamaran we had two choices - to swim off the boat or to take the dinghy to the shore. Now, Steve and I are strong swimmers and definitely could have jumped off the boat, but we wanted to go to the beach! So onto the dinghy we went. We did have to wait about 10-15 minutes to do so, and that thing is definitely TINY and all, but it is what it is. They literally *can't* pull the catamaran up to shore so you take what you can get.
Looking out over the beach after dropping off our things:
Looking out over the water from Honeymoon Beach:
Once we had spread out towels and whatnot, it was time for some snorkeling! Stay tuned for many, many snorkeling pictures in my next update ;)
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