Charlotte Amalie

Wes, Alex, and Me Standing at the ICMC Office

Wednesday was Monica's last day down here.  We woke up late and just relaxed around the condo in the morning.  Her flight left around 2:30 and she wanted to stop off at the Barefoot Buddha for lunch, so we all piled into the car at 11:00 to head over to Charlotte Amalie.  The drive should have taken 25-30 minutes, but the traffic was horrible and it took us an hour just to get to Barefoot Buddha!  We found out later that the reason traffic was so bad was because there was a "suspicious package" at the post office and they were diverting all traffic in the city away from the main road by the post office.  It's beyond me who would actually send a bomb or anything dangerous to a post office in the Virgin Islands (besides perhaps someone from the BVI), so the whole situation was a little ridiculous.  

The traffic left Monica in a bit of a pickle though.  You're supposed to get to the St. Thomas airport 2.5-3 hours before your flight because their security is as slow as can be.  Even if Alex dropped Monica at the airport immediately, she was pushing the 2.5 hour window.  Yet she desperately wanted this sweet potato wrap from Barefoot Buddha...so much so that she was willing to risk missing her flight to get it.  As fate would have it, everything worked out fine.  Monica got her wrap and made it to the airport with plenty of time because the airport was nearly empty.

While Alex was dropping Monica off, Wes, Kati, and I walked around some of the shops in the port.  It was exactly what you would expect from shops tailored to cruisers - alcohol and jewelry marked up beyond belief.  Alex swept us back up after about 40 minutes and we spent most of the afternoon in town.

Kati in Front of the Governor's Mansion

Prior to walking around Charlotte Amalie, I had thought the town was pretty dumpy, but when you get into the areas preserved by the historic society, it's really stunning.  Most of the buildings were made from balustrade bricks deposited by ships in the 1700's and many have been recently restored, giving them a very unique and authentic feeling.  We parked at Alex's office, which looked more like a king's palace (fitting because it's where the King of the Virgin Islands used to live and it's located on a street that translates from Dutch into King's street).

We stopped off at this old Synagogue that was built in the early 1700's.  It still has a sand floor.  It was a very simple yet beautiful building that really encompassed Caribbean life.  The funny thing is that the Synagogue was on a hill and they sold kitchy shirts saying "I climbed Synagogue hill"...what the shirts didn't say is that Synagogue hill is only about 100 feet up.  Still, from walking around town, I think that climbing that hill is probably the hardest thing some of those cruise ship types have ever done in their lives (their local Walmarts certainly have no hills like that and at least they can drive around Walmart in their Rascals).  It was actually scary how many fat or old people were driving around the broken sidewalks of Charlotte Amalie in their Rascals...and then complaining when they couldn't get somewhere or would have to stand up to get into a safari.  

After a little more wandering around town and looking at the buildings and shops, we headed to the beach.  By the time we were going to the beach, it was about 3:00 in the afternoon, so we decided to stick close to home and go to a little beach near our condos.  It was a great little beach and made for a relaxing afternoon.

That evening we cooked a bit more of the fish we caught the day before.  We whipped up another batch of ceviche (this time using some of the Blackfin Tuna) to go along with some blackened Wahoo tacos.  The Wahoo tacos were especially phenomenal and I think we were all a bit sad that we didn't have anymore Wahoo for another night.

To finish off the night we went to a nearby bar called Latitude 18 to listen to some local music.  It's called Latitude 18 because that's the nearest meridian to St. Thomas (St. Thomas is really located at 18 degrees and some number of minutes).  The music was good - very tropical and relaxing.  Afterwards we came back to the condo and called it a fairly early night.