St. Thomas

Wednesday we were so excited to get to go ashore again. Mainly because we were wanting to go snorkeling again. So first we got up and enjoyed a great breakfast and got to watch as we came into port. St. Thomas was beautiful! We got some good pictures as we watched.

It was amazing to watch as we docked this time. They basically parallel parked the huge ship between two other ships. It was crazy how close we got. After enjoying that we went through emigration and headed off to explore the city.Looking very much like a tourist checking out the map on where we wanted to go.We caught an open air taxi and went down and walked around. We found a really neat shop with a few things that we were interested in buying for the kids and that was when we realized that we didn't have much money with us. We had left our cards back on the boat and only had enough cash for the taxi ride back to the boat. We split up thinking that Hans could go back and get the money while I walked around some more of the shops. That seemed to work fine until we met up again and Hans hadn't made it back to the boat. There had been a big traffic jam and so he ended up waiting for me so we could go back together. So sadly we didn't end up buying the things we wanted.

We went back to the ship for our lunch. This picture was taken as we sat in the dinning area. It was so beautiful to see the sailboats all sitting there. After lunch we had a great shore excursion. It was Captain Nautica Snorkeling. We met and went out on a speed boat to the two snorkeling sites. The boats were fast and it was fun to hit the waves. This was by far our favorite shore excursion.
Oh - the finger got in the way on this oneThis snorkeling area was a lot more sandy and so there were actually quite a few sea turtles. It was so fun to watch them. If you held still by them they would come up right next to you to get air then swim right back down again. At this site we also saw a stingray. We didn't get too close for the picture so it is hard to see. After about an hour we got back on the boat and headed over to another site. At this site there was a sunken ship that we could see. We had fun swimming all around the coral and seeing all the different fish. These fish were so cool. They followed us around as we would swim. Seriously at least one was with us at all times. I actually got pretty good at staying underwater.This is one of my favorite fish that we saw. The picture doesn't do it justice. It is the blueish-purple thing. It was small and it looked like it was under a black light. The spots basically glowed. It likes to hang out in the fire coral. Heading back to St. Thomas. Snorkeling for two hours wore us out.


After we got back we took a sky rail up to Paradise Point. It was beautiful. The sun was just starting to set.

And the final picture of the day......our towel monkey