March 10 - St. Thomas

It’s Thursday and we’re in St. Thomas. We arrived early this morning and anchored at Crown Bay dock. I’ve never docked there. In the past we’ve always been at Havensight on the other side of Charlotte Amalie, but today our sister Princess ship the Grand Princess is there. We’re the only two ships here today so it isn’t as crowded today as I have sometimes seen it.

Katie left right after the ship was cleared for her diving trip. I went to the gym and after cleaning up headed out and about. I took one of the open-air jitneys to downtown. The main shopping street looked exactly as I remembered. It had been more than 9 years since we were last here, but not much seems to have changed. There are still tons of jewelry stores and shops selling liquor and perfume. I wonder about the liquor business since we can’t carry it on planes any more. And since weight restrictions are so stringent now. Well, it’s good because I’m not tempted to buy anything. I did a little window shopping, bought a few things and then headed back to the ship.

Katie got back around 12:30 PM and said she had a nice time diving. They did two dives. The first was to a depth of 62 feet and was a reef area. She saw lots of fish, some lobsters, barracuda and a couple of sea turtles. The second dive was to 42 feet to some sunken navy barges. She said it was pretty neat because she could swim in and out of them and , of course, they were teeming with sea life. Her underwater camera had condensation in it so we don’t know if the pictures will turn out. Surprisingly, here on the ship they no longer process film so we won’t know until we get home.

For dinner we went to the Crown Grill since the dining room menu didn’t appeal to us. Our friends decided to eat in the dining room so it was just the two of us. We had a delicious meal and left the table stuffed.

I’ve forgotten to mention that we’ve been playing Scrabble occasionally and Katie has been beating the pants off me. We’ve also had some heated discussions because she knows every two-letter word in existence (okay, perhaps I exaggerated) and some of them are totally obscure. Today, however, the tide changed and I won a game. It was good because I was becoming totally demoralized.