Swimming and Shopping

Thank you so much for all the positive words welcoming me back after my "hiatus!" I'm trying to get back into a new routine with overseeing the new house and packing up the old house, but the kids haven't started back to school yet, so it makes for interesting (and long!) days.

So--onto the trip recap! On this this day we headed into the town called Charlotte Amalie which is pretty tortisty because it's a port for giant cruise ships, but we wanted to check it out anyway.

The roads there were so twisty and mountainous that I almost immediately felt sick in the taxi cab and had to ask the driver to pull over--embarrassing!! Luckily, he took pity on me and drove really carefully for the rest of the trip.

Here is the view from atop one of the nausea-inducing peaks--you can see a HUGE ship out there:




Another view from way up of something called the 99 Stairs--but really there are 103 stairs--go figure!



We did some shopping in a fun outdoor market but I'm not showing any pics because I'm in all of them and look gross. The kids all bought t-shirts and fun shell necklaces and I got Pickle a cute tie-dyed dress.

We stopped for lunch at a great place called Cuzzins with lots of delicious food like fried plantains, curried conch and something called fungi which is mashed-up okra and corn meal. Also--I had a mango margarita!

Some of the streets were really narrow.
Here's the gang posing bu the water--you can see that cruise ship again.
Once we got back we were all exhausted and rested in the room for awhile, by by late afternoon we were all ready for a swim. It was a really nice hour to go swimming because the days were SO almost unbearably hot. It also made for some nice light for pictures.

Here's Pickle in the baby pool:
Practicing her floating:
A cute pic of Pickle and Gooser in the pool:
Patrick:


Teddy:

And Andy:

I also managed to get a semi-decent group shot:

That evening we decided to stay at the hotel for dinner and had a fantastic meal right on the ocean. I don't know if you can see the water in the pic because it was getting pretty dark--Pickle actually fell asleep during the meal.
Towards the end of dinner some crazy-strong winds started blowing in and wolfed down the rest of the food and ran for cover--but it was all sort of exciting and fun!

More tomorrow!