Our 4th day on the cruise dawned warm and sunny with the calm seas we had become so used to. We were already on our way into Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas.
This might be the place to mention a couple of crazy coincidences we experienced on the cruise.
I mentioned earlier that we were stuck with Celebrity Select Dining. Instead of changing to early Traditional Dining the first day, we decided to give it a try. On the second night we had to wait with a pager, then the wait staff took us down to the Traditional dining area anyway.
We were seated next to Tom and Debra. Weasked where they were from: “Ontario,Canada.”
So we told them we lived in Almonte. They knew where that was. Deb had lived in Ottawa for a while.
They told us they lived in a small town between Belleville and Kingston called Deseronto. I told them I grew up there. We knew a whole bunch of people in common. I went to high school with one of her best friends.
We tried to get the table next to Tom and Deb for the rest of the cruise but the Maitre d’ told us it was booked. However he was able to reserve another table for us in Traditional Early Dining.
When we eventually got to this table we met Catherine and Judd from York, SC. However Catherine was also born in Canada. Turns out she went to Queen’s University (so did we.) She even lived on Earl Street in Kingston – where Maria grew up. Crazy coincidences to be sure.
Back to St. Thomas. We were soon on our way into the town of Charlotte Amalie.
We docked at the Crown Bay Pier and since we were a 30 minute walk from Downtown and not in a particularly scenic area, we took a truck taxi downtown with 12 or so other cruisers.
Where we got off the taxi we soon met some of the local residents. No feral cats to be seen but St. Thomas does have feral chickens.
Lots of nice flowers around as well.
St. Thomas is a former Danish territory now owned by the USA. Dronningens Gade means Queen St. in Danish but nowadays it also goes by Main Street. St. Thomas is a shopping Mecca for the Americans because they get quite a nice duty free allowance if they buy stuff here. The main drag is crowded with watch and jewelry shops.
Another view of Dronningens Gade. That is about as much Danish as we saw here.
We remembered these cool alleyways off the Main Street which contained a variety of shops and restaurants. You won’t miss any souvenirs in St. Thomas. Won’t go hungry either.
This is one of the nicer side streets.
Nice little fountain at the other end of the Riise Mall.
Another pretty side street. I think we picked up our souvenirs near here.
It was getting hot and humid and we had our souvenirs, so we grabbed another taxi back to Crown Bay. The driver kindly took just the two of us – he didn’t try to get other passengers to share. On the way back he regaled us with stories of how expensive it was to live in St. Thomas. I guess tourism can be a mixed blessing for these folks.
Another coincidence – we were in port with an old friend. Adventure of the Seas was the ship we cruised on in 2022 when we visited the East Coast of the US and Canada. Nice to see her again.
Adventure of the Seas is about 20 years old now but she is looking great. Another classic cruise ship.
We were glad to be back on board as it was pretty warm and the port load in St. Thomas was about to increase by a fair amount.
Although the ship was docked in a rather industrial area the view from our side was pretty nice. So ended our port day in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas. See you tomorrow in Sint Maarten!