Day 8, Sunday, April 28 - Planes, Trains, Automobiles and Boat.

Sunday we had to regrettably return to the real world, you know...where the temperature is not always in the low 80s, with a breeze, and even if it rains, a few minutes later it is sunny and beautiful. 

Paul and Lisa had earlier flights, so said our goodbyes Saturday evening. They will fly to JFK and then to BTV.

Jean, Ed, June and Fred were on the same 4PM flight from St Thomas to Atlanta. From Atlanta, Jean and Ed fly to Albany, where they left their car, and we fly to Pensacola, where we left our RV. 

Since we had an afternoon flight, the four of us planned to explore St. Thomas, just a little bit, before we turned in the Jeep rental. We left our villa around 8:15AM and took the long way to the Cruz Bay ferry. We made it just in time to get on the 9:30AM Big Red Barge car ferry. 

It was a nice ferry ride.

We are going to miss our Jeep.  After driving it for a week on roads that are sometimes 4WD only, I have a new 'appreciation' for the capability of a Jeep Wrangler. It is pretty impressive at rock and rut crawling.  

They are a little primitive for a modern vehicle, and ours had an annoying squeak. 

That being said, if you come to St. John, you should not rent anything but a Jeep...they are made for this environment

We landed in Red Hook and took a route that stuck to the coast on our way to Charlotte Amalie, the capital of the US Virgin Islands.

We stumbled into a very busy downtown since it was the start of their carnival week, we had no clue. Sunday was the boat regatta, there were fast boats, vendors (mostly booze) and police everywhere. We parked and walked the waterfront, it was still early so there was a lot of setup going on, but already getting busy. 

It is not a great picture, but there were vendors setting up for a 1/2 mile down the water front. 

We asked the police if they were going to enter their boat in the race, they said no "we just chase them".  This boat has three 450hp engines, that is 1350hp, I think they will catch them. 

One street off the water was a VW old car display, these beetles all came from different countries, and they were all mint!

We walked for a bit over an hour, as the sun got higher, it got pretty hot. 

"Wicked Hot" by June's standards.

We found a cool spot, the St. Johns Brewery Tasting room, on the water front. We opened the place up at 11AM, "it's five o'clock somewhere". 

Jean and June had an "R&R", rum with their homemade root beer and Fred had a flight.....all of us were happy!

After cooling down we made our way to the airport. We filled up the Jeep before returning it, fuel on the islands runs from about $4.50 to $5.50 per gallon but we only used 3/4 of a tank the entire week.  The mileage per gallon is poor but the distances are short. 

We arrived at the airport an hour before I told the car company we would be there, but an Amalie representative met me at the curb, inspected the car, and took the keys...it can't get any easier than that. I was told to keep them informed of my arrival time if I was going to be off by more than 30mins, I didn't, and got a call from Amy who runs things.  She said the Amalie rep was waiting for another car but had mistaken us for them.  I apologized and hope I did not make the other party wait.  Overall, renting the car and ferrying to St. John was very easy since it avoids finding transportation to the people ferry in Red Hook.  I would do it again. 

At the airport since it was carnival week, they had some demonstrations going on and were giving away free rum shots. The sign said help your self to one, two or three....I stopped at two. This dancer was putting on a show. 

We had over two hours before our flight boarded so we sat outside security and had our lunch, sandwiches and left over pizza...yum, (good enough).

After lunch and security we made our way to the gate.  The place was so packed we could not even find a place to sit.  I wandered off to one of the corners and found 3 chairs together. I was trying to wave the others over when someone patted me on the back..it was Paul, they were sitting in the the chairs to the back of the three chairs. What are the odds of that, we just can't get away from these people!!

Paul and Lisa left before we did, we got on our flights about 30mins behind, but the four of us had layovers in ATL.

At the gate we talked about watching Oppenheimer the movie on the plane since we had visited the beach he once owned. It was a good, but long, movie one that makes you really think about that time and the heavy decisions that were made.  I enjoyed the movie but more from an historical point than entertainment.  It is worth the view. 

When we landed in ATL, we found that Ed/Jean's flight was delayed. We had a 2 hour layover, so we took the time to have dinner together. For airport food, it wasn't too awful.

We got out of ATL about 40 mins late, Jean/Ed got out with less delay than earlier forecast and we got a text from Paul/Lisa that they were on their flight from JFK to BTV.  We landed at PNS 30mins behind schedule and took a Lyft ride to cousin Debbie's, arriving around 00:30AM, it was pretty much as planned. 

Jean & Ed got into Albany late, minus one bag, but made it back to Moriah around 04:30AM .  

Paul & Lisa got turned around in the air and sent back to JFK, they were to fly to BTV this morning. We hope they are home in VT before they read this.

Such is the state of air travel today, you really have to want to go to endure the process.  For June and I it was Auto, Boat, Auto, Plane, Train(airport), Plane, Auto.  That is "Planes, Trains, Automobiles and Boat"! The odds of all that coming off with out a hitch is pretty low, but somehow we got pretty lucky. 

There is no debate that the Virgin Islands are kind of pricy when it comes to a vacation, especially since the great economy reset we have experienced over the last few years. That being said, it was a great week, in a beautiful place, with great friends. If was even better to have friends (Paul and Lisa) who acted as tour guides since they have been to St. John many times. We really 'appreciated' them! 

Experiencing the Virgin Islands is not something you can put a price on, if you get the chance to visit the Virgin Islands, you should. We also "appreciate" the blog and pictures so we can relive the week whenever we want, we have to compensate for the "CRS" somehow. :)

This is the end of our St John's blog.  June and Fred will continue to make our way back to VT from Florida. We will pickup that blog where we left it off a week ago. 

You can read that blog here: 

https://fjjjmj2024rt.blogspot.com/