Blogs from Saint Thomas, US Virgin Islands, Central America Caribbean

It was great to wake this morning and know we are still on route to St Thomas. As our next and final destination is Port Canaveral in Florida, when we get to St Thomas they will do the immigration clearance of all the passengers and crew. This will save a massive lot of time when we finally disembark Norwegian Epic As we have a small tour booked for St Thomas we have a slot at 8.30 in the morning for our immigration clearance. We are up really early and in the buffet for breakfast for about 6.30am. The last few days it has taken us a few hours to complete breakfast with so many people wanting our attention, so we do not want that to delay us today. When we arrived at Manhattans restaurant for the ... read more

Day 1 - 6/13/17, Arrived in St. Thomas, checked into the hotel, enjoyed our first cocktails at the Marriott Frenchman's Reef overlooking the St. Thomas Harbour. Dinner at the hotel restaurant Coco Joe's. Day 2 - 6/14/17, We took the St. John's ferry from Redhook & joined Salty Dog Day Sails for a wonderful excursion to snorkel at Lovango Cay, enjoy shopping at Foxy's, & pain killers at the Soggy Dollar Bar on Jost Van Dyke, BVI. Dinner at Havana Blue. Day 3 - 6/15/17, We slept in, took the Marriott Ferry into Charlotte Amalie for shopping & lunch. Back at the hotel we taxied to Magens Bay for an afternoon of relaxing & sun. Dinner at Oceana. Day 4 - 6/16/17, We took a St. John's tour that departed from the Marriott dock. Rode in ... read more

St Thomas is an island that belongs to the U.S. Virgin Islands. Christopher Columbus originally named the islands after the epic and tragic tale of St Ursula, a Christian saint and the 11,000 martyred virgins. Formerly the Danish West Indies of the Kingdom of Denmark and Norway, they were sold to the United States by Denmark in 1916. The U.S. Virgin Islands are in the Atlantic Ocean, about 40 miles east of Puerto Rico and immediately west of the British Virgin Islands. They share the Virgin Islands Archipelago with the Spanish Virgin Islands (administered by Puerto Rico) and the British Virgin Islands. Charlotte Amalie is the capital and largest city of the U.S. Virgin Islands, founded in 1666 as Taphus (meaning "beer houses" or "beer halls"). In 1691, the town was renamed to Amalienborg (in English ... read more

Thursday 6th November 2014 Saint Thomas, US Virgin Islands Christopher Columbus recorded his sighting of St Thomas on his second voyage to the “New World” in 1493. Little more is known of the Virgin Islands until the seventeenth century. In Charlotte Amalie, the main town on St Thomas, there is a commemorative stone with the title “Landing of the Virginia settlers”. These settlers were a company of 144 Englishmen, bound for Virginia, who landed on St Thomas on 4th April 1607 and stayed for three days, before going on to found Jamestown in Virginia. Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in the world, outside the British Isles. As this commemorative stone states, from that colony grew the overseas expansion of English speaking peoples: the Commonwealth of Virginia: the United States of America: the British Commonwealth ... read more

Sunday, June 1, 2014 Today we are visiting the island of St. Thomas. When visiting this island in December 2013, we have vivid memories of all the mega yachts lining the harbor, however this time, there were very few yachts. I suspect most of them headed to the east coast for the summer. Cindy and I had a late tour this morning; however Jenny and Marcus needed to get off the ship early, 8:15 am. There tour was swimming with sea lions, this sounds really fun. Michael and Brian’s tour was with Cindy and I along with Brian’s family, Charles and Cathy. Our tour started at 9:30 am. Cindy and I ate breakfast in the dining room. We really enjoy eating breakfast in the dining room. We meet a really nice family from the Boston area, ... read more