(4/19/12) Thursday
This morning we landed in port around 7:30 a.m. We’re in St. Maarten!
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| St. Maarten is yet another beautiful island! Later in the day, we swam at the beach pictured to the right of the photo. |
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| We all met in the Windjammer Café this morning around 8:30 a.m. for breakfast. It’s really hard to find seats for all 13 of us on days we are in port (because everyone wants to eat early and get off the ship.) We were very blessed to find a huge booth where we could all sit together this morning. For breakfast I had a biscuit with gravy, scrambled eggs, tater tots, watermelon, pineapple juice, sausage, and Fruit Loops cereal (not pictured.) |
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| After stopping by our rooms, we disembarked for the walk to the beach. This was a view of the back of the ship (the Aqua Theater.) Isn’t it big? |
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| We had to walk about a mile to the beach. It was hot and tiring! My sunburn still hurts from yesterday, and I can just feel the sun burning my skin. But the views of the ridge are pretty! We saw lots of goats grazing on this hilltop. |
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| The beach was really beautiful, but I must admit that we were spoiled in St. Thomas. J This beach was a bit more crowded and loud. |
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| J enjoyed playing with his sand toys around the chairs while the others swam. I jumped in the water a few times, but mostly I sat in the chairs covered in towels so that I wouldn’t burn! J I was just too tired to do much. |
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| Every few minutes, one of the many local ladies would come by wanting to sell you something. They sold everything from stuffed monkeys, to handbags, to dresses, to hats, to aloe massages! This lady puts new meaning to the phrase “I wear many hats!” |
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| After spending several hours at the beach, we walked around downtown Phillipsburg a little bit. It’s very crowded, and the streets are very narrow. We stopped at a Belgian chocolate shop (our ship was docked on the Dutch side of the island.) I had a little coconut-filled chocolate, and a caramel cookie covered with white chocolate (pictured above.) It was a nice little treat. |
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| We made our way back to the boardwalk along the beach and began the long walk to the ship. |
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| The kids were quite excited to find a crab on the way back (even though he was dead.) We also saw chickens and more goats. |
But then I had a more serious accident. I fell off the board, Ianded on my back, and snapped my neck back. I fell in such a way that the current continued to push my head back, exacerbating the problem. On top of that, I slammed into the back wall hard which further jarred my back. When my neck snapped back, I got an instant headache. I called it quits for the day after all of that. (Please continue to pray for my injury. After 3 weeks, I still have not gained full mobility in my neck. Pray that I didn’t permanently damage anything!)
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| Around 5:30 p.m. we went upstairs to change for dinner. We had set sail around 5 p.m. This was the view out of our balcony. I love the amazing views! |
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| We all went to dinner together in the dining room. It was nice to relax after a full day! |
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| On our way out of the dining room the previous night, our waiter had introduced us to one of the Indonesian waiters. He is apparently very good at magic tricks. He had showed the kids a disappearing coin trick, and promised to come back to our table tonight. He did several tricks that the kids loved! The one that baffled me most involved making water disappear from 3 coffee mugs. Then he made the water reappear! He was a lot of fun! |
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| For my appetizer I had a crab-cake with corn salsa, lime juice, and sour cream. It was tangy and delicious! |
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| This was the only night on the entire trip when I wished I had ordered something else. I had sole fillets with potatoes, tomatoes, and asparagus. It was good, but some of the other dishes looked a little bit better. At least it was relatively healthy! |
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| I made up for my mistake when dessert time came. I had a lemon tort with meringue that was 6 inches tall! The tart lemon was balanced out nicely with the sweet meringue…and the chocolate swirly stick. |
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| After dinner we decided to try to go to the ice show. We were able to walk right in (without tickets!) and get second and third row seats. |
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| The show was supposed to be a Monopoly® Game on ice. But each square on the board was a place on the ship! At each stop, they did a dance number to go along with that theme. It was very well done, and the skaters were quite talented! Photo Credit: Roma. |
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| After the show we walked around on the Royal Promenade and went upstairs to the photo gallery to look at the photos taken of us on the ship. Do you see the bar in the photo where a lot of people were sitting? It moved up and down the columns slowly as people ate! Photo Credit: Roma. |
After looking at our pictures, we walked along the Boardwalk and stopped in a little store called “Candy Beach,” to browse for souvenirs. After that we went up to our staterooms and called it a night. Tomorrow we will be cruising!
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