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Spring break trip report with 2 college girls.......
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cypressgirl
- Posts: 2178
- Joined: Tue Dec 26, 2006 2:42 pm
- Location: houston
Spring break trip report with 2 college girls.......
I will begin by saying that I have been going to STJ for almost 15 years. In fact my youngest daughter was conceived on STJ. But this is the first time I have been with my oldest daughter, Michelle, who is 19, without the rest of the family.
About mid Feb. Michelle decided she wanted to take a fun spring break trip, but knew I would never go for one of those "Girls on Spring Break in Cancun" type of things. So in her infinite wisdom, all she had to do was mention going to STJ and she had me hooked. Of course it could not be just a mother-daughter trip; we HAD to bring a friend along. I thought that was a good idea at the time and we started looking at airfare. To my surprise, we were able to find a great deal if we traveled from Mon.-Fri. I knew that was going to be a short trip, but a few days is better than nothing and I also knew I'd be a zombie by the time I got home, from trying to keep up with them.
Michelle's friend Jace (pronounced Jaycee) has never been anywhere. I mean nowhere. So needless to say, she was extremely excited.
The travel day was easy and uneventful, which is all you can pray for. The girls entertained themselves by taking photos of themselves on the plane for their scrapbook. Mine is the one with the metal bolt in her eyelid. I hate it, but at least there are no tatoos and she promises it's a temporary phase.
We land at 9:00pm and I have pre-arranged Christopher Taxi to pick us up and get us to Red Hook for the 10:00 ferry. He was a delightful person, says he's Kenny's personal taxi driver and assured me he wasn't on island during my stay. I was a little disappointed, but then I didn't have to give it another thought, so that helped in a way. We make the ferry in plenty of time and were greeted by Curtis, the agent from Carib. Villa, who had our car right there for us, and offered to stop a Dolphin market to pick up supplies, but we just wanted to get to our condo.
We stayed at Cruz Views #3, and I was really expecting it to be a bit of a dump. I was pleasantly surprised. The complex is quite nice, up a pretty steep little hill I would not want to walk, and a driveway I did not really like turning into at night for the first time, but I followed Curtis in with no problems. The unit has a great porch-deck, very private, cute wicker furniture that looked like it had been recently redone or new and a woven type of rug. Once inside I knew we made a good choice. The living room is small, but we really didn't use it, the bedroom was more spacious than I expected and had a lot of storage, the loft upstairs was really cute, but the climb up the ladder to get to it is not for the older set or someone who is not in reasonabely good shape. It is straight up with no handrails, and no bathroom upstairs, so when the girls had to go potty, they had to crawl down that ladder in the dark. That brings me to the bathroom, which was totally redone from stem to stern. It is beautiful like something you'd expect in a new villa. Lots of storage and a great shower with a pretty piece of stained glass. The kitchen is a little worn, but everything worked and the dinnerware and cookware seemed fine. We were not there to cook.
So we throw our bags down and Curtis gives us a ride back to Woody's because I have never driven on STJ and I didn't want my first experience to be in the dark after a few too many painkillers. Woody's was still happenin' at 10:45. As luck would have it, a nice table of guys were finishing up as we walked in and immediately offered us their table. One of the perks of traveling with college girls, I guess. They were in eye candy heaven. One hot guy after another walked in and we just sat there admiring. There was a guy in the corner table sitting closest to my daughter that struk up a conversation with her. Next thing I know, the waitress comes over and sets three upsidedown cups on our table. I ask "why the cups" and she tells me the guy in the corner is buying our next round. I take it as a compliment even though I know it's not aimed at me. I find out later this guy is a singer and piano player at Molly Malone's on STT. He is a middle aged guy, seems very nice, and was with a woman who seemed very quiet, polite, and normal. We decided it was time to catch a cab back to Cruz Views and the guy invited us to come hear him play at Molly Malone's on Thurs. night. We say we'll try, and make our exit. The cabbie dropped us off at the top of the driveway. He didn't want to navigate that parking lot at night either. We stay up til about 2:00am having drinks and toasting our good fortune, on the cute porch, as we watched the lights twinkeling over STT. End of the first day.
The next morning I start waking the girls around 8:30, knowing good and well there not going to move til after 9:00. I had some take out pasta salad from Woody's I got the night before for breakfast. I know that sounds terrible, but this was not a trip based around nice meals, so I figured that was better than nothing, and nothing was what we had. They weren't hungry at all, so off we go to the car. First stop, we needed fins. We could not find parking anywhere around Lowkey Watersports, so I used Slimman's parking lot across the street. Approaching Warfside Village we noticed the couple from the night before and stop to say hello and thanks for the drinks. I asked the lady in polite conversation if she had a good time at Woody's. She gives me the most sincere look and say "I don't remember being at Woody's". It was the first of many laughs of the day.
With gear in tow and coolers full of libations, we head off to Cinnamom, Michelle's favorite STJ beach.
It was a cool, windy day, but after getting completely submersed, the water felt really good. We decide to snorkel out to the cay and I discover I have an equipment malfunction and decide to just hang out on the beach til I can get it fixed. So the girls take off by themselves with STRICT instructions to stay on the beach side of the cay and not go around to the ocean side. It was really getting windy and I wasn't sure how bad the currant was. Of course they didn't listen, and in about 30 min. I could not find them at all. After an hour I'm starting to walk up and down the beach and I'm really getting nervous. No sign of them. An hour and 45 min. later I'm in tears, sure they are gone forever.
There was this little jock looking guy that had been out on his surf board earlier that pulled up in a dingy. I waved to him and the said "the boats not for rent". I told him I didn't want his boat, I needed him to go find my girls. He runs and gets his surf board and paddles out to the cay (I don't know why he didn't just take the dingy) He finds them pretty quickly and in a couple of minutes I see 2 little heads with arms waving. That was one of the most relieved moments in my life. When they got back to shore they told me of their adventures on the cay and how they walked on it and found all kinds of neat thing. I was too happy to yell too much, but I did a little. I asked them what the little guy said to them and they said he said "Your moms freakin' out! You better get back". We later had a good laugh, but I was still a little steamed.
By then the girls are starving and we decide to head to Shipwreck Landing, our favorite lunch time spot. It was really busy, and we barely found parking, but we managed to squeeze in a spot. The same waitress I have seen on so many trips was there again and I asked her how many years she's worked at SWL. She tells me 14 years. I'm impressed. The food was great. By that time we would have been happy with McDonald's. The Banana Quits are out in full force and I think they would eat out of your hand.
But the meal was great! I had a crab cake that was out of this world. I can't remember what the girls had, but when your feeding kids, who cares.
Now we have to decide which beach to go to next, and since we have not spent much time there in the past we head to Maho. Got a great place to park and it was nice to have easy access to the beach with neat sheet, cooler, chairs, and all that kind of stuff in tow. We stayed there about 3 hrs. and decide we are starving again.
We pack up and off to town to hit Dolphin market. No parking at Dolphin, so it's Marina Market instead. We had a gourmet dinner of chips and salsa, 2 kinds of preparred chicken strips, last nights pasta salad, and some cheese. We were in junk food heaven. I don't think I've been that tired in my life. The girls knew better than to ask me if they could go into town by themselves, so they were happy mixing drinks and hanging out on the deck. I think I was in bed by 8:30.
Day 2 we sleep til about 9:30. (I should have been rested up by then). We decide that tonight is going to be our late night party night. Great idea, since we have a full day on a boat booked the next day, but we only had 3 days to fit in all our fun, so what the heck. We spent a couple of hrs. shopping our favorite STJ stores. We love Caravan Gallery and I found several items for the other daughter at home dog sitting. We roamed around town til lunch time and I decided to treat the girls to a nice lunch at Caneel Bay before heading to Honeymoon beach.
We found it very inviting and no one made us feel unwelcome because we were not staying there. We did notice a sign saying something like "if you are not a guest, don't use the chairs and towels." We brought our own "stuff" so I'm sure it was obvious we were not staying there. We ate at their beach side restaurant (not the buffet one) and really enjoyed a wonderful meal and a couple of overpriced cocktails, but what the hey, we're on vacation. The view from Caneel's beach is awesome.
Time to head to Honeymoon. It was a beautiful day and the beach was not too crowded. We stayed a few hours and enjoyed the day more than I can describe.
Time to go home and get ready for our "big night on the town". The girls get on their island best and I just do the best I can. I'm thinking about that boat trip tomorrow.
So we head to Warfside Village thinking we're going to find some action at the Beach Bar. Well,there were about 2 families with babies in high chairs, so on we move to Joe's Rum Hut. (I think that's the name)
They had a great lady on the guitar singing folk-country type music and she was really great. We ate there and off we went to Sun Dog Cafe at Mongoose Junction for Kareoke night. I think it was more of a local talent thing, but we had the best time, and had a few more drinks.
It closed down about 10:30 and some of the musicians told us to go to the beach bar for a great band. So off we go the Beach Bar. We find a seat right in front of the band. They were great! So great, that after a few more drinks we bought a cd that I still haven't played. But really, they were very good. The band leader asked Michelle to pass the tip jar, and when she came back, he told her he had never collected so many tips. That made her day.
Tomorrow is our boat trip that I have been looking forward to so much, so about 2:00 we call it a night.
I'll tell you all about our trip to Jost with Stu Scott tomorrow. It's time for Dancing With the Stars.
Pardon the mistakes, I'm kind of in a hurry.
About mid Feb. Michelle decided she wanted to take a fun spring break trip, but knew I would never go for one of those "Girls on Spring Break in Cancun" type of things. So in her infinite wisdom, all she had to do was mention going to STJ and she had me hooked. Of course it could not be just a mother-daughter trip; we HAD to bring a friend along. I thought that was a good idea at the time and we started looking at airfare. To my surprise, we were able to find a great deal if we traveled from Mon.-Fri. I knew that was going to be a short trip, but a few days is better than nothing and I also knew I'd be a zombie by the time I got home, from trying to keep up with them.
Michelle's friend Jace (pronounced Jaycee) has never been anywhere. I mean nowhere. So needless to say, she was extremely excited.
The travel day was easy and uneventful, which is all you can pray for. The girls entertained themselves by taking photos of themselves on the plane for their scrapbook. Mine is the one with the metal bolt in her eyelid. I hate it, but at least there are no tatoos and she promises it's a temporary phase.
We land at 9:00pm and I have pre-arranged Christopher Taxi to pick us up and get us to Red Hook for the 10:00 ferry. He was a delightful person, says he's Kenny's personal taxi driver and assured me he wasn't on island during my stay. I was a little disappointed, but then I didn't have to give it another thought, so that helped in a way. We make the ferry in plenty of time and were greeted by Curtis, the agent from Carib. Villa, who had our car right there for us, and offered to stop a Dolphin market to pick up supplies, but we just wanted to get to our condo.
We stayed at Cruz Views #3, and I was really expecting it to be a bit of a dump. I was pleasantly surprised. The complex is quite nice, up a pretty steep little hill I would not want to walk, and a driveway I did not really like turning into at night for the first time, but I followed Curtis in with no problems. The unit has a great porch-deck, very private, cute wicker furniture that looked like it had been recently redone or new and a woven type of rug. Once inside I knew we made a good choice. The living room is small, but we really didn't use it, the bedroom was more spacious than I expected and had a lot of storage, the loft upstairs was really cute, but the climb up the ladder to get to it is not for the older set or someone who is not in reasonabely good shape. It is straight up with no handrails, and no bathroom upstairs, so when the girls had to go potty, they had to crawl down that ladder in the dark. That brings me to the bathroom, which was totally redone from stem to stern. It is beautiful like something you'd expect in a new villa. Lots of storage and a great shower with a pretty piece of stained glass. The kitchen is a little worn, but everything worked and the dinnerware and cookware seemed fine. We were not there to cook.
So we throw our bags down and Curtis gives us a ride back to Woody's because I have never driven on STJ and I didn't want my first experience to be in the dark after a few too many painkillers. Woody's was still happenin' at 10:45. As luck would have it, a nice table of guys were finishing up as we walked in and immediately offered us their table. One of the perks of traveling with college girls, I guess. They were in eye candy heaven. One hot guy after another walked in and we just sat there admiring. There was a guy in the corner table sitting closest to my daughter that struk up a conversation with her. Next thing I know, the waitress comes over and sets three upsidedown cups on our table. I ask "why the cups" and she tells me the guy in the corner is buying our next round. I take it as a compliment even though I know it's not aimed at me. I find out later this guy is a singer and piano player at Molly Malone's on STT. He is a middle aged guy, seems very nice, and was with a woman who seemed very quiet, polite, and normal. We decided it was time to catch a cab back to Cruz Views and the guy invited us to come hear him play at Molly Malone's on Thurs. night. We say we'll try, and make our exit. The cabbie dropped us off at the top of the driveway. He didn't want to navigate that parking lot at night either. We stay up til about 2:00am having drinks and toasting our good fortune, on the cute porch, as we watched the lights twinkeling over STT. End of the first day.
The next morning I start waking the girls around 8:30, knowing good and well there not going to move til after 9:00. I had some take out pasta salad from Woody's I got the night before for breakfast. I know that sounds terrible, but this was not a trip based around nice meals, so I figured that was better than nothing, and nothing was what we had. They weren't hungry at all, so off we go to the car. First stop, we needed fins. We could not find parking anywhere around Lowkey Watersports, so I used Slimman's parking lot across the street. Approaching Warfside Village we noticed the couple from the night before and stop to say hello and thanks for the drinks. I asked the lady in polite conversation if she had a good time at Woody's. She gives me the most sincere look and say "I don't remember being at Woody's". It was the first of many laughs of the day.
With gear in tow and coolers full of libations, we head off to Cinnamom, Michelle's favorite STJ beach.
It was a cool, windy day, but after getting completely submersed, the water felt really good. We decide to snorkel out to the cay and I discover I have an equipment malfunction and decide to just hang out on the beach til I can get it fixed. So the girls take off by themselves with STRICT instructions to stay on the beach side of the cay and not go around to the ocean side. It was really getting windy and I wasn't sure how bad the currant was. Of course they didn't listen, and in about 30 min. I could not find them at all. After an hour I'm starting to walk up and down the beach and I'm really getting nervous. No sign of them. An hour and 45 min. later I'm in tears, sure they are gone forever.
There was this little jock looking guy that had been out on his surf board earlier that pulled up in a dingy. I waved to him and the said "the boats not for rent". I told him I didn't want his boat, I needed him to go find my girls. He runs and gets his surf board and paddles out to the cay (I don't know why he didn't just take the dingy) He finds them pretty quickly and in a couple of minutes I see 2 little heads with arms waving. That was one of the most relieved moments in my life. When they got back to shore they told me of their adventures on the cay and how they walked on it and found all kinds of neat thing. I was too happy to yell too much, but I did a little. I asked them what the little guy said to them and they said he said "Your moms freakin' out! You better get back". We later had a good laugh, but I was still a little steamed.
By then the girls are starving and we decide to head to Shipwreck Landing, our favorite lunch time spot. It was really busy, and we barely found parking, but we managed to squeeze in a spot. The same waitress I have seen on so many trips was there again and I asked her how many years she's worked at SWL. She tells me 14 years. I'm impressed. The food was great. By that time we would have been happy with McDonald's. The Banana Quits are out in full force and I think they would eat out of your hand.
But the meal was great! I had a crab cake that was out of this world. I can't remember what the girls had, but when your feeding kids, who cares.
Now we have to decide which beach to go to next, and since we have not spent much time there in the past we head to Maho. Got a great place to park and it was nice to have easy access to the beach with neat sheet, cooler, chairs, and all that kind of stuff in tow. We stayed there about 3 hrs. and decide we are starving again.
We pack up and off to town to hit Dolphin market. No parking at Dolphin, so it's Marina Market instead. We had a gourmet dinner of chips and salsa, 2 kinds of preparred chicken strips, last nights pasta salad, and some cheese. We were in junk food heaven. I don't think I've been that tired in my life. The girls knew better than to ask me if they could go into town by themselves, so they were happy mixing drinks and hanging out on the deck. I think I was in bed by 8:30.
Day 2 we sleep til about 9:30. (I should have been rested up by then). We decide that tonight is going to be our late night party night. Great idea, since we have a full day on a boat booked the next day, but we only had 3 days to fit in all our fun, so what the heck. We spent a couple of hrs. shopping our favorite STJ stores. We love Caravan Gallery and I found several items for the other daughter at home dog sitting. We roamed around town til lunch time and I decided to treat the girls to a nice lunch at Caneel Bay before heading to Honeymoon beach.
We found it very inviting and no one made us feel unwelcome because we were not staying there. We did notice a sign saying something like "if you are not a guest, don't use the chairs and towels." We brought our own "stuff" so I'm sure it was obvious we were not staying there. We ate at their beach side restaurant (not the buffet one) and really enjoyed a wonderful meal and a couple of overpriced cocktails, but what the hey, we're on vacation. The view from Caneel's beach is awesome.
Time to head to Honeymoon. It was a beautiful day and the beach was not too crowded. We stayed a few hours and enjoyed the day more than I can describe.
Time to go home and get ready for our "big night on the town". The girls get on their island best and I just do the best I can. I'm thinking about that boat trip tomorrow.
So we head to Warfside Village thinking we're going to find some action at the Beach Bar. Well,there were about 2 families with babies in high chairs, so on we move to Joe's Rum Hut. (I think that's the name)
They had a great lady on the guitar singing folk-country type music and she was really great. We ate there and off we went to Sun Dog Cafe at Mongoose Junction for Kareoke night. I think it was more of a local talent thing, but we had the best time, and had a few more drinks.
It closed down about 10:30 and some of the musicians told us to go to the beach bar for a great band. So off we go the Beach Bar. We find a seat right in front of the band. They were great! So great, that after a few more drinks we bought a cd that I still haven't played. But really, they were very good. The band leader asked Michelle to pass the tip jar, and when she came back, he told her he had never collected so many tips. That made her day.
Tomorrow is our boat trip that I have been looking forward to so much, so about 2:00 we call it a night.
I'll tell you all about our trip to Jost with Stu Scott tomorrow. It's time for Dancing With the Stars.
Pardon the mistakes, I'm kind of in a hurry.
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obsessedmuch
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Xislandgirl
- Posts: 4163
- Joined: Tue Aug 08, 2006 4:03 pm
- Location: Slightly left of center
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Jo Ann - VA
- Posts: 756
- Joined: Sat Nov 11, 2006 11:56 am
- Location: Virginia
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cypressgirl
- Posts: 2178
- Joined: Tue Dec 26, 2006 2:42 pm
- Location: houston
I'm lovin' the report....can't wait for the next installment...[and the WGW (Women Gone Wild) need to at least stay up past 10pm!!! ] Great pics of the girls, and what a wonderful memory for you and Michelle. And I love your menu; sounds like me, all I'm interesed in when down there is beach, sun and libations 
I must admit I'm enjoying the "chick flick" trip report! I have to admire the way you at least tried to keep up with the teens! We took our daughter to the Cayman Islands for her graduation present, and she and her brother ran us into the ground way long before they got tired!
Looking forward to the rest of the report! One question.....did you feel uncomfortable walking around Cruz Bay that late at night? Just curious, not wanting to start anything......
-Bert
Looking forward to the rest of the report! One question.....did you feel uncomfortable walking around Cruz Bay that late at night? Just curious, not wanting to start anything......
-Bert
The liver is evil, it must be punished!
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cypressgirl
- Posts: 2178
- Joined: Tue Dec 26, 2006 2:42 pm
- Location: houston
I have to say I never felt unsafe walking around town at night. But we really didn't walk that much at night. We managed to get a parking spot in front of Warfside Village, and then when we went to Mongoose we parked there. There was one guy in town that was obvioulsy a little off. (I don't mean Lindy. We saw him, but he's harmless) We saw this guy during the day twice, and he was ranting and raving about stuff like the end of the world. The second time we saw him he was waving a broken off beer bottle and talking directly to us. That was a little scary and we quickly moved on.
I would not feel safe walking back to Cruz Views because that road is so dark. I'm sure it's fine, but I'm a woos when it comes to that kind of stuff.
I would not feel safe walking back to Cruz Views because that road is so dark. I'm sure it's fine, but I'm a woos when it comes to that kind of stuff.
