Why Did We Wait So Long? Trip Report 10/15-10/22 Part I
Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2007 1:19 pm
Getting There (Look Ma, No Socks!)
After months of anticipation, we had the weekend of 10/13 & 14 to do all of the final trip preparations.
As I looked at my packing list I realized that this was the first time I'd ever packed for a trip and wasn't bringing even a single pair of socks with me!
Saturday the anticipation was killing me, but we were kept busy enough to get through it. While I did some volunteer work at our local zoo in the morning, Leslie finished her shopping, went to Jason's soccer game, then picked Shane up from his meeting at school.
I bolted from the zoo in time to pick up some dry ice before the place closed, then went home to check on the pork butts that had been on the smoker since the night before. For the remainder of Saturday I pulled the pork, then used the foodsaver to store all that we didn't eat for dinner, then we finished most of the packing.
Sunday AM saw the final packing, then after dropping Shane off at his OM meeting we stopped by the house to wish Jason, my mom, and Champ and Cutie farewell, then headed south on I-95 towards Ft. Lauderdale.
Originally I had booked us on a flight that left Ft. Lauderdale Monday morning at 7:30AM. Since that airport is a good 2 1/2 to 3 hour drive from our house I didn't want to have to leave at 2 or 3 in the morning, so I booked one night at the Ft. Lauderdale Aiport Sheraton. In order to secure the AAA rate, I had to book it as non refundable. Eventually American added a flight that left out of Miami at 12:35PM, was direct to STT (as opposed to the 3 hour layover in SJU on our original flight), only got to STT about an hour later, and was CHEAPER, so I switched flights (duh!).
I was glad to have the room for the night anyway. It allowed us to slide into vacation mode a little earlier, and ensured that we could have a leisurely morning and still get to the airport with plenty of time to spare Monday morning.
The hotel is pretty nice, very close to the airport, but not too close to much else. We decided to just have dinner at the restaurant on site. The waiter was nice, and the chicken dish I had was pretty good, but the bartender did not know how to make a painkiller, so I had Myer's Rum and pineapple juice instead.
Monday morning we headed towards the airport. I had decided to park at an off airport lot that would shuttle us to/from the airport, and the driving directions provided on their website were, shall we say, less than perfect. So we got some early practice (that would come in handy during the week) of going the wrong way, turning around, and repating until we got to where we had intended. Still, I was on island time, we had a loose schedule, so all was good.
We got to the airport, and went to the American check in area. Since we were checking luggage and in no big hurry I had decided to forgoe printing our boarding passes and using curbside check in. I also planned to see if there was a resonably priced upgrade opportunity available.
We weren't holding business class tickets, so we got in the surprisingly short economy class line, only to be told that the line was only for those folks flying to Cuba (I didn't even know that you can fly commercially from the US to Cuba!). We went to the next line (the one that said business class only) and had no trouble checking in. Unfortunately, our plane was completely full, so no upgrades. The agent told us that even though were were going to concourse "D", we could go through the security check in that went to "E" because it was a shorter line (we did see a huge line snaking through the terminal when we first entered the building). I'm glad she told us that because in my opinion, the line at "E" was plenty long itself. Eventually we made it through with no issues and made the trek to the outermost reaches of concource "D" to wait for our flight.
One detail that had escaped my planning was lunch on Monday. The plane was going to offer beverages and snacks you could buy ($3 for a 3 Musketeer's bar!) so I went looking in the teminal. There was a Quizno's kiosk, so I figured a freshly made hot sub would do the trick. Problem was, the only offerings were prepacked cold sandwhiches. I paid an outrageous sum for two different ones, so that leslie, who is a somewhat picky eater could choose the lesser of the two evils. Turns out I could have bought just one - I ate all of mine, which was more than I really wanted, and Leslie only ate half of hers - oh well, lesson learned.
I bought two wheeled duffel style bags for this trip that we were checking. I bought them in a discontinued black and purple argyle color that made them stand out a little on the luggage carousel. I actually was able to spot them when they were loading the bags on the plane, so I was happy to be assured that they were going to be onboard with us. I was carrying on our snorkel gear in a mesh dive bag, and Leslie had a tote back with some books, snacks, etc.
The flight went pretty well - left on time, a little, but not too much turbulence, and before you knew it we were looking out the window at beautiful turquoise water! I informed Leslie that the land mass just below must be St. Thomas as we passed over Tortola (oops!), THEN slowed for the landing at the STT airport. We took our time getting off of the plane, knowing that we had a good wait for the luggage ahead of us, got a rum punch at the stand inside the terminal (it surprised me how few people were taking advantage of that) and headed for baggage claim.
I had hired a private taxi with Ivan Nicholas (arranged by the folks at Carefree Getaways)for our ride to Red Hook, and Leslie walked right past him without noticing the sign he was holding with our names on it - she was too busy taking in the sights and sounds and realizing that we were ALMOST THERE!
It was about 3:30, or maybe a little later, when we got in Ivan's van, so I knew that we'd miss the 4:00 ferry. Ivan called paco, at Carefree Getaways on St. John to let him know that we were on the way, so that he'd have an idea of when to meet us at the ferry dock in Cruz Bay. In order to avoid the downtown gridlock he took us on a route through some neighborhoods and over and around a mountain (I can call it that because I'm from Florida - some of you from out west, and maybe even those near the Appalachians might not call it that). We enjoyed talking with him about his kids, and living on St. Thomas, and around 4:10 or so we were in Red Hook.
The last time I took the ferry from Red Hook to Cruz Bay (for those of you that don't know, our only previous visits to St. John had been as day visitors off of cruise ships that were in port at St. Thomas) the ferry terminal consisted of a gravel parking lot surrounded by a chain link fence and a little booth where you bought your ferry tickets. I was amazed when Ivan pulled into a large paved parking lot with a modern looking, spacious, and gleaming structure next to it.
We got our bags and walked in. The place was mostly empty. We kind of milled around until someone kindly vlunteered to answer the question that was no doubt evident on our faces;
"The lady will show up to sell the ferry tickets about 15 minutes before it leaves".
That settled, we found a place to park our bags and our butts and watched as others began showing up - some of them looked to be folks that had just come from the airport, some kids just getting out of school, and assorted others.
Soon a ferry arrived and discharged its passengers. A guy came into the terminal, and announced that if anyone was going to St. John, they should board. We looked, and lo and behold, there was a gal behind the ticket counter (where did SHE come from?). So we got tickets, dropped our bags on the dock, and found seats on the top deck. It was only 4:30, so we figured we had a good wait until we shoved off, but after about five minutes the ferry pulled away from the dock.
It's hard to express just how giddy we felt while we made the crossing over Pillsbury Sound. We'd seen all of these islands before, but it had such a different feel to it this time.
Finally, the "Welcome to St. John" banner across the end of the ferry terminal, and Wharfside, and St. John Spice, and...and...and...we're HERE!!!
We got off the ferry, retrieved our bags and waited by the steps below St. John Spice (making sure NOT to sit on them!) looking for someone with a Carefree Getaways sign. Then it dawned on me....paco was probably not expecting the ferry to have left Red Hook until 5:00. I called him on his cell phone and sure enough, he didn't think we'd be in for another half hour or so. He said that maybe he'd just change clothes, and not shower as he'd planned, before coming to pick us up. I laughed and told him that we were on island time, and could certainly wait a few extra minutes if he'd rather shower (besides, who knew what he'd been doing all day? - maybe we'd RATHER have him shower first!)
Before too long he showed up, loaded our stuff, then drove the short distance to St. John Car Rental. They were already closed, but he'd made arrangements to pick the key to our Liberty up earlier in the day, so we got in and began to follow him up to the villa.
As we made our way out of town I was kind of mesmerized. All of the places that I'd been reading about on this forum for the last several months were right in front of me!
Look - there's Woody's (hey - I almost hit that guy standing in the street)!
Starfish Market - we'll have to remember how to get here.
So THERE'S the Westin.
This sure is a steep hill...
I must say - a couple of those turns right before we got to Cielo Vista were a little bit unnerving, but we made it!
Paco let us in, gave us a brief tour and orientation, then called Gary at Mixology for us (I had noticed that our order from them wasn't waiting for us ad I had expected), then wished us a good week and emphasized that we could call him 24/7 if we needed anything. Then he drove off - and there we were - looking at the sunset over St. Thomas from the deck of our home for the week - ON ST. FREAKIN' JOHN!!!
The villa owners and/or Carefree Getaways had left us a welcome package in the fridge consisting of a bottle of Cruzan light rum, some sodas, and a lime. There was also one beer, so we didn't need to wait for gary to show up to get our party started (he showed up rather soon anyway, apologizing for the order not being there, and he threw in a complimentary bag of ice for "our trouble").
We decided tp just have some snacks for dinner that night, so we got out some cheese and crackers, grapes, and nuts that we brought with us, and just hung out on the deck, marveling at the view and pinching ourselves to convince us that we were actually, after all this time, keeping the promise we'd made to ourselves the first time we ever stepped off of the dock at Cruz Bay, to come and stay here.
Eventually the travel day and excitement caught up to us and we went to turn in as we'd goten really sleepy.
Those of you that have made it all the way to the end of this can surely relate!
After months of anticipation, we had the weekend of 10/13 & 14 to do all of the final trip preparations.
As I looked at my packing list I realized that this was the first time I'd ever packed for a trip and wasn't bringing even a single pair of socks with me!
Saturday the anticipation was killing me, but we were kept busy enough to get through it. While I did some volunteer work at our local zoo in the morning, Leslie finished her shopping, went to Jason's soccer game, then picked Shane up from his meeting at school.
I bolted from the zoo in time to pick up some dry ice before the place closed, then went home to check on the pork butts that had been on the smoker since the night before. For the remainder of Saturday I pulled the pork, then used the foodsaver to store all that we didn't eat for dinner, then we finished most of the packing.
Sunday AM saw the final packing, then after dropping Shane off at his OM meeting we stopped by the house to wish Jason, my mom, and Champ and Cutie farewell, then headed south on I-95 towards Ft. Lauderdale.
Originally I had booked us on a flight that left Ft. Lauderdale Monday morning at 7:30AM. Since that airport is a good 2 1/2 to 3 hour drive from our house I didn't want to have to leave at 2 or 3 in the morning, so I booked one night at the Ft. Lauderdale Aiport Sheraton. In order to secure the AAA rate, I had to book it as non refundable. Eventually American added a flight that left out of Miami at 12:35PM, was direct to STT (as opposed to the 3 hour layover in SJU on our original flight), only got to STT about an hour later, and was CHEAPER, so I switched flights (duh!).
I was glad to have the room for the night anyway. It allowed us to slide into vacation mode a little earlier, and ensured that we could have a leisurely morning and still get to the airport with plenty of time to spare Monday morning.
The hotel is pretty nice, very close to the airport, but not too close to much else. We decided to just have dinner at the restaurant on site. The waiter was nice, and the chicken dish I had was pretty good, but the bartender did not know how to make a painkiller, so I had Myer's Rum and pineapple juice instead.
Monday morning we headed towards the airport. I had decided to park at an off airport lot that would shuttle us to/from the airport, and the driving directions provided on their website were, shall we say, less than perfect. So we got some early practice (that would come in handy during the week) of going the wrong way, turning around, and repating until we got to where we had intended. Still, I was on island time, we had a loose schedule, so all was good.
We got to the airport, and went to the American check in area. Since we were checking luggage and in no big hurry I had decided to forgoe printing our boarding passes and using curbside check in. I also planned to see if there was a resonably priced upgrade opportunity available.
We weren't holding business class tickets, so we got in the surprisingly short economy class line, only to be told that the line was only for those folks flying to Cuba (I didn't even know that you can fly commercially from the US to Cuba!). We went to the next line (the one that said business class only) and had no trouble checking in. Unfortunately, our plane was completely full, so no upgrades. The agent told us that even though were were going to concourse "D", we could go through the security check in that went to "E" because it was a shorter line (we did see a huge line snaking through the terminal when we first entered the building). I'm glad she told us that because in my opinion, the line at "E" was plenty long itself. Eventually we made it through with no issues and made the trek to the outermost reaches of concource "D" to wait for our flight.
One detail that had escaped my planning was lunch on Monday. The plane was going to offer beverages and snacks you could buy ($3 for a 3 Musketeer's bar!) so I went looking in the teminal. There was a Quizno's kiosk, so I figured a freshly made hot sub would do the trick. Problem was, the only offerings were prepacked cold sandwhiches. I paid an outrageous sum for two different ones, so that leslie, who is a somewhat picky eater could choose the lesser of the two evils. Turns out I could have bought just one - I ate all of mine, which was more than I really wanted, and Leslie only ate half of hers - oh well, lesson learned.
I bought two wheeled duffel style bags for this trip that we were checking. I bought them in a discontinued black and purple argyle color that made them stand out a little on the luggage carousel. I actually was able to spot them when they were loading the bags on the plane, so I was happy to be assured that they were going to be onboard with us. I was carrying on our snorkel gear in a mesh dive bag, and Leslie had a tote back with some books, snacks, etc.
The flight went pretty well - left on time, a little, but not too much turbulence, and before you knew it we were looking out the window at beautiful turquoise water! I informed Leslie that the land mass just below must be St. Thomas as we passed over Tortola (oops!), THEN slowed for the landing at the STT airport. We took our time getting off of the plane, knowing that we had a good wait for the luggage ahead of us, got a rum punch at the stand inside the terminal (it surprised me how few people were taking advantage of that) and headed for baggage claim.
I had hired a private taxi with Ivan Nicholas (arranged by the folks at Carefree Getaways)for our ride to Red Hook, and Leslie walked right past him without noticing the sign he was holding with our names on it - she was too busy taking in the sights and sounds and realizing that we were ALMOST THERE!
It was about 3:30, or maybe a little later, when we got in Ivan's van, so I knew that we'd miss the 4:00 ferry. Ivan called paco, at Carefree Getaways on St. John to let him know that we were on the way, so that he'd have an idea of when to meet us at the ferry dock in Cruz Bay. In order to avoid the downtown gridlock he took us on a route through some neighborhoods and over and around a mountain (I can call it that because I'm from Florida - some of you from out west, and maybe even those near the Appalachians might not call it that). We enjoyed talking with him about his kids, and living on St. Thomas, and around 4:10 or so we were in Red Hook.
The last time I took the ferry from Red Hook to Cruz Bay (for those of you that don't know, our only previous visits to St. John had been as day visitors off of cruise ships that were in port at St. Thomas) the ferry terminal consisted of a gravel parking lot surrounded by a chain link fence and a little booth where you bought your ferry tickets. I was amazed when Ivan pulled into a large paved parking lot with a modern looking, spacious, and gleaming structure next to it.
We got our bags and walked in. The place was mostly empty. We kind of milled around until someone kindly vlunteered to answer the question that was no doubt evident on our faces;
"The lady will show up to sell the ferry tickets about 15 minutes before it leaves".
That settled, we found a place to park our bags and our butts and watched as others began showing up - some of them looked to be folks that had just come from the airport, some kids just getting out of school, and assorted others.
Soon a ferry arrived and discharged its passengers. A guy came into the terminal, and announced that if anyone was going to St. John, they should board. We looked, and lo and behold, there was a gal behind the ticket counter (where did SHE come from?). So we got tickets, dropped our bags on the dock, and found seats on the top deck. It was only 4:30, so we figured we had a good wait until we shoved off, but after about five minutes the ferry pulled away from the dock.
It's hard to express just how giddy we felt while we made the crossing over Pillsbury Sound. We'd seen all of these islands before, but it had such a different feel to it this time.
Finally, the "Welcome to St. John" banner across the end of the ferry terminal, and Wharfside, and St. John Spice, and...and...and...we're HERE!!!
We got off the ferry, retrieved our bags and waited by the steps below St. John Spice (making sure NOT to sit on them!) looking for someone with a Carefree Getaways sign. Then it dawned on me....paco was probably not expecting the ferry to have left Red Hook until 5:00. I called him on his cell phone and sure enough, he didn't think we'd be in for another half hour or so. He said that maybe he'd just change clothes, and not shower as he'd planned, before coming to pick us up. I laughed and told him that we were on island time, and could certainly wait a few extra minutes if he'd rather shower (besides, who knew what he'd been doing all day? - maybe we'd RATHER have him shower first!)
Before too long he showed up, loaded our stuff, then drove the short distance to St. John Car Rental. They were already closed, but he'd made arrangements to pick the key to our Liberty up earlier in the day, so we got in and began to follow him up to the villa.
As we made our way out of town I was kind of mesmerized. All of the places that I'd been reading about on this forum for the last several months were right in front of me!
Look - there's Woody's (hey - I almost hit that guy standing in the street)!
Starfish Market - we'll have to remember how to get here.
So THERE'S the Westin.
This sure is a steep hill...
I must say - a couple of those turns right before we got to Cielo Vista were a little bit unnerving, but we made it!
Paco let us in, gave us a brief tour and orientation, then called Gary at Mixology for us (I had noticed that our order from them wasn't waiting for us ad I had expected), then wished us a good week and emphasized that we could call him 24/7 if we needed anything. Then he drove off - and there we were - looking at the sunset over St. Thomas from the deck of our home for the week - ON ST. FREAKIN' JOHN!!!
The villa owners and/or Carefree Getaways had left us a welcome package in the fridge consisting of a bottle of Cruzan light rum, some sodas, and a lime. There was also one beer, so we didn't need to wait for gary to show up to get our party started (he showed up rather soon anyway, apologizing for the order not being there, and he threw in a complimentary bag of ice for "our trouble").
We decided tp just have some snacks for dinner that night, so we got out some cheese and crackers, grapes, and nuts that we brought with us, and just hung out on the deck, marveling at the view and pinching ourselves to convince us that we were actually, after all this time, keeping the promise we'd made to ourselves the first time we ever stepped off of the dock at Cruz Bay, to come and stay here.
Eventually the travel day and excitement caught up to us and we went to turn in as we'd goten really sleepy.
Those of you that have made it all the way to the end of this can surely relate!