Monday, April 29, 2019

Pirates (and Hurricanes) in St. Thomas

Our first excursion on our Royal Caribbean Harmony of the Seas cruise last year was to the beautiful island of St. Thomas. It was our second time going there and we did different things than the last time we were there.

It was heavenly to wake up to this view! Look at that water!



St. Thomas is part of the U.S. Virgin Islands and the capital city of those islands (Charlotte Amalie) is there, hence the Supreme Court of the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Views of the ship from terra firma.


We went on a drive to some of the island's famous lookout points. We stopped at this point that overlooks Magens Bay Beach, a beach we'd been to on our Disney cruise in 2017. This is the blog post I did about that and you have to see the pictures to compare. Hurricane Maria did a lot of damage to this beach in the fall of 2017 and many of the beautiful trees along the beach were destroyed. The treeline on the beach is much more sparse than it was when we were there in March of 2017. 😢
It's still a beautiful view, though.




We stopped at another lookout point that overlooked Charlotte Amalie and met this donkey who thankfully didn't kick any of us!

There's our ship!


Our excursion was a historical pirate adventure. We went to Blackbeard's actual castle and got to see it, but unfortunately we couldn't go in it because of hurricane damage that was still being fixed. That hurricane really was devastating to this part of the Caribbean. 




Pretty views from the hillside below the castle (and the million steps we climbed down to get to ground level)...

I love the contrasting colors of the sea, the hills, and the roofs! 😍

We went to a pirate museum that was really good, with lots of real artifacts from shipwrecks in the sea. There was a really nice guy who worked there who's been on TV for his work diving and finding things like these.

Also at the museum was a dead-ringer for Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean!



I spotted this cool iguana hanging out on a rock on the way back to the ship.

More hurricane damage, viewed from the front of the ship. 


Just pretending!


I'll always love the beautiful island of St. Thomas!