Day 4 — Philipsburg, St. Maarten

This morning we woke up about 6:30 as we were pulling into port.

Most of our crew was on Deck 11, so those people you see on their balcony? We know them.

Interestingly enough, the ship was pulling in and then did a 180 and backed into its slip (this was a bit disheartening as I was hoping to be able to sit on our balcony and people watch but as it was we were facing an unused pier).

Watching where we are on the TV.

We got off the ship and actually stopped for a photo. It turned out pretty well so we bought it! I might need to Photoshop the lurker out of it. 🙂

During the hour and a half we were on Saint Maarten, it was sunny, it rained, it was hot as hell, and we saw goats. Yes, goats. They looked like little dots on the side of the mountain. This pic is zoomed in a bunch:

We didn’t plan to do much here (no excursions), but we did walk through a few jewelry stores and contemplatively looked at some Hearts on Fire jewelry to match my wedding ring (I’ve been thinking about it ever since our last cruise 10 years ago). It was severely tempting to buy a necklace… Tom said I could, but as the person who actually pays the bills and keeps our finances in order…I just couldn’t bring myself to spend $1800 (even as an early 20th anniversary present). Sometimes it sucks being an adult. But I told him we’ll just have to come back again. 🙂 That said, I did dream about a $10k tennis bracelet…

We were going to buy the kids their gifts (matching tropical wear) but unfortunately we had forgotten all of our cash and a lot of the places at the pier only took cash. But of course the chocolate shop (that a friend recommended) took credit cards so we bought chocolate. Darn.

We saw George Clooney!

And I love the warnings on cigarettes…

Heading back to the ship. It’s just HUGE.

We opted against traveling around Saint Maarten and doing anything as we really just kind of wanted to chill on the ship without anybody on it. And, indeed, there was really nobody on the ship. That said, most of the bars and restaurants were also closed so there wasn’t much open for us to do.

We ended up hitting one of our regular bars…

Grabbing some random food at different places—look, a salad (it was really really good!) and more chili cheese fries!

Taste-testing tequila… I wanted to see which I liked better—silver or gold. They aren’t supposed to make you more than one drink at a time, but she knew us from before, knew we were just going to sit there, and knew I was doing a taste test… (That last drink is what I showed up with.) Result? Silver wins.

Hanging out on our balcony…

Tom and I have both decided that we like the ship when we are in port and the majority of the people are off the ship. We do not like a lot of people. That said, one of the things that I do indeed find most interesting is that even though there are almost 7,000 guests on the ship, it is not nearly as busy (anywhere) as you would think it would be. We have 68 people in our group and we can go a majority of the day without running into any one of them! (Of course, that said, we can also walk around the ship one time and run into the same person three times.)

And meeting Johnny from Sweden at the Solarium bar who we spent most of the afternoon with.

And remember what I said about the bartenders? Today, the Solarium Bar staff is learning that all we want are Toasted Almonds. If SHE is making them, they’re frozen; if HE is making them, they’re on the rocks. Both are delicious. Since we’ve also been ordering them for hours, they give us a little leeway when charging them to our room cards. Normally you can only get one drink per person per room card but since they know they’re for the three of us they will let us get three drinks at a time. The bartenders are awesome.

(As I write this, Johnny and Tom are now in the hot tub while I sit in the shade on the pool deck and drink my drink.)

Then it was back to the room for me to relax on the balcony again and wait for Tom to come home!

4:27 Enjoying the balcony!

4:41 Dressed and ready for dinner! (Yes I have clothes on! It’s a dress with thinner shoulder straps and a V neck!)

Some of the boards today:

We had no tablemates tonight at dinner so we had a blast with just the two of us!

More drinks at the robot bar:

Tonight’s towel animal.

It was an early night, as Tom wasn’t feeling too well. Turns out Johnny had been buying Jack Daniels drinks for them… And Tom isn’t a Jack Daniels guy but drank them anyway. Let’s just say he learned his lesson!