The Virginia Blogs: Sacre Bleu! Het is Sint Maarten!

See? I told you I would get back to it...

St. Maarten/ St. Martin is one of the most laid back islands. It doesn’t have a huge population, and a majority of those who have homes there, don’t live there. I believe that both Madonna and Richard Dryfuss were offered up as examples of a the island’s home owners.



We had visited several years ago when the dock we were currently at was state of the art AND brand new and they were excited that the ships no longer had to tender in to port. See that pile of rock and stuff there? Yeah, another new pier. This one is going to be big enough to handle the Oasis of the Seas.

Because it is laid back, there are about three excursions you can take on this island: the Island Tour, the Kayaking in Marigot Bay and the Butterfly Farm Day Trip to Orient Point.

Well, Orient Point was the one we wanted to go on. Of course it was, there were butterflies. We dig butterflies. And naturally, the night before, we got the call that the tour was cancelled. Because that’s the way it rolls for us.

Since Tom is NOT a beach person, we decided to take the Island Tour. I started to get angry with him because he kept falling asleep on the bus. However, half way through, I had to change my tune because it was hot, I was sticking to the seat, the AC wasn’t working and the tour was boring. The island is beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but this tour was just not doing it for us.

This is Marigot Bay:



The stuff of nightmares, according to Tom. See that undeveloped island in the middle of the picture? Last time we were here, we took the Kayak tour, and that was wear we kayaked too. Let’s just say that smokers shouldn’t try to keep up with someone who loves to kayak and knows how to paddle. There was a tow rope and cigarette involved in his return to shore.

Anyway, St.Maarten is made up of two sides, Dutch and French. The ships dock in Dutch St. Maarten and Marigot is the big town in St. Martin. A lot more happens on the Dutch side, even though the French side is larger. We were also told that the main language on the island was English or Creole, and that French and Dutch were spoken only very infrequently. This was the first time we were able to get over to the French side and it was very European looking. And naturally, anything with French Roots has something named Louis the Something somewhere.



And that Quartier d’Orleans is not where you want to head. Just head for Philipsburg.

However, our bus had an hour and half stop in Marigot, so Tom and I started wandering around. There was a “shopping mall” that they were very proud of that had about 10 stores in it. And we were there so early that most of the stores were still closed.

There was a mother yelling at her kid, in French. There were two gentlemen eating breakfast and speaking in French. There were signs everywhere in French. The ladies at the market we wandered over to all started to speak to us in French. The times for the taxis were called out in French, as well as the dock for departure was all in French. The information was written in French. So the guy who said that there wasn’t much French spoken on the Island must’ve never actually gone to the other side of island, and certainly doesn’t know the French love of their own language.

We boarded the bus and continued on our tour, and I was only too happy to end up back in Philipsburg. We were immediately assaulted by someone who wanted to try and con us in to a time share. We tried to be nice, but finally wound up just walk away from her.

We meandered through the town of Philipsburg. I should mention here that St. Maarten is one of the places in the Caribbean that still has actual jewelry deals. You can honestly get good deals on precious and semi-precious gems here, so we’re always interested in looking. Most things are guaranteed to appraise 30 to 50% more in the US, and you can get diamonds duty free; the only draw back is that they are NOT conflict free gems. Most of the are DeBeers. Hmph.

After some hunting we found two pieces- the most gorgeous of which you will get to see if you are going to be at Nicole and Brian’s wedding. Otherwise, wait for the pictures. Ha.

We walked around Philipsburg for a little while, waiting for the next water taxi to take us back to the boat.



There aren’t nearly as many moored boats in Philipsburg bay as there are in Marigot, but it’s still pretty.



We were back in plenty of time, and sat around relaxing mostly. We were treated to another gorgeous view, this one with a history.

The island you see in the distance is called Saba. There are less than 1500 people living on it, and the top of the mountain is 2800 ft above sea level, which is impressive since the island is only 5 sq miles. Now, if you’re a movie buff, you’ll know that THIS is Skull Island from the original 1932 version of King Kong. The island was used as background for the beginning of the film.

And if you’re SCUBA diver, this IS the place to go. The entire immediate shoreline is a marine preserve.



Next up, Antigua...

The Virginia Blogs: Um. We're homeowners?

I promise that I will get back to the vacation soon. Honest.

We're not moved in or anything, but we're well on our way to being such.

Ok, so this is one of the stories I need to write down. We've been thinking and trying and trying to save for a house for about 3 years. We've gone looking and driving by and talked to a realtor or two over those years. When we moved down here, I made a concentrated effort to start looking at houses. The problem has always been that what we like, we can't afford. What we can afford we don't like. What we like requires major repairs, or what we can afford is in the ghetto.

Been there, done that, got the hell out.

So, we found some townhomes in Yorktown that we liked. They were nice. They were new. They were still building. We decided to keep an eye on them for a while and perhaps in Sept., go talk to them. I would once in a while wander back to the website and stare longingly at the floor plan, and sometimes wander through the other site and homes they were offering.

It had probably been 2 or 3 months since I had been back to this website, still wandering about looking for other houses we might want to consider. Well, as I wandered I came across a new development name I had never seen before: Fenwick Hills. Hmm. Ok, I'm curious.

I click on and play with the first house that comes up. It had a fun little 'build your own' button, and you could adjust things the way you wanted. Then I looked at the price.

Bwah? It fell under my mark for any home we might consider. Well under. Like $10,000 under. I showed this little find to Tom and he liked it. He probably thought nothing more of it after that. I did though.

The next day, since we had nothing to do, I decided to take us up to these sites and check them out. Maybe get a little information, think about it sort of thing.

We wound up in the wrong damn development. The houses were HUGE and gorgeous and I kept thinking, "There's no way these are the houses in that online brochure..." Sure enough, when we walked into the sales office, the lady said that the houses start about $350 and go from there. She was nice enough to direct us to the proper place.

Well, I walked in and asked for some information. I poked around the decorated model for a few before the lady could talk to me. Being that I was actually going to school to be an architect at one point, I was noticing details and was pleased with what I was seeing. I had to pause to wipe the drool off the granite countertops...

The lady was nice enough to talk to me and give me some information. I asked for a slew of information, and she happily answered me. I finally decided that Tom had to come in and see this place because I was loving it-- despite that it was not the place we had come to look at.

I dragged him, a bit of kicking and screaming, and we wandered through the townhouse. It was simply gorgeous. It was also completely out of our range. However the house that we had originally come in to ask about was in our price range, in our square footage range, and had actual land with it.

We drove home and I would say that by the time we got home that night, we decided to go back and apply for the house. What was the worst that could happen? They laughed at us and said no. I've had worse happen. So has he.

Well, they didn't laugh and they didn't say no. And sometime between August 16th and September 16th, we will be closing and moving into our house.



Our house will have a garage where the window is on this one. We are also probably going for a greyish/taupe for the siding.



This is the floor plan we picked. Actually, the only thing that we added on was the bay window in the living room.

And here is where they are going to build it--


I'll have a picture when they put the sold sign on the lot. Because I'm excited and cheesey that way.

ADDED 2020: 

Through a series of miscommunications, bad credit, and a totally unreasonable request from the realtor, we wound up not building this house. I'm still mad about the situation, but I'm not mad that the house didn't get built. A year later we'd move back to Philly, and just a few months after that, the shipyard had massive layoff and nearly my whole former department was eliminated. We would have been stuck in James City County, VA with no job and massive mortgage. 

Things work out. 

The Virginia Blogs: Bubble Heads In St. Thomas

The first thing you learn about cruises is that they are not really as relaxed and laid back as you might think if you plan on actually leaving the ship in port. Ninty percent of the excursions leave within 1/2 an hour of clearance at the dock. We ordered breakfast as room service because... well, it was free. Heh.

Let me just say that St. Thomas is a standard stop on nearly all cruises from the US. We've been there before, so once you've done the Island Exploration tour, you have to start getting creative with what you're doing. This was our answer.

Today, like the next four, we had to be on the dock by 8 a.m. But this was going to be a really cool excursion, and we were very excited about it. Not to mention, the boat pulled right up next to our ship. Sweet. No sweaty bus.



Our excursion boat pulled up and the first thing we are told is that this is barefoot boat. You are not allowed to wear shoes on the boat at anytime, so there was a bucket for everyone to deposit their footwear in. This is actually a great idea in warmer waters; its much easier to feel the deck of the ship without shoes on and keep your balance better. When the captain got us going, we knew why. We were seriously hauling through the water.

This was the first chance I had to get a look at the Boss Underwater Scooters.



There are only 200 of these things in the world. They are basically just what the name implies. Underwater scooters. You sit on this thing, put your head in the bubble so you can breathe, and go. Technically.

We were divided into two groups, and Tom and I lucked out on being the second group. This gave us a chance to get into the water and get used to the temperature. Even in the Caribbean, the water is cold in the winter. About 70.* And it gave us the chance to watch the whole process of getting in and out of these things.



They are lowered into the water, and then floated out to anchor points. The mini buoys you see are meant to keep track of where you are once you drop your buoyancy to get under the water. They are sources of amusement, as I will explain in a moment.

As the first group is swimming out and loading up, the captain throws a cup of cat food into the water. Bwah? About a half a second later, over a hundred yellow snapper are in a feeding frenzy all around the scooters and the boat and several unsuspecting snorklers.

[photo to come**]
We both decide getting in the water while the others were out and about in the scooters was a good idea. We doned our masks and snorkels and jumped in. I’m extremely comfortable in the water, which was a good thing, because were in about 35 feet of water. Tom is not so comfortable in deep water. Still he jumped in. At least you knew you weren’t going to hit your head.

We could see the scooters in the distance under the water. It was just plain neat that there was no SCUBA equipment involved in driving around down there—it was very James Bond.



They started to bring the scooters back after about 10 minutes and we crawled back on deck to watch. Well, you could watch the progress of the scooters through those little buoys like the 007 above. One of them was going around in circles. Apparently, they had been going around in circles for the whole time. The captain laughed, and said, “Every time. There’s always one that just goes in circles.”

I kept that comment in mind as we got in to the water to do this.

So, I swam up to my little underwater scooter, and ducked in as they had instructed: grab the back edge of the helmet, take a deep breath and use that grip to pull yourself under the back lip and into the bubble. No problem. But that wasn’t where they usually had the problems.

I gave the OK signal to the guide and he let the air ballast out. Down I went. This was wicked cool. Breathing in the bubble is an art. You have to remember to do it. You swear that you’re not able to breathe because you’re completely surrounded by water. But you are because there’s an oxygen tank right there. Once you realize you can breathe, you realize you can’t hear. The pressure in the water goes up MUCH faster than the pressure does down in the air. So you have to swallow every 3 feet your descend to clear your ears. We were only about 15, 20 feet down at any time. Still, just a little up and down makes you have to clear your ears.

Here’s something else you need to know underwater. The OK handle signal means OK, the thumbs up signal means “get me to the damn surface now”. Don’t use the thumbs up signal.

[there are photos underwater, to come**]

We merrily putzed along under the water, and learned that there is a reason there’s always one that goes in circles—those machines are really hard to steer! Holy mackerel, are they are hard. No matter how hard you mash the power button, you’re underwater and it takes a few seconds for the scooter to answer. So you can hit that button, turn the yoke and still be head straight for the fire coral.

You don’t want to be heading straight for fire coral. Ever. It’s seriously ouchie, and the only way to stop the sting is to pee on the burn. I’m not kidding you. Pee neutralizes the sting. I really didn’t want to pee on my hand.

I mashed the control and turned the yoke the other direction and carefully brought it back to the direction I wanted go – not towards the fire coral. While I didn’t end up being the sucker that went in circles, I surely would have been stopped for a suspected DUI with all the bobbing and weaving I was doing.

So our 15 minutes were up and we had to move back to where we were anchored. And this is where my asthma situation sucks. I have about 15, 18 minutes underwater before, between the pressure and the oxygen mixture, the asthma starts to kick in. It’s not an attack per se, but more of a ‘holy crap I’m going to die’ feeling. I knew it was going to happen, and I was kind of prepared. But it took them an extra minute or two to get to me in the scooter. I was, at that point, into the ‘just breathe, don’t panic’ breathing pattern.

Finally, they got to me and brought me up. Now, here is where they have all the problems with people getting out of these things. You can’t just curl yourself up and scoot down, there’s not enough room. So you have to throw your feet out backwards and push yourself in the same direction. I didn’t really understand what the hell they were talking about until I was in the thing. It’s really the only logical way out; there just aren’t a lot of logical people out there.

We had a few minutes while they got the scooters back on board, which after my air thing, wasn’t good. I found out first that someone had yacked on my bag. Only a little bit, but it was yack and it was on my bag. Ew. I also remembered that I hated anchored boats in lightly tossing seas. You have to give me the big waves or no waves. I was absolutely miserable until still we started moving again. And once we were moving, I was fine.



We wandered around the little shopping area in St. Thomas, which was basically all part of the port. It was a tourist trap, of course. There were no real deals to be had, but we found a few T’s for Tom—who realized that he had only packed about 2 t-shirts. We were only there for about an hour. We did buy a soda each. They didn’t have my usual, so I got a diet 7-up. Never ever buy anything but a diet coke outside the US. I had to choke it down for a few sips because I was so thirsty. I then turned to Tom and apologized and threw it out.

It was the first of two formal nights on the ship, but I’m going to do an entire single entry on just the boat, so you’ll have to wait for that. But here, you can enjoy the sunset.




-------------------------------
*When you're used to going in down there at 85 degrees, that's cold.
** yeah, there were a LOT of pictures; these were on underwater cameras that I haven’t had a chance to develop. Yes, people still develop film.

The Virginia Blogs: Old San Juan, and Sailing Away

We were up and at up bright and early the next day!

Ok, I’m a liar. We rolled out of bed somewhere around 8, ate breakfast, went back to the room and took a nap. We went out to the pool for a quick dip and it was WAY too cold for any form of dipping. So we walked out to the little public beach outside the gate and took a dip in the ocean. That was much more enjoyable.*

We headed back in and took some quick showers, packed up our stuff and checked out with about a minute to spare. Since this was a pretty swanky hotel, they were more than happy to store our luggage while we went exploring San Juan.

Now, Tom is infamous for his dislike and distrust of public transportation, but that’s probably because he only ever dealt with what passed for mass transit in northern Jersey. Which isn’t much, and isn’t very reliable. But I insisted that we try the bus system, which was simple and straightforward. It took about ½ an hour for the bus to show up, but it was $.50** and took us to the Old San Juan Casino, which was where we stayed last time and knew exactly where we were.

We headed up for El Morro, the fort at the bay entrance to San Juan Bay. Even though we had been here before, I naturally picked up back alley to walk down where we were both convinced that knocking on any of the doors would have gotten us just about anything we wanted. Homegrown. We quickly got off that street and found another that lead us up to the top of the hill that San Juan is on, and to the Plaza Las Americas. Or I think that what it was.



Now, I would like you to notice the sky in that picture. It had been sunny all morning, until we emerged on to this plaza. It looked, from what we had seen on the Weather Channel in the hotel, all the storms were going to go south of the city, or dissipate before it hit the city. So, we shrugged it off.

We headed up for the castle in El Morro.



Yeah, the thing that’s under construction.*** Note the clouds.

We hiked up the hill. The surf was really high and breaking in beautiful surfing waves, and I would have been tempted if the entire coast hadn’t be completely covered in rocks. We were rewarded after walking with one of the most famous sights in all of the Caribbean:



This is one of the guard turrets from El Morro. This is on every brochure for Puerto Rico and Caribbean cruises that has ever existed. And it’s OLD. One of the oldest European fortifications in the North America. Somewhere around 1610, 1625.



We walked up to the gate to see if we could go in to the castle (that was under construction).



Naturally, being administered by the US Dept. of the Interior, there was a $10 charge to go in. Um, no thanks. So we started to head back to the Casino where we could catch the bus and go back to the hotel to retrieve our bags.



Now, look at the mountains across the bay. What mountains, you say, everything is blurred by rain.

Precisely.

By the time we got back to the shopping district from El Morro, it had started to drizzle. About 6 blocks later, as we were heading down a cobblestone street****, it was pouring. By the time we were about a block from the casino, it was tropical torrential downpour… the kind even your underwear isn’t safe from. We hid out by the post office for a moment, but I knew that it wasn’t really worth it; we were already drenched.

It was nearly 3 p.m. and I knew that Tom wanted to get on the boat as soon as possible. Now that I was drenched and disgusted by it, I was anxious to get on there too. We were heading back to the bus stop we originally got off at, when I looked over to my right. There, lo and behold, was a covered bus terminal. Since it was still pouring, I dragged Tom over and we sat down waiting for our bus.

I am completely convinced that the Puerto Ricans are descended from penguins; the bus, which you expect to be poorly temperature controlled, was freezing. Now, instead of being just miserably wet, we were miserably wet and cold. Yeay.

We got off the bus a stop too early, which thankfully was only a block from the stop we actually needed. We headed back to the hotel, and collected our things. They were nice enough to call us a taxi and I ran to the bathroom. I looked in the mirror and decided that it was hopeless; I would embrace my drowned rat appearance.

We hopped into the taxi, and it was only a 10 minute ride to the PanAmerican Pier. It might have only been about 4 minutes, except for this construction zone we had to go through. I think that the construction has been there for a long time, because I remember it from 7 years ago.

The taxi driver dropped us off and before we walked in to check-in for the cruise, I grabbed a dry shirt for both of us and shoved that in our carry-ons. We dropped off the luggage and headed into the building. They had vastly improved their check-in techniques since we had last checked in. We were in, on the line, checked in and onto the gang way within about 20 minutes. Last time, it took nearly two hours to even get on the right line.*****

As we approached the first check point on the way into the ship, we were halted by photographers. I knew they were coming, I was hoping to get by without getting my Drowned Rat Status documented, but they were somewhat unrelenting, and I knew that I wasn't going to buy the photo anyway. We did it quickly and got onto the ship.

We headed up to our stateroom and once we were there, I quickly got out of the soaking wet clothes. We headed up to the Windjammer Café and grabbed a very large, very late lunch. A foolish idea, really. Dinner was going to be at 8:45, and here we were packing it in at 5:30.

We just wandered around the ship for about two hours and checked the place out. We then headed back to our cabin for the muster drill and discovered that if the ship was sinking, we’d be some of the last people off. Hooray? We were in a very fancy dining room in the interior of the ship for our muster station. If we were going down fast, I don’t think we’d made the boat. But the likelihood that we would be hitting an iceberg were slim.

We headed off for dinner, and enjoyed ourselves a bit too much. During the dinner, we pulled away from the dock and we were given no warning. We just started feeling sick until we realized we were moving. Then we felt better.

After that, we were tired and worn out and knew we had an early excursion the next morning. We checked out the Schooner Bar for a quick drink, then headed back to the room.


Adios, San Juan.



_______________________
*except for my watch. It was supposed to be water resistant to 50 meters. I looked at about an hour after this and the crystal was fogged. I was pissed. By the end of the cruise it had stopped working. I’m looking for the paper work for it; that thing was under a year old and it shouldn’t have taken on water or stopped working.
**A wonderful thing about Puerto Rico. 80% of the population speaks English (despite what you might think!) and they use the US dollar. No exchange rate! Woo hoo!
***If it’s famous, and I’m vacationing there, it’s under construction!
****Cobblestone is SLIPPERY when wet, and I’m not talking about a Bon Jovi album here.
*****That was with NCL, and it was a complete disaster. It took a total of 3 hours to board, which closed two hours after it was supposed and we were so held up on the line that we missed the muster drill. That was just the beginning of it, too. It went downhill from there.

The Virginia Blogs: Puerto Rico, You Lovely Island…

There is nothing in the world like trying to sleep before you have to get on a plane at 6 a.m., at an airport that is an hour away from your house and you have to be there an hour and half before boarding. Do the Math.*

In other words, there wasn’t much sleep at all. But we cranked our butts out of bed, closed up, wished the kitties well, and were out the door on time. Thanks to packing the night before.

Richmond Airport is small. I’m not used to these tiny little airports—their wheels aren’t as greased as Newark or Atlanta. Things tend to move a little less smoothly. And the TSA agents don’t seem to read their own regulations. I really don’t like TSA agents in the small airports; I hate to say it dude, but the terrorists would hardly hijack a PiperCub from Norfolk to fulfill a suicide mission, so chill out.

If you couldn’t tell, I’m a little miffed about security. I have always carefully read the regulations and know exactly what I can and can’t bring on board the plane, what I have to check and all of that. Right. Well, I’ve had my pocket knife since I was 19. It’s the MacGyver model, with the corkscrew. I bought one for me and one for my friend R. I have carried it through 8 or more European countries and who knows how many Caribbean islands. I had this thing in my purse when I boarded a plane on Dec. 12, 2001 when the security was off the chart.

Mr. Important TSA Agent pulls me aside and starts going through the purse. He pokes down into the purse where the knife resides (coated with purse detrius), “Mm. Hm. Ah. Hmm. Yup.” And he pulls out the knife like it was freakin’ black asp ready to bite. “That’s what I thought it was. You can’t take this on the plane.”

“That’s a 3 inch blade,” I respond. “It falls under the guidelines.”

“No ma’am, this is not allowed,” he nodded superiorly at me.

“I’ve never ever had it questioned before,” I said.

“Then someone wasn’t paying attention,” he said.

I was going to put up a fight, but I stopped. I recalled reading an article in a magazine not so long ago where the gentleman carried a corkscrew with a foil cutter—a knife that was perhaps an inch long and tried to put up a fight about it and failed. Despite the fact that he too had checked the TSA website and fell under the guidelines. What I wanted to scream at him was something about the 12” knitting needles that were now allowed and that he had to be kidding me. Instead I just stared at him.

“Would you like to go put this in your car?”

Well, hell, why would I want to do that? I would ADORE throwing out my 14 year old pocket knife that has never been questioned before. I reached for it and he pulled back teasingly. “No ma’am, you’ll have to step outside the screening area and I’ll hand it back to you.”

Jackass. Fine. I didn’t say another thing. I pulled my shoes back on, and headed for the exit area and he finally gave me my pocket knife back. I marched out the car mumbling swear words that questioned the agent’s parentage, and left the knife in the cup holder.

Then I had to go through security again. Grr.

So, I finally get out to the plane and we board fairly soon after we get out there. It was a pretty quick boarding, and before we knew it we were already out on the runway, ready to take off. I was hoping for a little nap, but the flight wasn’t really long enough. We landed in Atlanta in about an hour and 10 minutes.

And then we got to sit in Jackson Hartsfield Int’l Airport for 3 hours. But it wasn’t really sitting. We were assigned to gate C9. We walked over to C9** and sat down.(1) About an hour later, the speaker overhead pings, and announces that our flight will now be leaving from D5. Crap.

We grab our things and walk back to Terminal D. Now, mind you, Atlanta is the busy airport in the US. Perhaps in the world. There are two planes taking off and two planes landing every two minutes. There are five terminals with 40 gates, plus the main terminal. Going from C9 to D5 meant walk back to 2/3rds of the way down the terminal, going down the escalator, walking through the tunnel, going back up the escalator, and walking back down the terminal to D5. Did I mention that our original plane landed at D4? Yeah.

We sit down, settle in, and about ½ an hour later, the speaker pings again, and now the plane is at D9. We, and the other 100 people waiting for this plane, get up and migrate down to D9. We sit down, and fifteen minutes later we’re told that the plane will be leaving from D5 again. Everyone is getting angry, so this time, they at least offer the explanation that that walkway is not working.

Despite all that the plane was at the gate on time and we were actually able to pull away from the gate on time. Up, up and away, and off to Puerto Rico.

The flight to San Juan was 3 and half hours, and we both managed to grab a few winks before we gave up on that. And at 4:00 AST, we touched down in Luis Munoz Marin International Airport, San Juan, Puerto Rico!

Tom goes out for a cigarette and almost couldn’t get back in because I had his boarding pass. Lesson 1: Never leave an airport without your boarding pass—there was no way I was going to be able to handle 6 pieces of luggage. No, I didn’t over pack, thankyouverymuch. We were able to get a taxi right outside the door. Taxi Turistico, if you ever happen to find yourself in San Juan. Authorized by the Tourism board, guaranteed rates, no negotiation. Best way to go.

Our taxi takes us to one of the hotels just inside Old San Juan on the Condado. If you want to stay in San Juan, you want to stay on the Condado or in Isla Verde. It’s gorgeous and the hotels are fantastic. We stayed in the Normandie Hotel, an art deco hotel designed to look like a cruise ship which was gutted and rebuilt in 2005.



The coolest thing were these fish tanks:



When you got in to the elevators on the first floor, you could see them. There were some cool fish in them, too.

The window in our room was fogged up because it was so humid, but when you opened the window, you had the most wonderful view.


Ft. Geronimo, the end of the fortifications of Old San Juan.

The pool was freezing, the ocean was much warmer. The problem was that the room we were in was apparently had it’s AC programmed by visiting Eskimos. I looked at the thermostat and it was 60 degrees. SIXTY. I don’t even keep my AC at home in the middle of Virginia summer lower than 73. So I cranked the temp up to about 70 and it was still freezing in there.

This was the best way to sleep in there:


We settled in and decided to just go to dinner and relax. We were just too tired from being up for about 24 hours (with a few naps) to try to do anything. Tomorrow was time to get on the ship!