Holiday felted buddies

Winds weren’t looking favorable for us to head north yet, so we decided to go back to Christiansted. We actually found ourselves ‘trapped’ on the boat for two days with high winds and lumpy seas even in the harbor. I did a lot of reading, cleaned out the fridge, and finished some Christmas projects. It’s not exactly a hardship to have to stay put for a day or two.

Salvage work

We took the bus to the center of the island where I could get to an AT&T store. Only 45 minutes of waiting and the tech got my mobile hotspot working with the SIM card, so I wouldn’t burn through cellular data on my cell phone. We walked over to the grocery store then and did a big stock up. We caught a ‘taxi-van’ back to the harbor (big splurge – $2.50 instead of $1 for the bus).

Salvage divers at rest

 

Since we had already tried Savant and had a fabulous meal, we decided to give Balter a try as well. We went early and sat at the bar. As hot and humid as the islands are, once the sun goes down a glass of light red wine is still really nice. Turley Cinsault (never heard of it before) seems to be the red of choice in the nicer restaurants and you can buy an entire bottle for $40 (restaurant markup) so we enjoyed a few glasses and shared a scrumptious bowl of shrimp mac & cheese.

The Mill – fabulous pizza

We managed to rent a car one more day to explore a bit more, so decided to go snorkeling off the beaches of Fredericksted where the water was calmer. A local dive shop let us know that even though the cruise ship was still in town (housing FEMA workers), you could snorkel and dive right off the beach along the pier as long as you stayed away from the ship itself. The storm had made a direct hit on this end of the island and everything was pretty trashed, but you could still see some sea fans and sponges that had survived. There was a school of cuttlefish hanging out in the rocks that we watched for a while. After drying off we headed north to a fabulous beach bar called Rhythms. Unfortunately we were a bit too early in the day for the live music, but it was still a great place to relax and have lunch.

Prepped for the holidays