Last week was the babymoon for Sparks and I. We spent a week on Saint Thomas, USVI. Sparks’ parents lived there for five years but moved back to the Midwest before we met, so this was my tour of the old haunts.
We arrived three or four days after Hurricane Earl had brushed the island. The bed & breakfast we were going to stay at still didn’t have power, so we couldn’t stay there. Sparks got on the phone and quickly booked us five nights at the Marriott and two nights at… the Ritz-Carlton.
Staying at the Ritz was pretty rough, let me tell you. Yes that IS an infinity pool by the ocean. We were greeted in the lobby with chilled towels and rum punch, then driven to our room in a golf cart. It was pretty sweet.
There were people who knew us all over the island, it seems. This is Sparks with Justin, a member of his parents’ old church. Justin invited us to a Labor Day picnic at Magen’s Bay. Yay!
But first, a morning at Secret Harbor, which was practically deserted. We snorkeled a little and bobbed in the water a lot. Bobbing in the water was my goal for the vacation, so I was very happy.
Monday was the Labor Day picnic at Magen’s Bay, which is a very long beach of very fine white sand, protected by a deep harbor.
Kids scrabbled in the sand and surf
And we got to taste some authentic island food.
After the first two nights we moved to the Marriott Frenchman’s Reef, which was also very nice (though they have a bad habit of trying to sell you timeshares every single time you speak to an employee.)
Sparks’ goal for the vacation was to lounge around, reading audiophile journals and plotting his next big tube project. I think he achieved his goal, mostly while I was bobbing in the water.
There are two Marriott resorts beside each other, with a gorgeous seaside boardwalk connecting them. The other one, the Marriott Morning Star, has a very good restaurant called Havana Blue where we ate twice. We took a lot of self-portraits on the boardwalk in between.
On Friday, we took a pleasure cruise to the British Virgin Islands. Here is Sparks in the Cathedral Room at the Baths on Virgin Gorda. The boulders are truly huge and are strewn all over the island, not just the shore. I claimed pregnant-lady privileges and instead of taking a hot sweaty hike on top of them like the rest of the tour group, we bobbed in the water. Hooray!
After eating lunch and then snorkeling at Diamond Reef, we stopped at the Soggy Dollar Bar on Jost Van Dyke. It was on the most insanely beautiful beach we had ever seen–such a perfect strip of white sand with a line of palm trees behind, and so clear, turquoise water. Nice.
