Emerald Princess, December 2008, Day 7

St. Thomas

The harbor at Charlotte Amalie in St. Thomas has two separate docks for cruise ships. The original one, West Indian Company Dock, is next to the duty-free shopper's paradise -- Havensight Mall. The newer Crown Bay Cruise Ship Dock is on the other side out town to the west.

We didn't know which one we would land on. It turned out the Emerald Princess went to the West Indian Dock. The photo on the left shows the dock, the nose of the Emerald Princess and Royal Caribbean's Serenade of the Seas. We have docked there on our other two visits to St. Thomas. It is very convenient to the shopping centers and there are trams to help get you back to the ship on a hot afternoon. Our driver was Mel Brooks.


We hoped to see Cunard Line's Queen Mary 2 but she either didn't get to St. Thomas that day or she was at the Crown Bay Cruise Ship Dock.

We took most of our Christmas cards with us and mailed them from St. Thomas -- it's a U.S. territory. Also cell phones work there without international charges, so I called my parents in Maine.

After our room service breakfast we had to go, along with all the other passengers, to show our identification and passports to U.S. Immigration officers on board before we could leave the ship.



Lunch was pizza and burgers on deck and dinner was crab legs in the Michalangelo.

During the afternoon everybody on the starboard side got a free, live reggae concert from the pool area of a dockside bar and grill, Paradise Gate. Very good. After dinner we went to a show, "I Got the Music," but we weren't in the mood and left mid-way through.

It never got really sunny all day, but that was OK because it kept the heat down a bit.

Distances Sailed
Fort Lauderdale to Aruba
1137 nautical miles = 1308 statute miles = 2103 kilometers

Aruba to Bonaire
120 nautical miles = 138 statute miles = 222 kilometers

Bonaire to Grenada
395 nautical miles = 454 statute miles = 731 kilometers

Grenada to Dominica
199 nautical miles = 229 statute miles = 368 kilometers

Dominica to St. Thomas
274 nautical miles = 315 statute miles = 507 kilometers

Total distance so far
2125 nautical miles = 2444 statute miles = 3931 kilometers

NOTE: 1 nautical mile = 1.15 land miles = 1.85 kilometers

May 2008 Cruise -- Day 4, Carnival Glory

Tuesday
St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands

We could feel the sea a little through the night. Nothing serious but we were going through some choppy water.

As we approached the island of St. Thomas and the dock in Charlotte Amalie, capital of the U.S. Virgin Islands we saw two other Carnival ships already there.

At the north end of the dock was Carnival Triumph. At the south end leaving just enough room for our ship to squeeze in between was Carnival Miracle. Captain Rassello cleverly used the ship's side thrusters and we managed to slip in between the other ships with very little room to spare. In the photo above you can just make out the forward ship and the space our ship will occupy (look for Carnival's trademark whale's tail smokestack in the distance).

Because we docked in Nassau before we got to St.Thomas and because the U.S. Virgin Islands are an "organized, unincorporated United States territory" -- we have to go through U.S. customs here. Even if we are not getting off the ship! The ship's computer is so good that after an hour or so of long lines of passengers getting checked by customs there was an announcement that about 60 people still had not passed the check point. A few minutes late they started reading names.

After lunch we got off the ship and walked to the Havensite Mall to get duty-free goodies. The temperature was quite mild. We expected humid, tropical heat. The port and the hillside homes are very beautiful. And you can use your U.S. cellphone, if you stand in the right spot.

The cruise so far:
Port Canaveral to Nassau
279 Nautical miles, 321 land miles, 516 kilometers

Nassau to St. Thomas
870 Nautical miles, 1001 land miles, 1610 kilometers

Total so far from Port Canaveral to St. Thomas
1149 Nautical miles, 1321 land miles, 2126 kilometers

Note: 1 nautical mile = 1.15 land miles = 1.85 kilometers

This frog was sitting on the bed tonight.

May 2006, Caribbean Princess Cruise -- Day 4

Tuesday, St. Thomas, USVI

"Land at last, land at last!" from Sail Away, a 1961 Broadway musical by Noel Coward

Distance sailed so far:
Fort Lauderdale to St. Thomas, 1131 nautical miles (that's 1302 statute miles)

There is a nautical chart on the wall on Lido Deck 15. That's the deck where the big pools are and the two buffets, Horizon Court and Cafe Caribe. The chart shows the route of the Caribbean Princess and it gets updated every day by somebody from the bridge. The published distance is actually only 981 nautical miles but because of the rough seas we went 150 n.m. out of our way on Saturday night for a smoother ride.

Here's a photo of the ship at the dock so you can see how big it really is.

We arrived at dawn in St. Thomas and at 7:00 A.M. we were slowly pulling into the dock. I expected the view to be ugly warehouses with oil tanks and typical rusting waterfront sheds. What we saw however were steep green hillsides with lovely houses. I guess you could call them villas. It looked like the French Riviera. And best of all -- a U.S. based cell phone works from the balcony!

Directly across the street from the dock is a shopping mall just for us tourists. In the photo on the left you can see our ship behind the shopping mall sign. Those life boats are on the ship's Deck 7.

If you don't need to shop for jewelry you'll have time to buy liquor and cigarettes. Not only is the liquor cheap there is an extra bonus for U.S. citizens. Oh, the knowledge one picks up when traveling...

In several possessions of the United States there are special duty free regulations, and the U.S. Virgin Islands is one of them. You can buy and take home, completely tax and duty free, five liters of liquor as long as one liter is made locally. In this case made in the U.S. Virgin Islands -- and obviously this means rum. No, you cannot open it on the ship. They won't even give it to you until just before you disembark.

Here's the view from our balcony, looking down toward the mouth of Charlotte Amalie Harbor.

Click here to see the current view from the bridge of the Caribbean Princess.