Saturday, October 24 -- Back in St. Thomas! Yea!

We are back in St. Thomas, this time at Bolongo Bay Beach Resort. This resort "ain't much to write home about" -- the buildings are pretty old, but the furnishings seem updated and it does have a kingsize bed. And the beach itself is nice, though from what golf found out when she waded a little bit into the water just before sundown, once past the sand, it's rather rocky. Here's the view from our balcony.

Bath is rather small, but the resort does furnish little bottles of shampoo and conditioner, little bars of soap and a hair dryer (Sapphire Village didn't in every unit, depended on the owner, I guess). (Yes, that's golf's laptop on the bathroom counter -- the bathroom had the only available electrical plug she could find to re-charge the battery on the laptop, which she ran down on the flight down, using GoGo internet ["free for one flight for new user" for which she signed up so she could email Larry about the flight, but then he wasn't paying attention to email because he didn't know golf was using it! [gnash teeth] AAAAGGGGHH!!!)
Kitchen, though, hardly qualifies as a kitchen. A tiny wet-bar size sink, a small microwave, and a half refrigerator with no ice trays, much less an ice-maker. golf had to go buy a little styrofoam cooler and a bag of ice (she didn't take a picture of those).
By the way, St. Thomas is on Atlantic time, so it's an hour ahead of Atlanta except when Daylight Savings Time is in effect, and then it's the same time.

Now, as to how we (golf and I) got here. Larry and golf, with their smoking vice, had used up all the cigarettes golf got when she was down here in August, so it was time for another cigarette run. golf was able to get on the 10 a.m. flight down here (stand-by) without an problem, but this time she wasn't in First/Business Class. Bummer! (Is she spoiled or what?) Picked up her rental car, made it through "downtown" Charlotte Amalie (she's learning her way around pretty well) and to the resort without any major setbacks. Got all her stuff into the rental unit and seriously thought about going snorkeling first, BEFORE the cigarette run to K-Mart, but then she decided maybe she ought to do that run before dark, since this time she was taking a cross-island road that she hadn't driven (on the left side of the road, remember!) before, plus the water looked pretty surf-y (i.e., larger waves than she wanted to deal with while snorkeling).

So, golf figured she'd make the K-Mart run and be back in time to snorkel for a little while. "The best laid plans . . . " and all that. The extra stop to have to get ice and the styrofoam cooler added a little too much time to the trip. Nevertheless, golf gave it her best shot and changed into her swimsuit, blew up her inflatable raft, loaded up the snorkel gear, and headed for the east end of the beach. Where she discovered that the loopy thingy that holds the snorkel to the mask -- was MISSING! Had she been able to get her equipment in order, I think she would have gone in the water for 10 minutes or so, just to see if there were any fish there. But without that one little piece of equipment, she reluctantly resigned herself to no snorkeling today. HOWEVER, the resort does have its own dive shop, so she diddly-bopped over there and purchased a new loopy thingy for $2. Of course, by this time, it was too late to go in the water, but she's set for tomorrow morning (YES, she did check her luggage to be sure the loopy thingy hadn't just fallen off in the bag, but, alas, it had not -- or yea! it had not, since she had just spent two bucks to buy another one). Oh, yes, along the line of talking about buying things, the unit may have little bottles of shampoo, etc., but it has virtually NO drinking glasses -- only three mini-orange juice size glasses. So along with the cigs at K-Mart, golf also bought a cheapo set of four "old fashioned" drink size glasses (good for margaritas) and a souvenir-stamped West Indies plastic insulated mug for her diet orange Sunkist in the morning (okay, okay, she KNOWS she can't buy Diet Sunkist here, so she packed four cans of that in the bag she checked [extra bag to be checked for more cigarette cartons room] -- and they made it through the flight without exploding! So she has her version of "morning coffee" -- she never learned to like coffee).

Also, since she hadn't had anything to eat all day but a few grapes before she went to the airport this morning, a Burger King croissandwich at the airport, a couple of cinnamon cookies on the airplane, and a handful of peanuts, she figured she ought get something for dinner. She bought a frozen (what her generation calls a "TV dinner") at the grocery store, so I guess she better go cook it in her little mini-microwave . . . . though now she's not hungry . . . . good thing she decided against the $40 lobster dinner at the restaurant here at the resort. That $40 will buy a lot more than one 1-lb. lobster at our local Kroger . . . .

Signing off for tonight (while I still have whatever internet connection she's managed to piggy-back onto for tonight). !