Reflections on Day 4
This was a good day for us- we got off the ship (which we enjoyed - we're never going to be the "stay on the ship in port" people), for an age-appropriate, not too long, not too scheduled, excursion.
The rest of the day was unscheduled, and the port shops where we were at St. Thomas was super-accessible, which was nice. I was really surprised at the fact we were completely unaware of the 20,000 + tourists in town - perhaps because we took the early excursion.
We had no regrets at the fact we booked through DCL, even though it probably could have been done on our own easily enough in the end - the 6 ships in port was not something we wanted to mess about with ... we could see ourselves sitting around trying to find transportation and getting more and more stressed, which we do not need on vacation. Wimps? Yep, that's us - we pay for comfort and convenience on vacation, and have no qualms doing it, especially with a 4.5 year old.
It was nice spending some time on the ship when it wasn't as crowded, but honestly, we didn't notice a huge difference in most areas, except, of course, the Aquaduck.
Pirate night (kidlet version), though, was truly awesome for us. Disney got that one right, from our perspective. You'll note we didn't even try to stay up for the fireworks - not surprisingly, our noise-averse kid hates them, and even if he liked them, they're at 10:30 at night... he's not been awake past 9:30 p.m. more than a dozen times since he dropped his 11:00 p.m. feed at the age of 4 months. We feel no need to experiment with this on vacation - that's just crazy-making talk.
However, we were still missing our beach. We could have done a beach trip on St. Thomas, or we could have hopped over to the beach near Coral World, but again, the hordes of tourists had us spooked. Happily, a beach with our name on it was waiting in San Juan... more on that soon!
Good-night, St. Thomas: