San Juan airport, 8/26/07, finally heading home

Eventually we retrieved our bags from Barra Chino and found a taxi-van to take us to the airport. After going through security, we found our gate already full of travelers and there were no seats available. I have not been to all that many airports in my life, but this one had less seating than any others that I’ve visited. We finally just parked ourselves on the floor, against a large post. The airport did have free high-speed internet access though, so Mark and I both jumped online to do a little ‘net surfing. (The photo is Mark and Sharon.)

Right before they began boarding the plane, we heard Sharon’s name being called over the loudspeaker. Apparently her seat was broken (!!) so the airline moved both her and Mark to the way-back of the plane. The plane from San Juan to Miami was running late, and our layover was very short. When we arrived in Miami, Sharon called my cell phone (Caitlin and I were in the 8th row, way in front) and told us to hoof it down to the gate for the connecting flight, and let them know the rest were coming. We made our connection and they closed the plane’s doors almost as soon as we boarded.

Finally, we were headed home to Minneapolis, and made it back to Sharon’s around 11:30pm. Caitlin was awake enough to drive, so we opted to head back to Austin, and we were sleeping in our own beds just after 2am. It was a really, really long day, but it was a FABULOUS trip.

THE END

San Juan: Fake Coach on the street

After lunch, we headed out for some more wanderings. A street vendor was selling these fake Coach handbags, only a few blocks from where the Factory Store was located. These looked pretty good from a distance, but you could tell they were fake from 10 feet away – very cheesy workmanship, and they felt more like plastic than leather.

San Juan: Dooney & Burke Factory Store

Half a block from the Coach Factory store, we found this Dooney & Burke factory store. There were also several other factory stores in the area, so we're guessing it was a pretty famous shopping district.

San Juan: More Coach Factory Store

Final tally: Two new purses for Caitlin (a large green tote, and a small blue and white pocket-style purse) with a matching green card wallet, a matching green key fob, and a ponytail scarf. For me, an insane splurge of three new purses (medium white purse with appliquéd flowers and a bumble bee, large white tote with a lavender lining, and a small mauve leather purse), a photo album key fob to match the Coach wallet I already had, and another key fob as a birthday gift for my friend Lori. What a haul. The savings on just one of those 5 purposes equaled the cost of the round trip plane ticket to San Juan. The guy at the counter who was helping to package the bags told us that he had been in Minnesota before to set up the Coach Factory store in Albertville, northwest of the Twin Cities.

San Juan: Coach Factory Store!!

As we wandered aimlessly from little bitty store to little bitty store, Caitlin suddenly spotted a Coach Factory Store. The discounts you can find at a Factory Store are one thing, but on top of that, they were having a SALE!! 10 to 40% off just about everything, and it was a really big store. It took quite a while to choose (but at least this store was air conditioned), but we finally made up our minds.

More San Juan street scenes

More photos from our wanderings in Old San Juan. The white building with the columns is their Government Building, which was undergoing renovations.

The last day: San Juan, 8/26/07

It seemed to take forever for August to come and the vacation to begin. And then it starts, and “boom” the vacation is over. Big Sigh. So today is the last day of the trip. Last night we had to have our luggage packed and outside our cabin doors by midnight – this allows the crew ample time to get the luggage for 3,800 passengers down to the lower levels, taken off the ship, and placed in a color-coded storage area. We kept just the stuff we needed for today.

We had to get up crazy early to take showers, get dressed, pack up the carry-on luggage, and vacate our rooms by 8am. While it is a hassle to deal with the carry-on luggage (which included my laptop in another bag) for the rest of the day, the ship will have another pile of passengers boarding later today, and there’s no time to get the cabins cleaned if all the passengers don’t get out of the rooms.

Caitlin and I met up with Sharon and Mark, and headed up (with our bags O stuff) to the breakfast buffet. Everybody in the world was there, doing the same thing. In hindsight, this would have been the perfect day to get breakfast in the Main Dining Room, which I never did get to do. Next time…

After breakfast, we needed to find someplace to park ourselves until it was time to leave the ship. The night before we all received disembarkation Group Numbers, in order of people’s airline departure times, with instructions of what we were supposed to do. All the usual places were filled, so we headed down to the Lyric Theatre on Decks 3 and 4, which only had a dozen other passengers in it. The chairs there were very comfortable, so we all sprawled out and got ready to wait. I was extremely congested and borderline miserable by then, so I just half-snoozed. I think everyone else was reading books. Finally our Group Number was called, and we got in the Really Big Line to get off the ship.

Once you got in the line, it moved at a decent speed. Somehow Caitlin and I got in hundreds of people ahead of Sharon and Mark (we thought they were right behind us), so after “punching out” of the ship, we waited for them on the deck – which was shady – until they made it out too. Then down the gangway to a very large room that had luggage lined up everywhere. It took a little while, then we found all of our bags and followed the porter to the American Airlines counter, where we dropped them off. Caitlin and I also chose to check the carry-on bag for the route home, so we had a little less to carry during the day. By now, it was somewhere around 10 or 10:30 in the morning.

In hindsight, once again, we would have been better off in swimsuits by the ship’s pools for a few hours, because after we dropped the luggage, we had to wait in line for 40 minutes to get a taxi downtown. A helpful person at the docks told us that we could check our other bags at the Barra Chino restaurant in Old San Juan, so that’s where we went next. It had become cloudy, and rain was threatening.

After getting rid of that armload of carry-on luggage and laptop computers, we started to wander around the streets of Old San Juan. We meandered around a grocery store for a while (where Sharon purchased some Oreo-like sandwich cookies carrying a “Bimbo” brand name), then sat around in this park for a while. There were hundreds of pigeons, all completely unafraid of the people around them.

Leaving St Thomas. :-(

Leaving the last island behind, we headed up the gangway and back to the ship. Sharon and Mark went to the Internet Café on Deck 8 to catch up, and Caitlin and I donned swimsuits and lounged poolside for an hour. Actually, I fell asleep. Soon it was time to get ready for the last night’s dinner on the ship. Caitlin and I ordered the smoked salmon and pasta in tomato cream sauce, and Mark shared some of his mahi mahi with me. Mark also had the sirloin steak with béarnaise sauce, but I can’t remember what Sharon ordered. Whatever it was, it was great. Ivan brought us our last round of shots, along with a page showing the recipes for each one that we’d enjoyed during the week.

After dinner, we headed down to the Photo Lab on Deck 2 to pick up the “Week in Review” DVD of the cruise. Then it was time to pack up. We were required to get our bags packed and outside in the hallway by midnight, and just keep a carry-on (carry-out?) of the items we would need the next day. The last towel critter for the journey was a manta ray.

Goodbye, Brenda and Franko!

Back at the pier, Brenda and Franko gave us all hugs and took this group photo for us.

Markets in St Thomas

Soon we were headed back down to the harbor area, and back into crazy traffic. We could see little markets all over the place. This one even had fake designer handbags.

Mountain view of the ship

From one of the mountain outlooks, we could see the entire harbor, including our ship.

Mountaintop, St Thomas

We thought we were pretty high up for those pictures, but then we started to climb even further to the “Mountaintop – Home of The World Famous Banana Daiquiri”. The view was spectacular, and the daiquiri, made of fresh bananas, was pretty good too. You could see Magen's Bay from this vantagepoint also.

Magen's Bay, St Thomas

We saw everything at Coral World in less time than we expected, so we called Brenda and Franko to come and pick us up early. They had actually just arrived with other passengers, so after buying a few souvenirs in the gift shop, it was time to go. We had a few hours before we had to be back on board, so we asked for a short guided island tour. They agreed, and we were off. There was a cheesy song playing on the truck radio, over and over – apparently when they really like a song, they just set it on “repeat” and that’s what you get. For an hour.

Up mountains and down mountains we went, to several beautiful spots on the island.
We were very glad that we weren’t driving on those roads. Magen’s Bay was one of the first stops, and it was breathtaking. This is a bay that shows up on a lot of photographs of St. Thomas!

Coki Beach, St Thomas

If we had gone snorkeling that day, it would have been at Coki Beach, right next to Coral World.

Coral World: Caribbean Reef Exhibit

There was a new “Caribbean Reef” exhibit in a low, round building. This was particularly cool. Each tank contained a nice selection of sea life. This was the first time I’d ever seen real seahorses, and they are the darndest things. They were swimming around, and occasionally would stop and curl their tails around a branch as an anchor. The rock lobsters in the next tank were really cool too. When we exited the building, the pelican was perching right outside the door. He was very nonchalant about having his photograph taken from only 3 feet away.

Coral World: Sea Grape Tree

We wandered down another trail and found some more critters. This round-leafed tree is a sea grape, and we saw these at all 4 islands.

Coral World: Lorikeets

After we left the observatory, we checked out the shallow “petting pool” which contained small sting rays, star fish, big slug-looking things, and a few other sea creatures. Then we started down one of the trails and entered a large netted area for lorikeets. These beautiful birds were quite friendly, especially after we paid $3 for a cup of nectar. The second they saw the nectar being poured, they were all over it. The birds lapped it all up within just a few minutes. One was walking around on me, literally.

Coral World: Underwater Observatory

Coral World has a 3-story underwater observatory built off a short pier in the ocean. We walked across the pier, then down the circular staircase to the bottom. It was like snorkeling without getting wet – hundreds of brightly colored fish at all the windows, coral, anemones, sea urchins, etc. The next two levels up showed more fish, who preferred swimming around at a different level from those at the bottom. Caitlin didn’t go snorkeling with us, preferring to hang out on the beaches, so I bored her to tears by excitedly pointing at all the fish: “Oh, we saw that one, and that one, and one just like that!” Over and over. Poor Caitlin.