St. Thomas

Day 5:
Another day, another port. Today was a favorite of my mom's and all the ladies and shoppers on the boat...St. Thomas. Where 90% of the businesses are jewelry stores. This is not a factual statistic, but rather an opinion shared by both Chris and my dad. In actuality it is a very beautiful island in close proximity to St. John, another favorite destination shared by Chris and I as well as his own dad! However, this day we did not have any scheduled shore excursions (the champagne and snorkeling catamaran tour booked up too fast!), so it turned into a shopping excursion headed up by my mom. I can't complain too much because I am pretty sure she was doing some secret Christmas shopping for me as I kept getting rerouted by my dad to look in other sections of the store.

As the shopping section was a good distance away we had to take a taxi bus over to the designated drop off point. I was on a mission to find some sunglasses, my mom was on a mission to find a new camera, and Chris and my dad were on a mission to survive. It wound up being a very hot day, and paired with the crowded streets and outside shopping we did not last too long. I wound up holding off on the sunglasses, but my mom was successful with finding a professional Nikon camera. She has taken a real interest in photography and has enjoyed taking classes so I am glad that she treated herself with an early Christmas present (tax free of course!). Due to the insane heat, and a group consensus that there were no other stores but jewelry stores, we decided to take the 4 dollar per person ride back to the docks.
Chris and I met with my dad for an afternoon tea in the Rembrandt Dining Room. It was a nice time of the day to relax and socialize before going our separate ways before dinner. Tonight was Chris and I's special date night in which we had booked 8:30pm reservations for the specialty restaurant Le Cirque. This involved getting dressed up again which is always fun, although I cheated and wore sparkly flips with my dress this time. Unfortunately, Chris and I were left unimpressed with this restaurant in comparison with the other specialty restaurants we had been to in the past while cruising. It did not have any true French-inspired dishes (ravioli was one of the options) and the food seemed to be of lesser quality then the meals served in the dining room and was overall lacking. This was the only major disappointment throughout the course of the trip so I can't complain too much though.
The evening was fantastic, though, one of my favorite nights by far. Tonight the chefs were hosting a Dessert Extravaganza buffet poolside at 10:30pm at night. It was quite an amazing spectacle of food and even more fun to eat. This is when the ice sculptures made their appearance along with carved watermelons, chocolate and white chocolate fountains, ginormous dessert displays, etc. Needless to say it felt like Black Friday come early with all the crowds and lines. I don't know how Chris did it, but sometimes his over-detailed itenerized brain comes in handy. He tactfully got us seating next to the chocolate fountains and navigated his way to the strawberries with extreme stealth as soon as the red velvet ropes were dropped. He then jumped over into the pastry line and grabbed us a few samples of some super yummy chocolate cake, mousse, and a strawberry pastry. His plan worked because before I knew it the chocolate fountain line was wrapped around the length of the pool and they ran out of strawberries! So glad I got mine because that's all I really wanted. And I have the best husband in the world because he noticed my strawberry obsession and got me a Shirley Temple strawberry daiquiri. Yummy. After all that sugar it was a wonder that I got any sleep that night, but thankfully I'm pregnant and sleep these days is never an issue. Zzzzzz....