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We woke up at 7 a.m., took showers, and ate a variety of breakfast leftovers (cereal, English muffins, Pop Tarts, etc.) We packed up our things and checked out at 10:30 - 30 minutes before checkout time. We're usually cutting it closer than that.
We stopped in at Marty's house to drop off the extra provisions. Marty showed us his new apartment (he had just moved downstairs to the studio apartment from the main floor). It offered him more privacy than the shared quarters upstairs, and his deck still had the beautiful view down at the channel where the cruise ships enter Charlotte Amalie. Then we filled up the tank with gas and headed to Havensight. The Delly Deck is a local institution, and we stopped in for lunch. They have down-home fare which always attracts a local clientele. We all opted for sandwiches this time around. I got the turkey ciabatta sandwich with smoked turkey, lettuce, and Swiss cheese with fries. Craig got the cubano loncherias with roasted pork, ham, swiss, dill pickle, mojo mustard on ciabatta bread, served with fries. Craig had an unsweetened iced tea and I had a Diet Coke. We enjoyed our sandwiches and fries. After lunch we went a couple of buildings over within the Port of Sale Mall in Havensight to the Pirate's Chest. The store belongs to Marty's friend Sean. We've known Sean for quite a few years now, but we hadn't seen him during our last couple of visits. It was nice to get a chance to see him again and to introduce him to Mom. We did some gift shopping in the store. We bought a Christmas ornament of Santa and the reindeer partying on a speed boat. Marty used Sean's labelmaker to make a label for the side of the boat saying "Cap'n Marty's"...Perfect! Marty borrowed Sean's car to go pay his phone bill. We thought there was no way that he would be back before we had to leave for the airport (island time and all that), but he surprised us and came back in record time. We said our goodbyes until next year, and then left for the airport at around 1:15. We arrived at the airport well before 2 o'clock. We were the first in line at the Jet Blue desk and had to wait for them to open. Then we filled out our customs forms and went through immigration and security. We went into the gift shop and bought a couple of items. We didn't have a direct flight home, unfortunately, but we would be changing planes in Puerto Rico. Our flight boarded ontime (4:45). It was a 2-2 configuration. I sat with Craig, and Steve sat with Mom. The flight to San Juan was really brief, which turned out to be a good thing because ice was falling from the vent onto Craig as we flew. He looked around and saw that the same thing was happening on the other side of the plane. It was as if little hailstones were raining down. The free entertainmanet loop on the seatback TV's showed a documentary about a guy trying to recover property he lost in a NYC cab. Then it played the Gangnam Style video. Though everyone was always talking about this, neither Craig, Steve, nor I had ever seen it. Marty had even shown us a parody version earlier in the trip on his phone, but this was the first time we had seen the original. After those two programs finished, we were already arriving in San Juan, in the newly constructed Terminal A. We only had an hour for our connection, but it was plenty of time because wew were in the right terminal. We admired the modern architecture of the terminal as we watched the sun set through a huge window made up of geometrically shaped panes. We took turns using the rest room, and before we knew it our flight was boarding at 6:15. We left ontime at 6:45. Amazing! There is almost always a delay on our flight home which causes us to get home at an ungodly hour. We realized that if we ordered coffee on the flight, it would be Dunkin Donuts. We each got a cup, and it was the freshest cup of airline coffee we have ever had. CRaig had Fritos and I had blue Terra Chips. It was a very comfortable flight. We landed at 9:45 p.m. This was the smoothest sequence of flights we have had in a long time. Way to go, Jet Blue!! When will you start offering flights to Guatemala and Ecuador?! |
 Secret Harbour  Marty  Sean and Marty at the Pirate's Chest  |
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