Campbell’s Blog

Earlier this month Campbell took his first trip to the Caribbean. What a lucky little guy! And lucky for us he flies free. He let the rest of the family tag along. Aunt Jen and Uncle Conan were kind enough to let us continue on a planned trip together even when they couldn’t go. The Westin Resort on St. John was the destination. To give you an idea about our trip I have posted about eighty pictures or so to the gallery. Here are a few.

We arrived in St. Thomas in Charlotte Amalie on Saturday around noon. From there it was a short bus trip to the dock to catch a ferry to St. John.

On the inter island ferry (still at the dock).

Mara and Campbell both loved the ride. Although after a long flight Campbell was getting a little restless since he didn’t sleep much. The ferry ride takes about forty minutes. And the next thing we knew we were looking at the white sandy beach of the Westin resort.

Welcome to Paradise.

We stayed in a villa that is located on the hill of the resort across one of the streets dividing the resort in half. They had golf carts that provided transportation and were on a schedule. The schedule aspect wasn’t very convenient. Even when you called a cart it sometimes took a while for it to arrive. The best thing to do was to walk and work off some of the calories of the food we shouldn’t have been eating except for that it was a vacation. If we caught a cart on the way that was fine. However, in this mode it meant that Daddy was a pack mule. If you haven’t been to St. John, it is rather hilly. And you tend to build residences wherever possible since land is relatively scarce and hills provided the most beautiful views. So walking for the kids could be tiring. How the tiring part didn’t apply to Dad, we don’t know. Maybe that is why I wasn’t smiling. Pack ’em up!

This is the way to travel.

Believe it or not, there were still times we found ourselves hanging out in the room. While there, one of Campbell’s favorite things to do was to climb in the suitcases for some reason. Here he is hanging out in Mommy’s carry on for the plane.

Is this what we came to St. John to do?

One night we made reservations to eat at Asolare, as they were accommodating to the kids where Zozo’s was not (we later had a date night at Zozo’s, just Mom and Dad while the kids were babysat for). We tried to time it early so it wasn’t as crowded and if the kids got out of hand it would be less disturbing. The nice part was it was at sunset. Mara and Campbell ate a shrimp appetizer and LOVED it. They both did very well until the waitress scared Campbell. Hey, at least at that point we had someone to blame for him being noisy! It worked out well. Some might remember that this is the restaurant we had our rehearsal dinner at the night before the wedding.

If I can’t be quiet at dinner, at least I’m cute.

On Tuesday we made a pilgrimage to Hawksnest Beach right after breakfast. It was beautiful and we were the third set of people on the beach. One woman sunbathing, and a couple getting married on the east end. The beach was beautiful and the snorkeling was pretty good. Mom and dad each took a turn watching the kids so the other could snorkel a little. Campbell loved the sand (when he wasn’t eating it) and Mara liked watering the plants with ocean water. The west end of the beach is the portion on Caneel Bay‘s resort. After arriving this time and seeing it again we realized that we saw some rays off of this beach back in 2003.

Playing on Hawksnest Beach.

Even though Campbell was in a strange place, he was able to adjust pretty well. Mara slept in a bed and Campbell in a crib provided by the resort. They were in one room and Mom and Dad in another.

Vacation is exhausting!

The resort had a shared, large pool on the main side. It was really nice and a place of a lot of activity every day. Each villa building on the hill also had its own shared pool that was smaller, but convenient for short jaunts. It even had a barbecue, but we didn’t end up cooking out there like we thought we would. No particular reason other than never making the final plans to get the meat, etc. to do so. One day at the main pool we also rented a cabana for the day which worked out pretty well for an all day at the pool. Campbell was able to sleep in the crib inside, but Mara was too restless and went back to the room for her nap. It was a little expensive, but we paid for it with the timeshare speech that they gave us. HA.

Pool time.

One day was spent on the island of St. Thomas. On the bus ride from the dock to Charlotte Amalie another resort goer from Texas let us know about Cuzzin’s restaurant to eat. That was pretty good. The rest of the time we walked around and visited different shops. Mara was well behaved, so we allowed her to buy her first jibbitz in one of the shops.

What could be more fun, no car seats, and showing off the jibbitz.

There were a few times we were able to get a family photo in. This was was taken by our tour guide for the timeshare spiel.

Family fun.

The resort had a bunch of activities. From “Name that tune” at the pool, to the crabman who allowed everyone to pick a crab to race it, and tried to give away as many coupons to local stuff as possible as prizes. Mara’s crab, Crab, won a race and got a coupon for a sailing trip (she really tried to name him something else, but was misheard). The coupon went unused. Another activity was the iguana feeding every day at 3:30 that brought them out of every nook and cranny.

Attack of the iguanas!

Alas, it couldn’t last forever, and we were on another set of planes the following Saturday. What a trip!

Going home…

Can’t wait to go back again when the kids are older!

I think it would not be in my best interest to try and load all of our pictures to the site, it would take too long. We took 388 pictures. Even when I tried to just select a few, it was still too many at 200+. So, if you would like to see more of what we took you can download this zip file by clicking on the palm tree. But mind you it is 16.5MB in size.

Also, Steph was doing some editing of the photos to make them look nicer. She hopes to get them posted to Picasa at some point. Whew! Who knew the trip would be so much work!