Day 4 - Tuesday

Frank & I woke up bright and early for our daysail with New Horizons Charters. Another one of my research finds, New Horizons is highly recommended on Trip Advisor if you ever go to the USVI. They really take care of you and they tell you that your day with them will be the best day of your vacation(it definitely was a contender). If you order online you get the deal for "half price" (though I don't think anyone paid full price on our trip) so it came out to $60 a person. You leave at 8 a.m. or so and return around 4. They feed you a continental breakfast and an amazing lunch, and it's open bar the whole time and provide you with all the snorkel gear you'll need. We left from Sapphire Bay Marina and we stopped at a few different snorkel stops along the way. 

That guy in the black polo and cap is our captain. I can't remember his name. Scott or Mark or something. He was great.

This is what we look like at 8:30 a.m. on vacation.

A handy use for our fins. That Frank is so clever.

This was our first stop at Caneel Bay on St. John for snorkeling. Unfortunately I forgot my underwater housing for my camera back at the apartment, which I purchased specifically for this snorkel. Oh well. It was cool. We swam to shore at Caneel Bay and then snorkeled along the coast through some coral reefs. Lots of cool stuff. Nemos, alligator gar and more. Ask Frank. He knows what those things are actually called.

For lunch when we got back to the boat (lunch consisted of baked meatball parmigiana, fruit, pasta salad, lunch meat, brownies (baked right onboard) and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember. We were really hungry so we devoured it. It was soo good. And one of the crew members was passing around pitchers of these drinks called nooners - I have no idea what was in it but it was delicious. Anyway, we were tired and full and had no interest in going back out for another snorkel. Especially since the tops of my feet were really burnt, even though I had put a ton of sunscreen on them.  We just sat under the canopy and enjoyed the rest of our sail. Then this guy - a barracuda that our captain affectionately named Barry - showed up. That was pretty cool.

Around 3:30 or so we headed back to the marina. Man I was so tired. I don't think I even showered before I went to bed for an hour. That's gross I know. Frank woke me up at 5:30 or 6 and said he wanted to go back to Hull Bay to check out their sushi bar, Watahoshi Sushi (another find that I actually researched before we went on our trip). Word on the street was that it was actually good - I wouldn't find out until later how they managed to serve authentic and fresh sushi out of a shack in St. Thomas.

This is the sushi chef. Turns out, he is actually the son-in-law of the owner of Hull Bay. Originally from Japan, he and his wife (owner's daughter) moved to San Francisco after they had been married for a few years and opened up a sushi bar out there. When Hull Bay's owner decided to move to St. Thomas full time and buy the Hull Bay Hideaway, she convinced them to come down too. Enter Watahoshi Sushi. Authentic Japanese sushi out of a shack on the northside of St. Thomas.

This is his wife. She was hostess and waitress. We looked through the menu... I can't tell you exactly what we ordered but I believe there was scallop sashimi (I now know that I'm not a fan of raw scallop), a few rolls of sushi with some variation of avocado, shrimp, salmon,etc., and the Hideaway Roll ($14). The most expensive thing on the menu, it's an inside out roll made with beef filet, avocado, and a bunch of other stuff I don't remember. Really yummy. The waitress told us that her husband created the roll for her mom (owner of Hull Bay), who at the time said she didn't like sushi. She now eats everything on their menu. We left full and satisfied. I think the bill came to about $60 or something.

It was relatively early so we decided to find a nice place to go and enjoy the view of the cruise ships leaving port. Our handy GPS took us to the Banana Tree Grille overlooking Charlotte Amalie Harbor (where the cruise ships dock). We enjoyed a glass of wine and thought about the fact that we still had 5 more days to enjoy on the island. End Day 4.