Ok, this is long, our first time there and sooo much to talk about. We had a great time.

Part Deaux: The fun begins!

Saturday Evening, June 30. The lovely wife Karen has a hair dryer, fresh clothing and makeup!!!! All is well in the world. I am however not the conquering hero I imagined myself to be after chasing down the luggage. Jake, my boy Jake, mini Me, keeps saying “Dad lost the luggage”. Ahh, he’ll pay someday, when he’s not so cute.

Dinner with assorted TTOL’ers, Bama and friends, Saildoggie and family, Tricia and Tommy and some more maybe? I’m tired and glad we’re back on track. Sat outside while Quito began to play, great music, I’m ordering CD’s tonight. Much less hot outside. Couple inebriated touristas around but nothing out of the ordinary. Kept an eye on the girls a bit and then head off to the Elm for the last night with my daughter, the night owl, in tow. Elm was nice, a few steps up from a youth hostel but it got the job done. Myett’s folks were nice too, I was in the shop looking for a brush that morning and they heard the luggage story and offered to help with phones, etc.

Sunday dawns, hooray, clean clothes. An early theme for the trip, who knew we’d have a theme so soon? Breakfast at Rhymers with the Jeannius crew. Load up in a while and lug the bags down to the dingy dock and board the boat. Neat boat, never been on a catamaran other than for daysails in SF and Maui. Kids were digging it, as you can see from the pics.

Nice sail to Monkey point, much different than mono hulls that I’ve been on, of course. Mark was a great, safe captain and it was nice to not be in charge of a boat for the first time in a while. (we’ve got a runabout here at home). Thanks again Mark for being the responsible one. Grab a mooring ball when someone leaves and into the water some of us go. Kids were apprehensive, didn’t get in, some other time perhaps. The depth off the back I think got them. Good snorkel, better than I’ve seen in Hawaii.

Off we go to Marina Cay. Dingy in for ice and some drinks, Jake snorkels off the beach, he’s a fish. Katie and Jake build sand sculptures of Spongebobs house as well as Squidwards, etc. Tommy introduced Karen to a #2 Painkiller, another #2 Painkiller and then slipped in a #3. So, Karen needs a t-shirt that says “#3 is for me”. Good stuff, those Painkillers. J Tommy’s a fun lovin’ sneaky guy; we like that around here. <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/toast.gif" alt="" />

Dinner at Marina Cay, good food, good service, good night. We’re beat. I sleep outside because there’s no room and I couldn’t find the A/C vent. Duh, the black hole next to the light! Idiot. Oh well, plenty of breeze for the wife and kids and I saw a spectacular moon. Saildoggie got up a few times to check our position and make sure we weren’t off the mooring, which was good. Too much stress as the captain, I appreciate him doing that.

Monday, off to the Baths, they’re full up, with a chump on a Virgin Traders power boat pulling in to grab a VISAR ball. Classy. We bail and head on up to Leverick to get off the boat and move in to Serendipity. Played by the pool at Leverick before/after checking in. Fresh water is NICE! Met Gordapeak and family, IPMsMom and family, etc.

Serendipity Villa, bigger and nicer than we thought. Not luxurious but very, very nice. Great location, good to strong breeze to keep the bugs away. Had the Jeannius crew up to have dinner, Karen said that it was too nice of a place not to have a party. So we BBQ’d. Early to bed, everybody tired still.

Tuesday: First full day in VG. Lounging around, checked out the resort, ate pizza at the pool, drank beer at our pool. Lay day. Kids hung out with another family we met in CGB, had a new cat in the TMM fleet, from Annapolis. Nice folks.

Call the office and ask if we can stay two extra days instead of heading back to Tortola on Saturday. “No problem” they say. I’ll figure out how to pay for it later.

Wednesday: I think we got a cab this day. Not sure! Down to the Baths, at lunch at Mad Dogs and cab back to the house to lounge around again. Baths are cool, not too crowded today.

Ok, days are blending together here now, please excuse me if I miss something….

Dinner with IPMsMom family Wednesday night? Maybe Thursday? I don’t know. Nice kids, nice family, always seem to be out on the Hobie Catamaran on North Sound. Sometimes it’s upside down, but they are out there! J

Thursday, rent a car, drive on left side of road, no problem. Roads are way, way better than Tortola and from Leverick to the Baths, there are only two real turns, one right, one left. I think. We check out Savannah Bay, nice but windy. Good place to hang out. PR Navy starting to come in, fast. Then head down to Spring Bay. LOVE this place, mini Baths kind of vibe, good snorkeling, no crowds. Some charterers doing a BBQ on the grills, it’s a National Park so there are some tables and such. We went back there on Sunday too. I think we went to Saba Rock today also, but maybe on Wednesday. Neat place, kids loved the fish tank. Met a nice family from SoCal that the kids hung out with some more on Friday.

Friday: not sure what we did here. Had drinks at Spyglass Villa with the IPMsMom family and Kimmers and Lew. Great conversation, we really appreciated the time up there. Rent that villa folks, it’s got a great view. I’d love to sit and talk to them longer some time in the future, they’ve got great info on VG, etc. Kimmers was a great help to us when planning this trip. Mocko Jumbies later on and then we got lucky and Sir Richard popped off fireworks later that night. They look great from the pool of Serendipity actually.

Saturday: Rent a dingy, head to Prickly Pear. Cough, Cough, prices a bit steep and I didn’t bring enough cash, they floated me $2 to pay the bill, CC machine on the blink. But…cool little island, just us and another couple. Windy out on the sound, went out behind Saba Rock a bit but it was rougher than I liked so we headed back along Prickly to see about Honeymoon beach. Getting windy, head across sound to other end, near Mosquito. I look back and whoa! A gray line of clouds coming in. Turn around, head home, tie up to our dingy dock and 5 min. later the rain comes. A bit rough out there in a fiberglass dingy but it was fun.

Sunday, another car rental day. I’m going to have to work overtime this year to pay for this but it was worth it. Back to Spring Bay, bring sandwiches and drinks, saw some squid floating around while snorkeling, that was cool. Kids played on the rocks a lot.

Any whoooo….Monday, off to the ferry in the morning, Speedy’s at 8am. Nicer than the Smiths 7:50am boat. Then Road Town (wow, busy place, our first experience there) and off to STT and the Emerald Beach Best Western. Happen to run into “Lovecat” my luggage guy and was able to say thanks and tip him. $32 dollar cab ride to the hotel, have lunch, hope to check in early but not to be. But 4pm rolls around and they still don’t have the room ready and it’s not looking good. Get that straightened out and in the process Karen meets a newlywed couple that had already moved out of one hotel/resort that was supposedly beach front all inclusive, except they hand you eggs in the morning and say “Make your own”. Hmmm, not fun on your honeymoon. We bought their dessert for them that night.

Tuesday, walk to the airport, about 14 min. for us. Saved $25 cab ride. This “per person” fare stuff I don’t get. Gets a bit expensive when you’ve got only 100lbs of kids. Geez. Got there 2 hours early, at 6:30am, good idea too because the line got real long. Nice AA folks there, got through customs ok and then had a good breakfast at a decent price before boarding. We even sat next to our own children on this flight!!! Yay for us! In the back row of course but beggars can’t be choosers. The MIA plane had come in from overseas and was getting the fine tooth comb over, so we barely made the connection in DFW. Bags didn’t but hey, how else would this story end if not for another baggage issue.

Some final thoughts, if you’ve made it this far. TTOL folks are very friendly, very helpful and I think the moderators are to blame for that. <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/jester.gif" alt="" /> The culture on the site enables you to get good information and be able to trust most of it. I can't think of anything that I heard here that was in reality way off the mark.

Thanks to Malcom for the taxi service back and forth to West End. It eased the stress. Thanks to Mark (Saildoggie) and his family as well as to TriciaH and Tommy for letting us come aboard Jeannius for a night. We’ll be back on a boat because of that.

I’ll stop there. Lots of other folks we ran into were really neat and helpful. Great vacation, a bit more pricy than we expected (food) at times but it’s way, way better than going back to Maui. It’s now been put in the rotation.