Our first port after one night on our cruise ship was the island of St. Thomas. We docked a couple of miles from Charlotte Amalie, the capital of the U.S. Virgin Islands. St. Thomas is one of the territory's four principal islands.
Where Puerto Rico's capital city San Juan was bathed in sherbet-y hues, the island of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands was splashed with bold, bright primary colors--crayon colors.
A Dutch-style windmill is not the first thing that I expected to see on St. Thomas, but since coming home I have learned that the Danes who were the original conquerors of St. Thomas established sugar cane plantations here in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The fields were worked by convicts and slaves, and windmills were built to press the sugar from the harvested stalks. Ruins of 150 windmills are strewn about the Virgin Islands, with just four on St. Thomas. This one at the port is a reproduction.
Of all our ports, this was the only one where we had booked a cruise ship excursion, and since we had to wait around a bit for our departure time, we strolled through some of the open shops. I wish we had bought a "Don't Mess with Bob" t-shirt:
