…Or Part deux, as they might say in our first port of call, Sint Martin/St. Maarten, the half-French, half-Dutch island.

Daddy actually took the girls out bright and early on St. Maarten, in search of french crepes. Mommy, well…Mommy it seems had a little too much to drink at the amazing French restaurant, Remy, the evening before. So she was, ahem…getting her head back on straight before joining the party on Orient Beach.

J. and I visited the island 12 years ago, way before we had kids, and way before the island was ravaged by tourists. So while the beach, ocean, and sea air were all beautiful and a great way to spend an afternoon, the rest of the island seemed…a little run-down. It is an exercise in eye-opening guilt when you travel to some of these poorer islands – and while I’d love to buy goods to help support the people living there, most of the stuff they have for sale is just the same ‘ol crap they hawk to the tourists. Stuff I don’t need or want. So the beach trip was really the only highlight of St. Maarten.

Then we sailed on to St. Thomas. J. and I got in two fantastic dives (we saw a shark and a pretty cool wreck!) the morning we landed in St. Thomas. It started to rain as we were coming back in on the dive boat.

Thankfully rain in the islands is warm and relatively sporadic – it stops as quickly as it starts. So we rounded up the girls and attempted to go out and explore the island. St. Thomas is kinda expensive. And is filled with a lot of the same tourist junk, too. Although we did find, and buy, what are being sold as “the softest sheets in the world.” I was so excited to find sheets made from bamboo for our new bed! And then I discovered that the company who makes them is in Utah, so it wasn’t even an exotic St. Thomas brand. I bought some anyhow, and after having them on our bed for a few nights, I must say – I think that they did not oversell them…they are some soft sheets!

All in all, St. Thomas made the list as a possible destination we can revisit someday, but we were happy to get back on the ship, our home-away-from-home. After all we had Pirate parties to attend:

And character breakfasts to wake up to:

Princesses to meet:

(Addie spotted Ariel – her fave princess – while we were down in the atrium. Ariel was a few floors up and Addie just screeched “Ariel!” and took off to chase her down. It was definitely a highlight hanging with Ariel for a few minutes with noone else around!)

Animations to create:

And seeing our animations come to life:

We celebrated an early birthday:

And finally, it was time for our last stop – Castaway Cay.

I would just like to go on the record as saying, “I want to live on Castaway Cay.”

Seriously. The day on the island was spectacular. We fed and swam with stingrays:

Er…some of us did:

Some decided that they just wanted to snorkel in the part where “there are none of those stingrays!”:

We played in the water and sand all day long:

We did more waterslides:

And when we got tired of playing in the water, we just rested. In the water:

It was the perfect end to the perfect vacation. I just put one thing in the suggestion box…”Maybe you could just do a cruise that stays the entire week at Castaway Cay?”