The much promised, way overdue trip report - days 1 and 2...

Well, it has been over two months since Tim and I went to St. John. I promised a trip report and well... I had good intentions. I just never really got to it. I am posting a link to this on the St. John message board - so that is why I have added some extra details that you may wonder why... the folks over there like to read trip reports to get an idea of what they might expect when they take their trip. Okay, we left on Friday July 7th from Tampa to Fort Lauterdale then on to St. Thomas. When we got to St. Thomas we grabbed our free rum punch and grabbed a van over to Red Hook. While I was in line buying our ferry tickets, Tim bought a strawberry smoothie from the smoothie stand. This was a key part of our trip! We did not have any smoothies our our first trip to St. John, but this second trip could possibly be named the "Smoothie trip". We we were on a continual smoothie drip for our entire stay. We took the ferry over and met our jeep rental company. We rented from C&C jeep rental. They were okay - not wonderful, but they were fine. We rented a condo from Serendip and we got an extra 10% off from C&C. Our Vitara was around $300 for the week and that was about $100 savings over renting from Conrad Sutton as we did last year. Oh, I should back up... we did a more expensive trip last year for our 15 year anniversary. This year's challenge was to get back to St. John, but do it for half the cost. Thus... a condo at Serendip instead of a villa and a smaller Vitara at C&C instead of a bigger jeep at Conrad Sutton. Not to mention we were able to get our airfare for half the price through Spirit Air. Okay, we got our jeep and headed to Serendip. We rented one of the two studios they have - the Juliette. It was nice, very clean, equipped and just fine for what we needed. It was not the villa we had last year, but the price was right and I would absolutely stay there again. We settled in and headed into town for Uncle Joe's BBQ. I had been waiting a whole year to get that fantastic sauce again and it was that good. We got it for take out and came back to eat on the patio. Saturday we decided to go in to Cruz Bay to see the Carnival vendors since it was their last day. They have some local artists there and I love that type of shopping. Actually, we had to head back to the condo twice, once for clothes since we thought we were going to the beach originally and the second time for cash - the craft tents usually only take cash. I did find my mom a Christmas present, but I can't say what it is since she will read this. I will just say we knew it was right for her the minute we saw it. We also went in search of smoothies. I can't remember the name of the place, but it is a little open air place that has fruit, veggies, and a small amount of groceries. They sell large smoothies for like $5 or $6 - a great deal and very good smoothies. With that we headed out to Caneel Bay. We walked around the ruins and took some pictures. This was our first time at Caneel Bay. We had seen the ruins from the road on our last visit and I decided I wanted to see them up close this time. Then we headed out to snorkel. We really didn't see anything that exciting under the water here. The grounds are pretty and the beach is nice, but the snorkeling was not my favorite. While I was sitting on the beach, Tim went in search of... you guessed it... a smoothie. This was by far our most expensive smoothie - a whopping $9 and it wasn't all that large. We actually took the cup home as a souvenir for Savannah. She loves to tell the story of the $9 smoothie. We headed back to the condo and just had a relaxing evening. The picture looking out through the flowers was our view. Tomorrow brings Miss Lucy's Brunch, Lamasure Ruins, Salt Pond Bay.