Wonder of the Seas at Crown Bay

Before our cruise on Wonder of the Seas I looked up places we could walk to from Crown Bay where Royal Caribbean’s ships dock in Saint Thomas. Google didn’t show much other than a beach and a place called 99 steps. This is an original Danish step-street built in the mid-1700’s. The bricks came from Denmark as ballast in ship’s holds. Step-streets like this one were built to access hillside dwellings. There are palm trees and flowers at the sides of the stairs. Blackbeard’s Castle – one of three national historic landmarks on the island – was supposed to be at the top of another staircase accessed from the top of the 99 steps.

tour busses at a viewpoint

Instead of walking there we ended up doing a bus tour. Sometimes impromptu bus or taxi tours are great, sometimes not. This was one of the disappointing ones that don’t go to much in the way of interesting places, but the driver did point out a tower on a hill which was all that is left of Blackbeard’s castle, the rest of which is a hotel that has been closed since being damaged in a hurricane several years ago. The walk also pretty much would have just taken us into Charlotte Amalie, so really either way would have been a disappointment unless the 99 steps themselves had been fantastic.

backside of a fort snapped in passing

The tour bus drove by some interesting things that the driver mentioned in passing, but other than the backside of a fort snapped through the window on the way back that was the earliest building made by Europeans on the island (which he mentioned when we passed by the front on the way out), I didn’t get photos of anything other than the places where we stopped.

ships in both ports

We went to a viewpoint on a hilltop where we could see both the Havensight cruise port which had 2 Holland America ships and one MSC, and Crown Bay where our ship was docked. From there the two ports looked closer together than they do from down below, but still just a bit too far away from each other to get a photo of all the ships at once without wide angle or panoramic options. I did manage to get ours plus a couple of the ones at the other port all in one photo though.

donkey at the viewpoint

There were some little souvenir booths, a guy with a donkey, and a whole lot of tour busses at the viewpoint. Most were open-sided trucks, but ours was a fully enclosed white bus. Not a full-sized bus, but bigger than all the other ones there. Probably too big for all the tight spaces we went in and out of that day as well as for the area’s skinny little roads, but our driver did have some mad driving skills. You had to tip the guy with the donkey to take any photos of it. Gotta make a living somehow.

Magens Bay

Later we pulled over into a small lookout above Magen’s Bay. It’s a popular tourist beach in a sheltered cove. Legend has it the bay was used as a place to hide while lying in wait for unsuspecting ships by Sir Frances Drake, a privateer sanctioned by the English to pirate Spanish ships. The bay’s name comes from Jacob Jorgenson Magens, an early owner of the property whose eventual heirs donated it to the island’s municipality as a public park.

Mountaintop

After that viewpoint we went to a place called Mountaintop, which had a giant Cruzan rum store that also sold zillions of overpriced souvenir trinkets. It advertised world famous banana daiquiris. It had a rack of “I love my dog” signs in which we found our dog’s name (Piper) as well as the names of Piper’s dog friends she stayed with while we were away (Brody, Gracie, and Angus.) Who knew our dog and our friends’ dogs all had popular enough dog names to appear on stuff in a souvenir shop. We didn’t buy any of them though we might have if they hadn’t been so overpriced. The shop was quite crowded so people pretty much had time to either wait in line for a banana daiquiri, for the restroom, or to shop. Maybe a bit of two, but not all three unless you were quick enough to the back of the store to beat the line to either the restroom or the bar. I think most of the people from our bus went for the restroom, but we got there first and beat the line so we had some time to wander around the store since we didn’t go to the bar. This shop must have had some sort of deal going with the tour busses because so many of them went there that they could hardly get in and out through the crowd of other busses, let alone find a place to park. Our driver had to back up a steep curved hill to get out because there were so many other busses he couldn’t even get down to the circular driveway to turn around.

Tree Limin’ Extreme Zipline (internet photo)

The driver mentioned a zipline somewhere in the vicinity. We did not go there or see it, but it would be something fun to do. That would be the sort of thing to book on your own and take a taxi to unless at some point ships start having excursions that go there.

windmill at Crown Bay

The driver offered to let people out in town so we could have walked to the 99 steps from there and then back to the ship, but I get motion sickness sometimes and was feeling a bit queasy from all the tight turns and steep hills and didn’t want to get out and walk in the heat right then and John didn’t really want to walk anywhere in the first place so we just stayed on the bus and went back to the port with everyone else. Nobody else wanted to walk back to the ship from town either so everyone stayed on the bus.

iguana at the cruise port

Probably the highlight of the day was all the iguanas in the rocks by the water at the cruise port. The rocks are right next to the water, but there was so much seaweed floating in it that it kind of looks like a beach in some photos. There was also a big white bird there. Its size and shape was similar to a heron. I had not seen a white heron before, but google says they do exist and that there are heron species in the Virgin Islands with white juveniles.

white bird overlooking seaweed and garbage

Besides seaweed the water there was full of garbage including a lot of plastic which is terrible for the ocean creatures. Royal Caribbean really ought to hire somebody to keep that clean because besides being horribly polluting to the ocean it also makes their cruiseline look really bad having all that garbage floating amongst the seaweed at their private dock.

map of Saint Thomas

A map somebody was handing out as we entered the port area showed parasailing available on the island, however it was far enough away from the cruise dock that it would probably take prior planning for booking and transport before the cruise to insure doing it. I didn’t keep that map, but found a map of the island online. Taxis are available at the port, but making sure a return taxi and a parasailing trip would be available before traveling all that way would be a good idea. The map also mentioned the zipline (called Tree Limin’ Extreme Zipline) somewhat near the Mountain Top place where we went, but showed it on a different road. Those appeared to be in the same general area of the island, high above a place called Coral World Ocean Park. There were no excursions offered to any of those places through the ship or near the dock so checking out the availability of both the activity and transportation back to the ship prior to the cruise would be a better plan than just randomly taking a taxi there without knowing whether space would be available for your chosen activity that day or how easy it would be to get back to the port afterword. Taxi drivers might know whether or not those things are something you could do on the spot, but then again they might not. I didn’t ask any of them so I really can’t say.

parasailing at Saint Thomas (internet photo)

Back before covid there used to be people offering all sorts of last-minute activities at most of the Caribbean ports, but so far post covid island tours are all that we have seen other than shuttles to town or taxis, except in Cozumel where they have booths along the street with on-the-spot bookings for pretty much any of the same things you can book pre-cruise. We have not seen any of the people with signs offering last-minute snorkel adventures or other fun things to do like we used to see frequently by the ports.

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