We found out some interesting things today. Many years ago, J.W. Marriott visited St. Thomas staying at a privately owned hotel. At the end of his stay, reportedly only 5 or 6 six days long, he owned the Holiday Inn and adjoining properties. Those hotels are now the Frenchmen’s Reef and Morning Star Resorts by Marriott. Six years ago, the Frenchmen’s Cove Vacation Club was built adjacent to those properties making it a very large campus.
Above is Frenchmen’s Reef below is the cove where we are staying.
As with most Vacation Club locations, each unit is appointed beautifully with stainless steel appliances and granite counters, tile and most amenities anyone would want.
Today is Faye’s birthday and we have a special dinner planned for her. But there is a lot of day to go through before we get to dinner. We have a water aerobic class at 10:30 a.m. but it seems it is actually on “island time”.
While we are getting all shriveled up waiting for the instructor, we started watching this woman covered from head to toe in some sort of sun protective gear. I’m sure you’ve seen them. They look like a light weight wet suit with long sleeves and legs and high collar.
In addition to this, she had on a BIG brimmed hat (also not unusual for people who can’t be exposed to the sun) but she had what looked like yellow plastic boxes on here feet and webbed gloves. This, as it turns out, is our instructor. I have to say, the workout was not as hard as walking the hills between the levels although we will probably go back again tomorrow.
Noon was our scheduled Paddle Boarding class, but it got postponed to Friday so we just hung out by the pool and relaxed. Faye and I are getting pretty good at the crossword puzzles in the daily newspaper reprint.
So far, we have successfully completed three out of three which only proves my philosophy of “none of us is as smart as all of us”.
We scheduled a presentation with the Vacation Club folks in exchange for free tickets on the Snorkeling Catamaran, so off we went. Not a bad deal for 90 minutes of our time and the folks are not the high pressure, obnoxious folks normally associated with time share sales. Actually, Jim and I discovered some information we didn’t know and will be able to use our membership more efficiently going forward. Worth the time.
Back to the villa and ready for our special dinner. Attention all foodies. This is for you. We went to Room with a View Restaurant in the Bluebeard’s Castle high on a hill not far from the hotel.
Being one of the first to arrive, we had a choice of tables and chose one with a panoramic view of the port downtown and the Reef point.
We also had a great view of the sunset.
Our dinner started off with one of the best tomato bruschetta appetizers I have ever tasted. I could have easily ordered a second, but all our eating is starting to catch up to us. Our waiter recommends two options; rum marinated roasted pork medallions with banana chutney and fresh yellow tail snapper with lemon, capers and herbs and butter white wine sauce. Since we couldn’t decide, Jim ordered the pork and I ordered the snapper. He opted for red potatoes as his side and I ordered penne pasta with garlic and olive oil, perfect complement with the capers.
Remember we won a free dessert from this restaurant at the vendor fair on Monday night, but none of us had much space left to put dessert. Our waiter, Joe, who had done a fabulous job so far talked us into a Banana Mango Flambe’ made with rum, brown sugar, butter and toasted fresh coconut over vanilla ice cream saying it was perfect size to share and very light. You know what they say, there’s always room for ice cream (or is that Jello?) We could see it being made as we sat at our table with flames burning off the alcohol, but we had no idea it would taste so good. Joe was spot on again.
Back to the Villa to finish today’s crossword. Can’t afford to ruin our record!
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