Day 7 – Celebrity Summit Thanksgiving Cruise - Friday 29 November – Charlotte Amalie, St Thomas

It was nice to be back in the US again – our 4G was working now. After our group breakfast in our suite, Wade and I went to the future sales desk to book our next cruise. The special offer they were giving was hard to pass up. We decided, though, after looking at the celebrity website, that the better date for us to go to Bermuda would be in August – there was a cruise leaving on my birthday, the 31^st and Wade's birthday was the next day – in addition, this cruise was $500 less expensive per person than the one in June. Celebrity also would give us a free classic beverage package and an additional 25 cruise tier points per person. We booked adjoining Celebrity suites.
 

We had decided to go to St John. The weather was kind of yucky – raining off and on and cloudy. We disembarked and found the taxi stand – it was $10 per person one way to go to Red Hook where you catch the ferry to St John. It took about 20 minutes to get to Red Hook and we hit it exactly right as the ferry leaves on the hour – we got there about 5 minutes before 11 am. We paid our $7 per person for a one way ticket to St John and boarded the ferry. It was a short ride – about 20 minutes to get to St John. On the way, I was reading about St john and trying to find out where the best snorkeling was as we had our snorkel gear with us. 
 

We met up with a guy who walked us over to his friend's store for Charlie to buy swim trunks and snorkel gear – it was a fair hike from the ferry stop to the store. He then walked us to the taxi stand and we boarded an open air van for the 20 minute ride to Cinnamon Beach for another $7 per person one way. I had asked about Trunk Bay but the guy told us that it was $6 per person to get to Trunk Bay and an additional $4 per person entry fee. Cinnamon Beach was $7 per person with no entry fee and would likely be less crowded.

It started pouring rain when we got to Cinnamon Beach and continued to rain off and on for the rest of the time we were in St John. We snorkled a bit and then rented a stand up paddle board for Rhys to try. Unfortunately, we only got to spend about 2 hours at the beach before having to head back and catch the 3 pm ferry back to St Thomas. Seth, Amina, Charlie, and Wade had returned to the ferry station earlier so that they could return Charlie's snorkel equipment and have lunch. We met up with them at about 2:45 by the ferry station.

We returned to St Thomas and took another taxi back to Charlotte Amalie, did a little shopping, and then reboarded the ship. The ship had a bit of a mechanical problem and didn't leave at 5 pm as scheduled. We spent the time packing our things up and then showering and getting ready for our last dinner on board in Normandie.

We enjoyed 2 bottles of wine with our last dinner on board. We also had another 2 rounds of their caviar service – Marky's russian osetra karat caviar gold and tried out the Chateaubriand for 2. Amina and I shared the 6 stars dessert.

We got back to our suite and finished packing. I had asked once again at Normandie about our free dinner in a specialty restaurant and was told that the maitre'd would fix the problem. I had pre-booked and pre-paid all 4 of our specialty restaurant dinners but we got one night free for being Penthouse Suite guests. We also asked them about the location of the disembarkation lounge. As Elite members, we could meet in the Normandie in the morning but as suite members (which included Charlie and Wade whose reservations were tied with ours) – we were invited as VIP members to Michael's Club. The staff told us that Michael's Club would be less crowded and it was just a short walk on the same deck to the ship's exit. It would have the same continental breakfast as Normandie. We attached our special VIP green 2 luggage tags and our suitcases were whisked away at 11 pm.