2026-9-22 travel day to St. Thomas

 Since we had a relatively early flight (9:57am), I spent the night at the kids' house so we could save about 40 minutes travel time bright and early.  It's about an hour to the airport from the kids' house, so figured that was long enough of a car ride to start our travel day.

 But the drive went well.  Josh parked in an off site parking lot with free shuttle to the airport,  That went really well, too---the shuttle basically saw us parking and drove right over and picked us up.  Within minutes, we were being dropped off at the doors to the Delta counters,  

Since the kids had a checked bag, we had to wait a few minutes to check in their bag.  I managed carry on---which we were able to gate check.

The gate was full.  Plane was almost full.  But I actually had an open seat next to me. 

 

 

Layla noticed a rainbow outside the gate windows.  Always reminds me of Mom wishing me good times. 

Boarding was on time and we even left a couple minutes early.  Bye Bye Atlanta!  See you in 9 days!!

I even found out that T-Mobile gives Delta flyers a perk of a free drink.  So how could I pass that up---especially when I saw they have a cream bourbon!  Did take me awhile to figure out how to get to the coupon.  I thought I was connected to Delta wifi when I clicked on it in my settings.  But apparently you have to type the website into the address line and then pull up the T-mobile site and find the "perk".

After about 3.5 hours, we were approaching St. Thomas.

and landing

Angie rented a car from an off site Enterprise, so we caught the shuttle and went to pick up our Jeep.  Talk about a hard car to get into!  But Layla loved it and it probably was a good choice with the roads out there!  Soon we were on our way to K-mart (one of only 3 left in the US?).  There was a grocery store next door that they said we were going to next, so I didn't bother with getting stuff like milk and distilled water. But by the time we left K-mart, they decided to head straight to the Margaritaville.

Not our first time here.  But we haven't been there in over 10 years! And it's the first time since the "hillside" units were open.  I've heard bad things about long waits for golf cart transportation to the hillside units or taking lots of stairs, so we were a little apprehensive, but it appeared that the lower units were being renovated, or they used that as an excuse not to fill reservations there due to the Sargassum seaweed problem and the lack of beach from them trying to clean up the seaweed.  But the hillside wasn't too bad.  We didn't wait too long for golf carts, but it was off season.  A couple times we waited about 15 minutes, then just took off walking.  It was also annoying figuring we should tip everytime we were taken to or from the unit.  After the kids left, I mostly just walked the steps---slowly.  

But check in went fast.  Here Layla is in the lobby. 

The building next to ours.  we walked down for dinner and I took a few pictures of the walk.

Looking back up at some of the stairs.  I think these led to the upper pool which we walked up to once.

Back towards our building.

The restuarant---down at lower level

They have some great nachos

view from our seat.

 

 

Back at our room.  The only real colorful sunset we got the whole time. 

They brought some of Layla's games, but this was the only time we actually played any.

View from our livingroom patio

It's amazing how tiring a travel day is.  I think we all had a good night's sleep.