Cruise Day Thursday--St. Maarten!

 We woke up in St. Maarten!  We wandered down to watch the boat dock and ran into Xenia who was doing the same thing!  It was fun to see the golf cart keep parallel with the boat and the huge ropes they were tying us up with.  We had originally planned the mountain downhill trek for our excursion, but it was cancelled so at the last minute before yesterday's excursion we had to choose another one.  Becky asked me if I wanted to hike a mountain and zipline down.  I decided to go for it!  I have never wanted to do anything like that ever but thought why not.  So the day arrives and we head out early to meet our group.

Here is what the town looks like s we came in.

Here is my ticket which I did not even have time to look at before seeing the sign the gal was holding which said EXTREME ziplining.  HUH?  Becky then told me that it was a ropes course and had ladders and pegs to climb and it wasn't so much a hike. WHAT!  I have never so much as climbed a rock wall (or wanted to) and now the entire thing was out of my comfort zone.  Lucky for me it was raining....so I didn't cancel but decided to let the big guy decide.  Whew, cancelled!  I am really glad too because this isn't something I want to do--at least not the first time.  I was the biggest person in the group (even down 100 pounds and I barely made the weight limit) pretty sure I was the third oldest person too.  Not cool.  So no ziplining for me!  We then signed up for riding horses on the island later that day and went shopping.

I bought Kathy one of these cool windchime things.  She got the peacock feather/teardrop one (far right below) and Becky bough the flower/snowflake looking on in blue above.

Found some stuff for the kids too.  Sniffed around in the chocolate shop but did not buy anything!  I am keeping up with my hexies too, see?

Here we are all ready to ride horses!  Our horses had a bonding moment.  Mine was Magic and hers was a Spanish name that started with F I think.

The best part of the whole ride was going in the ocean.  We were not expecting that and were not dressed right (since it was a last, last minute sign up) but we rolled with it and it was fun!

 My horse went pretty deep!

 After a shower and change of clothes we went up to 14 to the Olive or Twist lounge.  Really great views up there!  Seems not too many folks hang there either!

 I ran into Alice along the way and she showed me her new room (her old on had mechanical issues so she was upgraded to one with a balcony!) so it was cool to experience this and take some pictures!

 Later on I listened to "Carribean" by James Mischner--still have a long way to go on it and worked on my hexies.

Mary Ellen from Sew Many Places led us on a trivia game--we won!

 We hit the machines for a bit. Here is my table working hard!

 We decided to surprise Mary Ellen with a quilt block or two from each of us.  I decided to make her and I a matching block so this is what they look like!

 We went to the ice skating show with Alice, Xenia and Maureen.  It was great...such a tiny rink and they can jump in it and do all kinds of creative things!

 After that everyone wandered off to Bed. I ran into Gail and we gabbed a bit while she drank her bedtime wine and then I went to the dance party on the Promenade.  They did the YMCA and all kinds of fun stuff!

 I also managed to get in some more hexie sewing!  It had been a rainy kind of day so I did the grey hexie, figured I would always remember the day!