Road Town, Boats, and Chickens!

I decided not to wait 2 more weeks for the next post, so here it is:

Honeymoon Day 2 - Tuesday, May 3, 2011 - Road Town, Tortola

Since it was late when we arrived Monday night, we didn't take pictures of the hotel until Day 2. We slept in on Tuesday and had a leisurely morning around the Village Cay Hotel and Marina.

The private patio for our hotel room

The bathroom

This is the view from our patio.  Not exactly the best view, but we could see the pool.

The hotel we were staying in has an open air restaurant right on the marina. Since we slept in so late, we started our day with an early lunch.

John waiting for his lunch.

John ordered Honey Stung Chicken and I had the buffet, which included beef stew, BBQ chicken, Mahi Mahi, and chocolate cake.

View of the Marina from our table

After lunch, we set out to explore Road Town.  We walked in toward the city, and then, we took a stroll along the coast.

Just as our taxi driver had warned, there was a cruise ship docked; though passengers seemed to be straggling back to the ship by the time we ventured out.

While we were wandering, we had a secondary goal of finding the ferry port, so we could take a ferry to Virgin Gorda on Wednesday.  Just when I wanted to turn back and just ask at the hotel, John spotted some boats worth checking out - Turns out it was the port.  Yes, I'm saying he was right... it happens.  :)

After finding the port, we took a different path home and stumbled across this smoothy stand.  I just had to partake of a Strawberry, Banana, and Mango Smoothy.

Smoothy stand.

After our walk, we decided that a nap was in order... and we took one.  This was probably one of favorite honeymoon activities.  ;-)

After our nap, we went out to enjoy the pool.  The water was too cool to swim, but we still found it relaxing.

Note the fake cat on top of the rocks.

While we were out on our walk we found a restaurant that I'd seen a recommendation for while researching before our trip, so we decided to head there for dinner.  

I should take a moment to explain why we didn't just Google Maps the address of the port and the restaurant before we came to Tortola... There are no street addresses in the BVI.  Seriously, places all over the island have a PO Box in Road Town where they receive mail, but there aren't street addresses to guide you to a location.  You can tell the general location on Google Maps, but when you're out walking, things look a bit different.  Luckily, though, the area was pretty small, and we enjoyed our exploratory walks.

On our way to dinner, we stopped to take a picture of the local "wildlife"

All over the island, there are chickens and roosters roaming about.  Supposedly, they belong to people, but they seem to run wild... everywhere... the beach, the park, the middle of the road, into open air restaurants.  Also, the rooster crowing happens periodically throughout the day, but has a particularly high concentration around 4 am.  We're heavy sleepers, so we generally fell back asleep after the morning Rooster wakening, but we agreed that living on the island and needing to wake up early for work would be annoying... maybe that's why nothing opens very early.

Our Dinner Destination

We had dinner at Pusser's, Road Town (apparently, it's a small chain in the BVI). This was one of our favorite meals of the trip.  We split an appetizer and an entrée: Jerk Chicken Quesadillas, which were fabulous! and Fish & Chips, with which John introduced me to malt vinegar... not quit as fabulous, but a fun new experiment.

Sunset at the Marina 

After dinner, we walked back to the hotel and enjoyed a sunset on the marina.

Watching the sunset.  Note the slight sunburn from our afternoon stroll.... we  were better about sun screen after that first day out in the sun.

At the hotel, we checked the internet, watched a little cricket on TV, and read books on the balcony.  One enjoyable day done.  We went to sleep relatively early because we planned to catch an early boat to Virgin Gorda the next morning.