"Remember to Drive on the Left"

That's what signs say along the roads here in St. Thomas. I would have taken a picture of one of those signs except I was busy trying to remember to drive on the left. This is a U.S. Territory, so I can't figure out why they drive on the "wrong" side of the road here, but they do. Just to keep the tourists on their toes I guess.

Ray is working at the University and we are now staying at one of the faculty apartments on campus, which is quite nice, except the TV doesn't work. After spending yesterday and this morning in an apartment without a functioning television set, I took the rental car downtown this afternoon. I was pretty nervous about this wrong-side-of-the-road business and dared not even play the car radio for fear of lapsing into auto-pilot. Turning corners is the trickiest part for my money.

The "downtown" to which I refer is Charlotte Amalie, the capitol of the U.S. Virgin Islands. It is quite historic as a refuge for pirates and center for the slave trade, settled by the Danish in the 1600's. The old buildings around Charlotte Amalie harbor that date from that period have all been turned into kitchsy souvenir shops, art galleries and jewelry stores, but they are pretty interesting to look at. They all have these huge, heavy arched wooden doors and are built from the motliest assortment of stones and bits of brick you can imagine. I read that many of the buildings were built from stone and rubble that was used as ballast in the old ships, hence the interesting mix.

I was going to take some more scenic pictures (palm trees, ocean, etc) for Gerrie (see her comment on my previous post) but the sky opened up and it poured buckets of warm, steamy rain just after I took these pictures.