I'm a bit of a failure at shopping

I was hoping for another sculpture when we ventured into the town.

The Scam: They tell you the necklace is free and thank you for coming to the island

The Reality: They then ask you for a small donation to a charity (a charity which they do not name but its for children)

The fallout: I looked at the guy and say, “That’s how it goes? I’m not interested, take it off.”

“Okay,” he said and removed it. The next one we met I said, “I’ve already heard that song and dance, not interested.”

We went through a few shops. I’m not a shopper so my shopping mostly revolves around finding interesting things that match my taste for decorations. I have several tapestries from Japan for instance and I got my wooden knife owl from Freeport. I wanted another wooden carving and I braved the thickness of the crowd looking for one.

The first place we went was a t-shirt shop where the shirts turn a color in the sunlight. They were cute but nothing really struck my fancy. Next, we went to the straw market. We pushed through the people. The shop keepers are not as aggressive. I wanted some type of wooden bead necklace, but there were so many people it was not worth the aggravation. Plus, many items had made in china labels on them. I wanted the real thing.

We found the sculptures but I was disappointed. The one who had the most interesting items mostly had walking sticks and giant fish. He did have some almost completed turtles but nothing was lacquered. If the turtles had detail I would have grabbed one. As they were, I was not impressed enough to spend my money in it.

I almost got a painting, but nothing struck me as what I really wanted. We decided to walk along the pier back to the ship. On the way back, I found more items that almost got me but not quite. There were painted rocks, and conch shells, starfish and more. Yet, none of them said take me home they just whispered that they would be clutter and attract dust. I did find one lady selling italian ice. She had fruit punch, apple, and I think cherry. It was hot and I love italian ice. I got one in fruit punch and then spent the rest of the walk directing people to her stand as they asked me, “WHERE DID YOU GET THAT” with great excitement.

Here, I discovered one of the buildings we had trotted through on the way to the segway tour was the port control area. We wound up in line and found out that we needed our photo ID as well as our ship card. We had no photo ID with us. We figured that they’d let us on since the ships check us as well and we did have valid ship cards. As we stood in line i passed a sign that said, ‘Jet Skis’. I stopped and asked for a price (70 dollars) and times (until four pm). “We’re doing that after lunch,” I told my husband.

Once we made it to the check point, they looked at our sail and sign cards and waved us through. The guy had more fun making fun of my name with rhymes then anything else. Off we went to the ship for lunch, our photo Ids and plans to change into swimsuits to go and jet ski.