Fun Freebies! Jazz Concert & Carnival, St Thomas

Jazz in the Park featured The Eddie Russell Band, as well
as a variety of other jazz talent.  The event kicked off at
5:30 p.m. and ran until to 10 p.m.

Sexy as sailing the Caribbean sounds, our nightlife more often than not is constrained to 300 square feet… and usually a killer view.

It’s a rare treat when our date night is a night on the town, rather than our usual -- huddling over Wayne’s laptop to watch a rerun of “True Lies” or some other romantic movie.

We’re adventurous.  But we’re also cheap.  

The downside to cruising from place to place is it’s often tough to find what’s fun and free.  Visit any tourist office, open most guidebooks, puruse on the internet and you’ll have no trouble finding cool stuff to do that you pay for -- often a lot. 

Attractive Roosevelt Park on St. Thomas was the venue for Jazz
in the Park.  Near Yacht Haven Grande is an alternate venue.

The upside to getting stuck in St. Thomas is our lovely neighbors, Jamie and Keith from Kookaburra.  They’re local live-aboards.  They knew about First Fridays “Jazz in the Park,” in St. Thomas’ Roosevelt Park and invited us along.  It was free and just a long dinghy ride away, or a short one with a $1 Safari taxi-bus ride.  A night on the town, and a wonderful opportunity to get to know our charming neighbors a little better.

We dinghied to nearby Crown Bay Marina, took the bus until we could walk faster the bus could navigate traffic.  We met up with Keith and Jamie and enjoyed a perfect evening grooving to jazz, sipping Barefoot wine (one of the concert sponsors) and nibbling patties and other local vendor-sold treats.  Keith and Jamie dingied us back to the marina, so it was an easy hop home.

All sorts of nibblies and sips were available to support the event,
along with free face painting and other family –friendly activities. 

We want to do events like these more often!  The trick is finding them, passing through.

If all goes well on our boat repairs, we’ll just miss St. Thomas’ Carnival (click here for info on that), a two-week festival kicking off Friday April 12 2013 with “Brass-o-Rama.”  Rumor has it the festival caters so much to locals  that cruise-oriented shops close up and take vacation.  Sounds like our kind of event, but...

1,000 mile sail awaits us and we feel the clock ticking urgently.   

We bought a Bahamas Lonely Planet guidebook --our next major stop. Lonely Planet is oriented towards more frugal travelers like us and we're looking for more depth and variety than what we find in cruiser's guides.   We predict it will be a while before our next “True Lies” rerun.  

We’ll miss Keith & Jamie though!