Yet one more beautiful day down here in Florida. I would like to say that I was out and about doing fun, cool or great things all day, but the truth is that I really didn't do much of anything. I spent the morning reading the news, doing the crossword and reading the comics, but I otherwise didn't do much of anything else.
   By late morning I was curled up on the couch reading one of my books. I have 3 that I am reading right at the moment, as well as a couple of magazines that I look through as I eat breakfast. And other than a short period of time when I got out and about for a walk, I pretty much just hung out in the trailer reading and listening to NPR on the radio.
    But the good news for the day is that the ant infestation that was going gangbusters a couple days ago is now pretty much done. I put some ant bait trays out a couple of days ago, and after watching bunches of ants sipping up the contents, basically 'drinking the koolaid', they were pretty much done for.
   The only other thing done today was working up another set of photos to post. The ones below are also from my week on St Croix island in the Caribbean, where we were contra dancing for a week. (See previous 3-4 posts). These are from an afternoon we spent in the capital Christiansted. We had lunch and wandered the streets for a couple of hours. There isn't any real order to them, they are just pictures that caught my eye. 
   

An Afternoon in Christiansted on St. Croix - February 9, 2016

This is my girlfriend Rima. We are waiting for the taxi at Sugar Beach Resort.

Rima gets her hair braided every year when she comes down by a local women and her daughter. I think she looks tons better than Bo Derek ever did, a real 11.

The taxi dropped us off in downtown Christiansted and we walked down to the harbor about 2 blocks away. This is looking out on part of the harbor where some of the boats are moored.

A picture of Rima and me.

Just off the boardwalk, near some of the restaurants, a school of tarpon patrol the waters for anything the people want to feed to them. They go crazy over chicken wing bones, but not so much french fries or bread.

Some of the fish are at least 4' long, maybe verging onto 5'.

Note that the two fish on the right have their own remora fish attached to the top of their bodies.

There seemed to be a lot more chickens running free this year than there have been in the past. Several of them wandered about the pier area and around some of the restaurants looking for dropped treats.

We had heard about a good restaurant from some of our fellow dancers called Kim's. So we walked over to it and sat just inside at a table near an open window looking out on the street. We had several people walk by that we knew and even had one join us for lunch. This is the menu for the day. Rima had the Potfish, I had the Kingfish, Terri had the Conch and Don the Grouper. All of them were wonderful, but I have to say that Rimas Potfish was beyond good. A whole fish braised in some kind of curry/crusian sauce.... it was yummy. By the way the side dish 'Fungi' has nothing to do with mushrooms. It's a local dish made of several ground up vegetables and it is very tasty.

There are several ruins of buildings near the downtown area. Many were probably built during the 1800's when the Danes still owned the island. I just like how they look.

Beautiful arches built out of bricks that likely arrived on the island as ballast in sailing vessels from England or the U.S. After unloading the bricks and selling them, they would load up with sugar and rum and return to their home ports.

Another old building.

One more.

Most buildings incorporated stone, coral and maybe a brick or two. It was all mortared together using a mixture of sand, oyster shell that had been fired and ground up, and molasses. As odd as it sounds, it seems to have worked pretty well.

More coral blocks.

It was nice to seeing flowering bushes and trees all over the island.

Another ruin, this one downtown near the city parking lot.

It doesn't take long for nature to move in and start to reclaim the land.

A momma hen and her 8 chicks. Many of the chickens seem to range freely without any one claiming them, they also seem to be able to produce enough chicks to perpetuate themselves.

One of the many roosters that were nearby.

One of the original government buildings on St Croix. This one was maybe the most important one since it took care of all of the taxes that were assessed on goods being imported or exported off of the island. As such it made money off of the sugar and rum that was exported as well as all the material goods, including slaves, that were imported.

All of the old government buildings are now painted in this beautiful yellow color. To the east a couple hundred feet is the fort that protected the harbor entrance, while on the west was the scale house and the warehouses and courtyard where goods were weighed and stored, and the slaves were auctioned off. It should be noted that St Croix did away with slavery long before any of the other islands or the U. S. did.

*brk