# Back from St. Thomas



## hotcoffee (Aug 16, 2010)

We just returned from a week on St. Thomas at Marriott Frenchman's Cove.  This was my first visit to the USVI.  We have four in our family, but had seven in our party on this trip.  I allowed my teenage daughters to invite friends.  Here are some first impressions:

1.  Driving on the left is not particularly difficult or troublesome.  I quickly adapted to it, and only occasionally forgot.  For example, once or twice when making a turn, and there were no cars around to provide an obvious reminder, I had to think about which lane to turn into.  Most of the time it is obvious since you will go in the same direction that the other cars are going.

2.  Taxis are plentiful and easy to get from almost anywhere that tourists would generally go.  So, unless doing some exploring, one could get along without a rental car quite easily.  That said, having a rental car is definitely convenient.  In particular, it makes grocery shopping much more convenient.

3.  It is probably not worth using the car ferry to visit St. John unless one wants to visit multiple beaches.  For us, spending a few hours on just one beach tired us out, and we were ready to go back to the resort.  So, we had opt'ed for the regular ferry and taxis to visit Trunk Bay, and that worked out very well.  Had we wanted to also go to Cinnamon Bay, there were several taxis at Trunk Bay that would have been able to take us.

4.  The main roads on both St. Thomas and St. John are generally okay.  You don't need 4WD on either of them.  We had a 7 passenger minivan, and negotiated the hills and turns on St. Thomas fine.  Other than the narrow streets of Cruz Bay, the roads on St. John also looked fine.  Both islands are hilly.  So, there are a lot of turns and sometimes steep ascents and descents.  Some of the roads are also very narrow.  If one has not driven there, but has driven the Hana Highway on Maui in Hawaii, he would not have any problems with most of the roads in the USVI.  I would rate the Hana Highway more challenging in general to drive then the roads on USVI.

5.  I did not find the people of St. Thomas to be particularly friendly or unfriendly.  Most were reasonably pleasant - which is what I had expected.  There were no surprises for me in that regard.

6.  We did not experience much in the way of breezes there.  Not sure where the trade winds were (or, if they even get much in the way of trade winds there).  Not having much breeze made it feel very sticky in the summer heat.

7.  The beach at Trunk Bay on St. John is definitely one of the most beautiful beaches in the world.  Making it part of a National Park was a fantastic decision.  Its natural beauty has been preserved for future generations to see.  It was only moderately crowded when we were there.  We did not have time (and were too tired) to visit any of the other beaches on St. John, but I assume from pictures that they are also nice.

8.  There were a lot of restaurants that I would have liked to try; but, with seven people, I wanted to eat in as much as possible.  We only ate out twice - both times at either the Marriott Frenchman's Reef or Morningstar hotels.  The Havana Blue restaurant at the Morningstar was fantastic, but it is probably going to be too expensive for a lot of people.

9.  We did not go to the BVI.  With seven people, it would have been way too expensive.  Even without that trip, this vacation was a bit on the expensive side for me.  We had to board two dogs at a pet hotel.  That always adds to the cost of our vacations.


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## Tia (Aug 17, 2010)

Thanks for your trip report!


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## krmlaw (Aug 17, 2010)

great report! ther ehas been alot of buzz about crime - anything to worry about that you saw?


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## hotcoffee (Aug 17, 2010)

krmlaw said:


> great report! ther ehas been alot of buzz about crime - anything to worry about that you saw?



Well, I did not see any crime.  However, I did not always feel comfortable in downtown Charlotte Amalie away from the waterfront area.  I don't know if that was due to my having heard of that girl getting shot recently or to the general appearance of the streets.  One block back from the waterfront is a street that has many of the jewelry shops.  During the daylight hours, that street seemed pretty safe due to tourists walking up-and-down the sidewalks.  Some of the connecting streets were little more than alleys.

One of our group was a 19 year old very devout Roman Catholic girl who insisted she wanted to attend a Saturday evening mass.  We walked her to the church doors and saw that she got into the church while it was still light around about 6 PM.  Then, we caught a cab back to our resort.  By the time she left the church, it had become dark; and she had to walk about a block laterally before she could find a connecting street to get back to the waterfront area to catch a cab.  She mentioned something about the road leading back to the waterfront area that was directly in front of the church (which was not much more than an alley) had a closed gate.  She noted that the streets were almost empty (except for one or two locals here and there) without any tourists.  When I heard that, I realized that I should have insisted that she skip mass and stay with us.  Now, the very thought of a teenaged girl being in Charlotte Amalie alone after dark causes me to shutter.  Charlotte Amalie is nothing like Lahaina or Kona in Hawaii where many tourists are still roaming the streets after dark.  It seems like the tourists go into hiberation after dark there.


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## Tia (Aug 18, 2010)

I think most tourist after dark go the restaraunts/bars via cars or taxi and are not on foot, from our experience there.


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## hotcoffee (Aug 19, 2010)

Tia said:


> I think most tourist after dark go the restaraunts/bars via cars or taxi and are not on foot, from our experience there.



One of the big issues St. Thomas faces is the fact that cruise ship passengers all return to the ship by evening.  I've never taken a cruise.  So, I don't know exactly when they are supposed to return.  

The shops probably see little reason to stay open when there are no tourists from the cruise ships around.  However, even given that fact, there are still plenty of tourists on the island staying at hotels and timeshares.  One would think that the streets in Charlotte Amalie would not become almost totally empty after dark.  Could it be because most of the restaurants are not in the downtown area?


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## Tia (Aug 19, 2010)

Restaraunts are spread all over the island, most are not downtown. Frenchtown has several and Redhook has several where there seem to be more tourist in the evenings.


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