Living it up in St. John, USVI

While visiting St. John:
Snorkle at Hawksnest Beach, tour the ruins at Annaberg, have dinner at Zo-Zo's, and enjoy an outdoor Sunday brunch at Miss Lucy's while listening to the live jazz music.

Quick Tips:

Stay to the left when driving!!!! Oh, and don't stop for the wild donkeys that you will see on the road! They will chase you down for food!

Both Trunk Beach and Anneberg will cost you /person. But if you go after 4:30pm, it is free! That gives you plenty of sunlight to enjoy the snorkle trail at Trunk Beach!

Best Way To Get Around:

Jeeps are fairly expensive -- for 2 jeeps split between 3 couples it worked out to be approx. /couple. The cost of a taxi ran us /person from downtown to our villa (Gift Hill). In the end, it would have been cheaper had we just used taxi service from our villa--but it would have been less convenient.

The Palm Villa is a very private villa over looking Cruz Bay and St. Thomas. The villa is split up into three separate buildings. The first building is the common building with a kitchen, living room, study, washer/dryer, and a loft with two twin beds. The second building is the master bedroom (incredible). And the third building is split into two separate bedrooms, both with their own private bathroom. The room we stayed in had a completely private outdoor shower overlooking the ocean! And then there is the view from the patio!!

Standing on the patio, you have a perfect view of not on Cruz Bay (and all of the beautiful sail boats in the bay) but you also see St. Thomas. My favorite time to sit on the deck was for the sunset, and just when it started to get dark. The sunsets were incredible, bright reds and oranges! I loved lying back and watching the stars, and looking at the lights of St. Thomas!

This is a self guided tour and only takes about 30 minutes to go through. It is a pretty interesting tour -- you learn quite a bit in regards to the technology they used and just a general idea of what life was like back then.

These ruins date back to the 1700s and I found it quite eerie to walk through them.

Also, on a side note, the view from the plantation is amazing! You have a great view of some of the British Virgin Islands (there is even a diagram of the channel showing the visiable islands and their names)

There is a small island in the bay, around which there are some great coral formations, and a lot of fish and pelicans to look at. One of the people from our group was lucky enough to watch a sea turtle swim by.

There is a fairly strong current that you have to swim against to get out to the island. Also, there are a lot of boats that anchor in the bay, so be sure to stay within the marked boundaries of the swimming area.

When we first arrived to Hawksnest Beach, we were under the impression that there really wasn't much to see as far as snorkeling was concerned. Much to our surprise, we found quite a bit of live coral and tons of fish. There is hardly a current to swim against, but--when the tide goes out, it gets very shallow quickly!

The beach is beautiful, with a lot of shade trees. If you are planning on spending the full day here, come prepared with food and water--you can't pick up anything here

There is an archaeological dig going on behind the windsurfing hut at Cinnamon Bay. From what we were told, back in the 1700s, the slaves revolted, killed everyone, and then burned the village down. If you are interested, you can volenteer some of your time in helping out around the dig site. You can find out more information by going to the site.

On a side note:
We live in Vancouver BC, so, for this trip we decided to fly out of Seattle. Anyways, our trip home was spread out over 2 days. Day 1: Fly from St. Thomas to Chicago (over night stop), Day 2: Chicago to Seattle.

For our over night in Chicago, our travel agent booked us in the 4 Points, Sheraton Hotel (at O'Hare). When we arrrived, we were booked into a room on the 5th floor. We lugged our bags up there, and opened the door to a room that had food all over the place, newspaper scattered on the floor and a bed that wasn't made. So we went back to the lobby, talked to the manager--for our inconvience, he upgraded us to one of their VIP rooms. All would have been fine if maybe that room was clean..but it wasn't. So needless to say, finally, we were given a clean room, but that didn't come without a fight. The manager offered to send a cleaning crew up to clean our room while we waited. He didn't actually offer us another room until I asked for our money back so that we could go else where. It was a nightmare!