Eight Days in St. Thomas and St. John, US Virgin Islands

In January, 2017 we took the most amazing trip to St. Thomas and St. John. This article is our family’s photo diary of that trip. If you’re looking for a quick overview of the trip for your own planning, feel free to look at the pictures here, but also make sure to check out our Itinerary for the Virgin Islands of St. Thomas and St. John for a shortened version of this write-up that has fewer pictures and can help you plan your own trip to the USVI.

If you’ve come here from that article for more pictures, here’s a few links to help you navigate this post which has well over 100 pictures of our trip!

Day-by-Day Guide

• Day 1: Traveling from Baltimore to St. Thomas
• Day 2: Sugar Bay Resort (for Breakfast), Magens Bay, Drake’s Seat, Coral World, and Sangria’s
• Day 3: Magens Bay, Mangrove Lagoon Tour w/ Virgin Island EcoTours, and Sunset Grille
• Day 4: British Virgin Islands Tour w/ Bad Kitty/Calypso Tours
• Day 5: St. John: Honeymoon Beach & Caneel Bay Beach Resort
• Day 6: Charlotte Amalie Self-Guided Tour and Water Island / The “other” Honeymoon Beach
• Day 7: St. John: VI Nat’l Park Reef Back Hike, Maho Beach, and Trunk Bay
• Day 8: Blackbeard’s Castle, a Few More Sites in Charlotte Amalie, and Traveling Home

Day 1: Traveling (First Flights for L, E, and H!)

Day 1 started bright and early for us at 4am at our home in Baltimore, MD. The entire family was super-excited to get to St. Thomas, having consolidated all of our stuff down to just 7 backpacks and 1 checked bag. (Spirit Airlines is a “bare fare” airline, so packing light saved big.) Our friend Bob R. drove us to the airport in Kronk (our 12 passenger van) and we commenced with the photos. This trip included E, L, and H’s first flights, and so we were pretty excited to be walking through the airport and boarding for the first time!

Our flights included in layover in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida for about 3 hours. The kids and we passed the time on our phones and video games – anxious to get back in the air for the islands!

We touched down on time at around 4:30pm, got our bags, and headed to the rental we picked via VRBO. Everyone was super excited to be there, we just had to put our feet in the water before the sub completely set for the night. We headed out to dinner at The Yacht Club restaurant on the beach. It was a fine meal, but we were all exhausted and the kids were restless from the long day of travel. We finally got to bed just after 10pm and that was a welcome relief.

Day 2: Sugar Bay Resort, Drake’s Seat, Magens Bay, Coral World, and Sangria’s

Like all our big family trips, we were anxious to dive right into the USVI. On Day 2 we started out with breakfast at The Sugar Bay Resort in St. Thomas. The resort backs up to a beautiful bay and the food was fantastic )though all-u-can eat on the island was a little pricey at $160 for all of us). After breakfast we tooled around the grounds for a bit to get a sense for the non-restaurant part of the resort. It was indeed beautiful and introduced to do our first few lizards on the island. These guys grow to about 2 feet long head-to-tail and most aren’t scared of humans (probably because they are frequently fed by us).

Next Stop: Drakes Seat & Magens Bay, St. Thomas

After taking in the beauty of the resort, we had a little bit of time before our afternoon appointment with the sea turtles at Coral World, so we decided to hit one of (if not the most) famous photo spot on St. Thomas: Drake’s Seat, which overlooks the very popular Magens Bay. You can see why this is such a popular spot!

We took a few portraits at Drake’s seat, but by far the twins shot came out the best. This almost looks like they were superimposed on the background!

We headed downhill from Drake’s seat to visit Magens Bay for a few hours to pass the time, and also to get our first “real” Caribbean beach experience. Magens is beautiful, and if you’re considering visiting St. Thomas, it’s a “must see” location.

One thing about the VI is that there are these amazing boats (mostly catamarans) basically parked in every harbor where it’s allowed. Here’s one particularly nice looking example just parked in Magens Bay.

When we traveled to the USVI, Nintendo had just released their very popular Pokemon Go video game that rewarded you with different Pokemon depending on the region where you were playing the game. Kim, E, and H took some time to get in some play while we were visiting Magens!

Magens Bay also gave us a few more friendly lizards looking for handouts!

And seeing none, this little guy scurried away…

Next Stop: Coral World Ocean Park & Sea Turtle Encounter

After about 2 hours at Magens Bay it was time to head to our Coral World Sea Turtle experience. The whole family loved this experience, because you aren’t supposed to touch the sea turtles in the wild, but Coral World’s rescued turtles are fine to pet, if not just a bit intimidating because they do have large beaks. Unfortunately H was too young for the Sea Turtle encounter and L was a little too intimidated for this adventure, so they both sat out. Coral World had plenty of other things to see, though, so everyone got to enjoy the experience!

Coral World has this amazing (if not a little dates) underwater observatory situated out in the middle of the Caribbean.  Inside, you descend a few stairs and get to view fish in their natural habitat.

The remaining attractions are scattered over a few acres of property. We enjoyed checking out the exhibits while waiting for our Sea Turtle encounter to begin.

Before we entered the turtle’s pond, one of the keepers fed the turtles their usual green leafy lettuce. I told myself this is so they wouldn’t want to bite us, although I’m not sure the two were related. These turtles seemed pretty docile and mostly just made loops in the pool.

Unfortunately because they only allow four people in the turtle exhibit at once, we had to break up into two groups to get the five of us who could do the exhibit through. Here’s a few of the best pics from our “encounter.”

After the turtle encounter another of the staff threw down a bunch of lettuce for the hoard of lizards that live at Coral World. Some of the braver kids attempted to actually feed these guys 🙂

The next two pictures are from an exhibit that J and H got to try while B, E, and I were at the turtles. They appear to be aquariums where you can “get your head in the game!”

After Coral World we took a brief trip back to the condo where all the kids played with these stuffed animals that our host left for the kids. Our favorite animal is a hippo J named “Rodriguez.” Rodriquez has subsequently traveled with us to Luray Caverns, Nashville, and several battlefields.

After a whirlwind of a first day no one wanted to cook dinner, so we headed out to Sangria’s, a recommendation from our host. This turned out to be the kids favorite restaurant of our trip. It’s right on the beach and they show movies on the big screen after dark. Day 6 of our trip was Super Bowl Sunday and we came back to Sangria’s to watch the game.

Day 3 – Magens Bay, Mangrove Lagoon Tour, and Sunset Grille

We had so much fun at Magens Bay on Day 3 that we decided to sneak back over in the morning before our Mangrove Lagoon Tour with VI Eco Tours. This time at Magens I tried to get a picture of all four boys together (which turned out awesome), but not without some serious rowdiness! I love the set of pictures with the boys that came from our second stop.

Next Stop: Mangrove Lagoon Tour

We departed Magens around 12:30 to head on over to our Mangrove Lagoon Tour which was hosted by VI Eco Tours. This tour was amazing. We loved everything about it. If you’re considering a tour while in St. Thomas, we highly recommend this one. This tour was so good we wrote an entire article about it here:

• St. Thomas Mangrove Lagoon Tour Review

Next Stop: Sunset Grille for Dinner!

After the Mangrove Lagoon Eco Tour, everyone was zonked. We headed back to the condo to take some quick showers and dip in the pool, and then we headed out to Sunset Grille for dinner. We really liked the vibe at sunset – and the food was great. This was the kids’ second favorite restaurant after Sangria’s.

Day 4: British Virgin Islands Tour

Late on in our planning for this trip we were looking for one more big excursion to add into the adventure, and a visitor to our site turned us onto Bad Kitty / Calypso Tour’s BVI day trip. This excursion is great because you can catch the boat at either Red Hook in St. Thomas or Cruz Bay in St. John, hit 4 BVI sites pretty quickly, and get back to the USVI before nightfall. The highlight of the trip is the first stop in Virgin Gorda to see the famous Baths. We got lucky with excellent weather for some photos at the baths. It proceeds to Cooper Island, Jost Van Dyke, and a snorkeling stop. Jost Van Dyke’s White Beach had the clearest turquoise water we’ve ever seen. It was stunning.

Our Day started here, at CAPT QUIN’s in the Red Hook Terminal on St. Thomas:

We boarded the Bad Kitty 2 and headed over to St. John. Here’s Kim and the kids on The Bad Kitty 2:

I could have included a thousand pictures that we took between the islands. The landscapes are breathtaking in person, but in pictures they all tend to run together. They all mostly look like this:

As we pulled into Cruz Bay, St. John, we did get our first look at VI National Park’s Visitor Center which sits right on the harbor.

After a brief stop at Cruz Bay to pick up additional passengers, we were on our way to Tortola to go through immigration in the BVI. We made a brief stop at H.M.’s Customs and then were on our way to Virgin Gorda.

Interesting fact: The Virgin Islands (USVI and BVI) are the spot where the U.S. and U.K. are closest to one another geographically on a map. The two closest islands are apparently only about 1/2 mile apart!

Here’s Tortola’s harbor. This is such a typical VI harbor – filled with dozens of sale boats waiting for their crews!

After a short stop in Tortola we were back on our way to Virgin Gorda, with more of the same:

The Baths at Virgin Gorda

Finally, after about an hour in the catamaran, we landed at Virgin Gorda and swam to shore. The rock formations and turquoise water of Virgin Gorda are truly beautiful. These pictures made the whole trip worth it!

The most famous picture spot in the Baths is “The Cathedral” below. This place has a beautiful blue hue that can get washed out by camera flashes, but it is one of the most beautiful spots we saw in the BVI.

After we finished the quick tour we were back outside for a few more shots…

And then, because of the lack of a boat dock at The Baths, everyone has to swim back out to their tour boats. This was actually really fun — we and the kids all loved it!

After finishing up at Virgin Gorda we did a brief snorkeling stop before heading on to Cooper Island. The snorkel stop wasn’t anything to write home about with an average of 15 foot depths and no notable sightings of rare fish. Before long, we were back on the boat and headed for Cooper Island.

We loved Cooper Island because you are greeted by the Union Jack. It was super cool to remember that by just traveling an hour by boat from the USVI to BVI, we had actually visited the United Kingdom!

 

Cooper Island is a fun little island that is barely inhabited. It has just a few villas and the very cool Cooper Island Beach Club restaurant hat is actually in quite good shape for being on a lonely island in the Caribbean. The food was great and the weather perfect!

After our stint at Cooper Island we got back on the boat and headed to Jost Van Dyke’s White Beach. White Beach turned out to the the most beautiful beach/water combination we saw anywhere in the VI. The turquoise water was crystal clear, the white sand was beautiful, and the palm trees and sail boats all around just added to the effect. We would have stayed here for hours, but unfortunately only had 60 minutes to check out the beach and the famous Soggy Dollar Bar.

And here’s the Bad Kitty Boat. Wish I would have taken a picture of it before this point in the trip. But here it is – not a really big boat by any means. In fact it’s quite cramped with all the people they bring on board. But we survived. You have to view it as more of a sea bus to get you were you need to go.

We departed Jost Van Dyke and headed back to the USVI.

But before we finished they gave all of us these semi-inappropriate temporary tattoos to commemorate the trip!

Day 5 – Honeymoon Beach Day Pass, Caneel Bay Resort Restaurant

On Day 5 we took the ferry from St. Thomas to St. John and spent the majority of the day using VI Eco Tour’s Honeymoon Beach Day Pass to enjoy Honeymoon Beach. The Day Pass gave us access to kayaks, snorkel gear, paddle boards, and life vests to explore the beach and nearby coral reef. We wrote about this whole day separately in this post.

Day 6: Charlotte Amalie Self-Guided Tour and Water Island / The “other” Honeymoon Beach

When we planned this trip we had this idea of doing a self-guided tour of Charlotte Amalie and trying to also hit Water Island. For the most part after doing both we think we would have preferred just heading back over to St. John for the day, because we didn’t get as much time there as we had hoped, especially at Trunk Bay which is beautiful. But Charlotte Amalie is neat, and on Water Island we did meet some really nice residents. Water Island is the smallest inhabited island of the USVI which just over 100 residents.

Downtown Charlotte Amalie has some pretty beautiful statues, parks and sites. Unfortunately, we didn’t realize our SLR didn’t have a memory card in it, so we only came away with the photos from our smart phones. Which, as it turns out, was good enough. Here’s a few of the pics we did get.

One thing that pictures really can’t capture is that our GPS (Google Maps) gave us continuous trouble navigating Charlotte Amalie. The streets are narrow, and some streets only have pass-through points for people on foot, even though the GPS thought they were regular roads. This led to a few sticky situations, most of which we didn’t capture on camera because we were too nervous about how exactly we were going to back our minivan out of them.

After our brief self-guided tour, we hopped on the ferry from St. Thomas to Water Island.

Our first stop on Water Island (after picking up golf carts) was “The Other” Honeymoon Beach. (There’s actually two Honeymoon beaches in the USVI, one on St. John and one on Water Island. Make no mistake: the one on St. John, which is located in the National Park, is much nicer in just about every way, except that Water Island’s Honeymoon Beach has two decent bar/restaurants right on the beach to serve you. Here’s the picture from atop the hill on the way in. It IS beautiful!

Golf carts are the preferred method of transportation on Water Island!

And here’s one of two decent restaurants on the island. This one is Heidi’s.

And here’s the other: Dinghy’s!

We stayed for a while, took some photos, and even swam a bit.

The rocky sand was a disappointment to the kids after just having spent the prior day with wonderful sand on St. John. But, when life gives you rocks, you might as well skip them…

After spending an hour or two at the beach we hopped in our golf carts and explored the island.

Probably the most interesting history on the island is that during World War II, the US Military started to build a Fort on Water Island to protect the submarine base in St. Thomas. The fort had gun mounts on the surface, with the bulk of the fort located underground in the hillside. The war ended before the fort was completed, however, any only some relatively modern ruins remain. I thought the below sign was pretty funny. It’s clearly a “FOR RENT” sign cut short to just say “FORT.”

This picture is on top of one of those artillery mounts with St. Thomas in the background.

And here’s the entrance to the underground portion of the Fort. Since we didn’t have flashlights, it was pretty hard to navigate the area. But Kim and the kids did go back into some of the rooms.

After we drove around for a bit we came back to Honeymoon to get a shot from the nearby hillside. So many beaches in the USVI offer this hillside view which does help capture the beauty of the place.

 After we finished exploring, we headed back down to the Water Island ferry dock to get back to St. Thomas before the last boat of the day left.

 

  And, we’re off!

Day 6 happened to be Super Bowl Sunday, so after we hit the condo for some showers, we headed out to Sangria’s for the second time this trip to get some good food and watch the game.

Day 7: National Park Reef Bay Hike, Maho Beach, and Trunk Bay

Day 7 was our final full day in the USVI. We took the car barge early from the Red Hook port in St. Thomas over to Cruz Bay, St. John to spend the whole day. We started up in the hills of St. John on the Reef Bay Trail.

 

   

 

Day 8 – Blackbeard’s Castle & Traveling Home