Need to really really get away even when you’re already in Saint Thomas? Consider a day trip to Saint John.
Beginning with a 7am taxi pickup from our lodgings in Charlotte Amalie, we arrived at Red Hook’s Ferry Terminal at 7:30am.
Because the ferry was a bit delayed due to the higher volume of people getting on this morning, we were able to buy our tickets quickly online via a QR code they displayed on a sign by the queue and catch one of the hourly ferries at 7:30am. The fare costs $8.15 per person.
The whole ferry ride takes 20 minutes.
We arrived at 7:50am into the main town of Cruz Bay on Saint John.
From there the differences from its sister island of Saint Thomas was palpable: tinier, less bustling, more relaxed, and more nature.
After having a quick breakfast at Cruz Bay Landing, we got picked up by Spencer of Island Buddy on a last minute booking for their 3 hour tour of St. John.
Definitely don’t miss the following sights —
Trunk Bay:
Caneel Beach:
Cinnamon Bay:
If you got a great guide as we did, you can also feel like getting a private beach all to yourself to swim in. This was at Lameshur Beach:
It’s snorkelin’ time!
After half an hour here, we packed up and headed out to explore one of the sugarcane plantations and ruins of old windmills back in Saint John’s colonial days:
Returning back to Cruz Bay by 12:30pm, we spent the rest of our day on Saint Johns eating and sampling one of the most bomb smoothies at Our Market Smoothies.
Once we had our fill of the slow life, we took the hourly ferry back to Saint Thomas, arriving back at Saint Thomas at 5:20pm.
And at the recommendation of a college friend, we booked 5:45pm dinner reservations at The Easterly:
Some of the best food of the trip so far:
Grilled Avocado with grilled corn, Jicama, baby heirloom tomatoes, pickled onion, ginger-lime vinaigrette
Bone Marrow with roasted wild mushrooms, carrot top remolata, seeded sourdough
Wahoo/Ono with Tomatoes, Onion, Jasmine Rice, and Passion Fruit Aioli
The return back home was uneventful.
Unlike arriving into the USVI which requires a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours of travel, there is no need to retest for COVID prior to returning from the US Virgin Islands back to the United States mainland (they consider this domestic travel). Furthermore, rates have remained near to zero here for the past 2 weeks which made me comfortable knowing I was very unlikely to be bringing anything back to NYC.
And it helps to get on empty flights.
- At time of posting in Saint Johns, it was 23 °C - Humidity: 72% | Wind Speed: 21km/hr | Cloud Cover: partly cloudy