Well another year, another trip to the Virgin Islands. Each November for the past 8 years my husband and I have been fortunate enough to take a vacation and revisit the place where we got married. Flew out of Newark on American and connected in Miami….GET ME THERE ALREADY!
Ahhh….the best part of the trip arrived…walking out of the plane and down the stairs and letting that warm air just hit ya. I suppose it’s my favorite part because I know the trip has just begun and we are finally there! Rented a midsize car from Budget.

1st night nothing fancy…stayed one night at Point Pleasant (nothing really to write home about) we just really needed a place to sleep for the one night. Had dinner at Molly Malone’s and walked around the marina. I usually LOVE Molly Malone’s grilled ruebens, but the bread was a little soggy this time. Oh well, all is good - we’re in paradise :O)

Next morning

Off to STJ via the car barge. Rented Coral Rays in Coral Bay with Destination St John. We actually meet them at their office and followed them to our villa. OMG…the hill getting up to the house was…words can’t describe. STEEP/LONG and not paved about ½ the way up. It took us an hour to try and make it up. The agent from Destination St John apologized that no one from her office told her we needed a 4 x 4 for this property. To make a long story short we actually rented ANOTHER automobile from Paris-Hertz rental for the rest of the week. (Yep – two rentals and the other car just sat). Fortunately by brother called from STT airport to let me know he was in and I was able to warn him he has to get a 4 x 4. He said to me “how bad can it really be” I just said BAD and don’t even think about coming to the house without one. Well, STT airport did not have any 4 x 4’s so he and 4 other people took the ferry over to STJ and rented from the same company we did. He called again once he was in STJ and had the car. My husband drove down and met them at the fork in Coral Bay. My brother laughed and said he couldn’t even count how many times everyone in the car said OMG. Needless to say he then knew I was not being over dramatic by telling him to get the 4 x 4.

The villa was beautiful, clean, and spacious and had every necessity you could think of. The views were amazing. I can actually still in vision them in my mind. We had a swimming pool and a large hot tub that we enjoyed just about every evening. Oh, another thing was we had Satellite TV, but it didn’t work.

We had dinner at Skinny Legs (yes, I think they have the best burgers).
Shipwreck landing-food was so so.
Island Blues- food was so so. It was funny because the waitress said how incredibly busy she was and when we asked her if they had any specials, she said she would have to check and see. Hummmm. My brother ordered his steak well done and it pretty much came out mooing. We just took it home and gave it to the neighborhood dog.
Miss Lucy’s – we went to their Sunday Brunch. Fantastic! (My favorite meal out so far) I had the Spinach Florentine with poached eggs. YUMMIE. Nice view and music.
The Balcony-in Cruz Bay. It was our anniversary so Hubbie and I ventured out for an evening alone. Food was very good.
Margarita Phils- in Cruz Bay. Very disappointing…1st off they offer desserts, but small catch…they have no coffee, because they have no maker. We were also surprised when we got our bill. We had six small bowls of chips and were charged $6.50 each!
J J’s Texas Coast Café- Cruz Bay-very good breakfast.

Donkey Diner-great breakfast

I have to say one of our best meals was in our villa. We prepared a Thanksgiving feast with all the trimmings. My brother even bought down decorations for the windows and festive paper products for our meal.

Prior to our trip I made a list our for everyone to bring 3 items on it. I had things like mayo, coffee, sugar, mustard etc…This helped keep the food bill down. We still had to do food shopping while we were down there which was at the Marina Market in STT. My husband and I stopped there the morning before we left for STJ. While in STJ we did frequent stops at the market in Coral Bay. Once at Love City market and the other times at that other market down the rode.

Beaches- my husband and I already visited most of the beaches already from previous trips and already established which beaches we favored. The rest of the group pretty much did all their exploring during this trip. I personally love Gibney Bay. We also went to Canel Bay and Francis Bay. Did a little bit of snorkeling too.

We all left on the same day from STJ. The group of 5 left a little earlier in the morning. They had breakfast and were pretty much on their way. We stayed behind and cleaned up a bit. We were headed back to STT to stay at Secret Harbor for a couple days the rest of the group was going home to NJ. We love the beach at Secret Harbor and love the fact you could walk a few steps to the beach. All that schlepping around in STJ gets old. Secret Harbor is also special because we got married there 8 years ago. Our first night we wanted to go to Latitude 18, but we couldn’t even get into the parking area. Gez, were they giving away food! We guessed they might have had some type of entertainment that night. Plan “B”- let’s try it again ….my grilled ruebens at Molly Malone’s - right on the money ! We also had dinner at Room w/ a View over looking Charlotte Amalie. This is always one of our favorites and again did not disappoint us. We also saw the 1st mega yacht parked by the new yacht club. They had cool blue lights that illuminated the area where the yacht was parked. Also ate a Bluemoon Café twice. Very good.

Like I said my husband have been going down this time of year for the past 8 years and we cannot remember it being as busy as it was. Restaurants were booked up…car rentals not available. I always liked November because it was always a little quieter – not this time!

Back home to NJ - to the smiling faces, warm sunshine and beautiful crystal clear blue water…yeah right!