Hi everyone-
Well, just as I thought it would, our trip went by so quickly and now it's over! 🙁 I thought I would write a brief synopsis of our trip which was incredible. Our group consisted of two families- myself, husband, and our 3 kids, ages 16, 13 and 9; and our good friends with their 2 kids ages 11 and 8. This trip was to celebrate the 2 Moms turning 40 in the near future. I should say this made turning 40 a little bit easier. ha ha.
We live in the Hamptons so we took a direct flight on American from JFK to St. Thomas on Thursday 4/6. The weather was hot and sunny when we landed and we were all pumped! I had arranged an open air safari vehicle with Fred at Dynamic Tours- he was right there waiting for us with a luggage cart when we landed. I would highly recommend his services. We waited about 30 minutes for the luggage to start coming around but soon enough we were out of there and on our way to the ferry. I am a nervous driver so the open air safari and left side driving thing made me a little crazy and I kept my head down for the better part of the trip to the ferry. The kids laughed at me (as did the other adults) but oh well. We arrived at the ferry, Fred made sure our luggage was taken care of and we bought tickets for the St. John Ferry and waited about 5 minutes for the boat. Fred assured us that someone else would be there next Saturday when we departed, and gave me his business card with the driver's phone number in case of a problem which I thought was great. We got on the ferry, broke out the sunscreen, and relaxed for the short ride over to Cruz Bay. We would be staying at Cinnamon Bay in a cottage for 2 nights before heading over to the villa we rented for the remaining 7 nights in Coral Bay so we took a taxi over to Cinnamon Bay where we checked in and were pleasantly surprised by the cottages, which were clean, comfortable, bug-free and a very short walk to one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. We had a couple of friendly cats around, which the kids loved, saw a few mongoos(es), but no donkeys in the campground but to the childrens dissapointment! (I was okay with that :))
We ate at T'ree Lizard Restaurant the first night, a delicious dinner that we all enjoyed, and went to bed about 9 since we had all been up since 5:30 am! Our alarm clock the next day (and the day after) turned out to be the garbage truck that makes its rounds of the campground at about 7 am! That was truly the only dissapointing thing about the campground. But, we were all up and at 'em soon after, made some hobo coffee and went up to T'ree Lizards for breakfast which was good. We spent the day on the beach and in the water, snorkeling, kayaking and having a great time. This was our first trip to STJ and we were suitably impressed by this little slice of heaven. One of our cottage neighbors recommended dinner at the Maho Bay Campground, she said it was a nice walk so we decided to do that. On our way out of Cinnamon Bay, we asked the taxi drivers how long of a walk, but they were fairly vague and said about a mile. Ok, we could do that. It was about 6:00 pm. I was a little nervous about the road portion of the trip, since the road is so steep and we had 5 kids in tow but we headed out anyway. In retrospect, it was really great but I have to say I would take a taxi next time!! It took a while to hike it there but the views on the way were awesome! Dinner was very good and the views from the restaurant lovely. We went to watch the glass blowing demonstration while the guys hunted down a taxi for the ride back to Cinnamon. No such luck, taxi's stop running at 7:30! Hmmm, walk all the way back in the dark? on those roads? with 5 kids? I bet the taxi guys at Cinnamon had a good laugh on us! The front desk at Maho graciously lent us 2 flashlights, and then looking and feeling like the family Von Trapp, off we went into the night. We actually had a great time and it will be one of our funnest memories of the trip! The kids thought it was great but we were all exhausted by the time we reached Cinnamon and went to bed.
We were up early again (thanks to the garbage truck) and packed up. Our plan was to taxi into Cruz Bay, shop around, get lunch and pick up the rental cars at Conrad Sutton, and drive out to Coral Bay to meet with Windspree and follow them to the villa at 3 pm. We had lunch at Margherita Phil's (YUMMY! but $$$) one of the girls had her hair braided, and then we picked up the 2 rental cars from Sutton, who I would also recommend. We drove out the Coral Bay on the North Shore Road, stopping at Cinnamon Bay to pick up our luggage that they held for us. Coming down into Coral Bay from Bordeaux Mountain was incredible. We were a little early to meet Windspree so we went over to Skinny Legs and had a drink, it turns out the bartender Larry tends bar during the summer in East Hampton at a sea-side restaurant called Bostwicks, small world!! He graciously bought our round of drinks which was very generous. We then walked over to the Windspree office, where we met up with the lady we were following out to the house. Stay tuned............................