my road to travel…the road “more” traveled

Relax at a St. Thomas Spa

One thing you won’t have to worry about when planning your vacation on the island of St. Thomas is finding a nice place to stay.  As one of the US Virgin Islands, St. Thomas is a Caribbean Paradise with lodgings ranging from charming and quiet city inns to world-class beach resorts.  Some of these resorts offer all-inclusive vacation packages which will immerse you in the most decadent pampering and supply you your every need.

 If your picture of the perfect St. Thomas vacation includes hours soaking up the sun by the pool or on the beach, snorkeling in delightfully warm water among schools of brilliantly colored fish, or golfing on courses with settings so magnificent that you really won’t care if you shoot the worst round of your life, you can do all of those things in St. Thomas.  And if you think no vacation would be complete without a relaxing day of treatments at a spa, you’ll have no trouble finding a St. Thomas resort which can accommodate you.  Here are just three of the most popular spa resorts in St. Thomas:

The Wyndham Sugar Bay Resort and Spa is carved out of a mountainside and surrounded by dense tropical greenery, with spectacular ocean views.  Its Journeys spa is the largest full-service on any of the US Virgin Islands.  The spa’s six treatment rooms are accompanied by a private massage for couples which contains his-and-her Jacuzzis.  There is also a private outdoor massage cabana, and showers in the rain forest outside the spa.  While use of the spa is not included in the cost of an all-inclusive stay at the resort, you can purchase spa services separately.

On the South Shore St. Thomas is the largest hotel in the US Virgin Islands, the Frenchman’s reef and Morning Star Marriott Beach Resort.  If you’re a fan of the good life, this is the resort for you.  Its spa, the Reef Health Club, provides a variety of spa services, including stone, aromatherapy, and therapeutic massages, body polishing and detoxifying wraps, and a choice of eight different facials.

Also on St. Thomas’ South Coast is the Ritz-Carlton, resembling a Venetian palace on its thirty acres of lushly landscaped oceanfront.  The Ritz-Carlton’s spa features eleven treatment rooms and an open-air cabana, all filled with the scent of Caribbean spices used to enhance the spa experience.   The Spa has kid and teen treatments as well as those for expectant Moms.  Choose from among traditional wraps, exotic facials, and to-die-for massage therapies!

There are, of course, many more excellent spa resorts on St. Thomas.  You can either find them with an Internet search, or speak to your travel agent about picking the perfect spa for your perfect Caribbean getaway!

The magnificent beaches of St. Thomas are a magnet for millions of sun-worshipers from around the globe.  St. Thomas has an astounding forty four beaches in its 32-square mile landmass, so your biggest decision will be choosing which of them to visit during your stay.  If you are staying at a beach resort, you may have access to your own private beach.  But you owe it to yourself to do some exploring! 

If you’d like to try some snorkeling during your stay on St. Thomas, Coki Beachis the place to do it.  Located next door to Coral World Marine Park, Coki Beach is a great beach for families with its food and drink vendors.  You can even purchase kibble to feed to the fish!

Secret Harbour in Red Hook - St. Thomas

The half-mile pristine white sand crescent of Megan’s Bayhas frequently earned it accolades as one of the world’s most beautiful beaches.  The calm water off Magan’s Bay stretches between two peninsulas which protect it from the worst of the wind, and the sea bottom is quite flat and sandy, making it an ideal swimming area.  You’ll have to pay a three dollar entrance fee to access the beach between 8 AM and 5 PM.  

If windsurfing is your thing, head for Sapphire Beach where you’ll get an excellent view not only of St. John, but of some other of the area islands.  There is also a great reef for snorkeling to the east of Sapphire Beach.

One of the still somewhat undiscovered delights of St. Thomas is Lindquist Beach.  The fact that it’s not fully discovered, however, means that you won’t be able to purchase food and beverages or rent water sports equipment here.  There are also no lifeguards, so you will swim at your own peril.

 Lindquist Beach is another popular beach in St. Thomas. Lindquist Beach is still considered a well-kept secret.  Lindquist Beach is currently an undeveloped area.  This means entertainment, food and drinks, and water rentals are not available. 

While Secret Harbor in Red Hook is set on a very pretty cove with excellent snorkeling, it hardly lives up name.  There’s nothing secret about it, as it’s the site of a condominium resort, and the beach is seldom free of people lounging in hammocks and beach chairs.  Many divers are attracted to Secret Harbor, so there are several dive rental shops along the beach, as well as people sunbathing, playing volleyball, and swimming.

We mentioned only five of St. Thomas’ forty-four beaches, but of the remaining thirty-nine many simply do not qualify as resort quality beaches.   Before you decide which beaches on St. Thomas deserve your attention, do some research to learn what activities are available at each, or if one of them is a place where you can simply go for some peace and quiet to enjoy the scent of the salt air and the feel of the sun on your face!

Capturing the perfect scene in St. Thomas

There’s no better way to preserve happy vacation memories than with plenty of photographs and videos. As long as you take precautions to see that your camera or camcorder either isn’t stolen or damaged from exposure to sand and salt water, you’ll return home with your memories safely captured.  While you may have insurance to cover the theft or accidental damage to your photography equipment, receiving money to replace it means nothing if your photographs and videos have been lost!

Don’t think, however, that you have to rush out and buy photography equipment before heading to St. Thomas.  If you don’t already have it, you’d be very smart to wait until you arrive on the island, and purchase it there.  If you’re a United States resident, you can purchase up to $1600 worth of duty-free merchandise while in St. Thomas.  In the capital city of Charlotte Amalie, as well as at the Havensight Mall in Crown Bay, you can buy the finest digital cameras and camcorders at a fraction of what you’d pay if you bought one at home.

The largest camera seller on St. Thomas is Royal Caribbean(no connection to the cruise ships) with five shops on the island, including ones in Charlotte Amalie and the Havensight Mall.  They carry all the best brands of camera–Nikon, Canon, JVS, Sony and Leica among them–and have been in business for more than 30 years with a great record for customer service.  As long as you know what you would expect to pay for the same camera in the US, and are willing to do some negotiating, you can almost certainly get a better price on it in St. Thomas!

Even if you don’t have the budget to purchase a digital camera in St. Thomas, you can still capture your vacation memories with a disposable camera.  The quality of the pictures won’t be as good as those taken with a digital camera, but you can improve them if you have your disposable camera pictures placed on a CD when they’re developed.  You can then use your PC to enchance the photos.

There’s no other place on St. Thomas to get some marvelous vacation memories, than at the former United States communication station on the summit of Saint Peter Mountain.  From this location you can view  20 of the islands surrounding St. Thomas, and was named by National Geographic Magazine as one of the top 10 views on the entire planet!  It’s certainly a view you’ll want to preserve on film, and it might look even more stunning after you’ve had one of the famous Mountain Top banana daiquiris!

Perhaps your trip to St. Thomas will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  Or it might be only one of many happy vacations you spend there.  Whether it’s the first-and-only, or the first-of-many, it deserves to be preserved in photographs, as do all the St. Thomas vacations which follow it!

The Virgin Islands lie like a necklace of jewels in the sky-blue waters of the Caribbean. Their unparalleled tropical scenery, blessed with bright sunny days and dark starry nights are cooled by fragrant ocean breezes.  St. Thomas, with its bustling capital city of Charlotte Amalie, is the most popular port-of-call for cruise ships which stop in the Virgin Islands.

If you’ve decided there’s a cruise to  St. Thomas in your future, your next step will be to decide which cruise line offers the most for your dollar.  Every one of the big cruise lines (including Royal Caribbean; Carnival; Holland America, and Celebrity) list Charlotte Amalie on their ports-of-call, because the harbor is deep enough that they don’t have to ferry their passengers ashore.  Some of the smaller cruise lines, like Windstar, actually originate their cruises in Charlotte Amalie and travel from there to the smaller of the Virgin Islands.  These smaller cruise ships are ideal if you want a more intimate cruising experience.

Enjoying a cruise to St. Thomas is one of the most relaxing and simplest ways to see the Caribbean.  Your cruise ship will provide you with all the luxury of a fine resort, with plenty of on-board activities usually including a casino, live entertainment, and gourmet cuisine available around the clock.

One reason that St. Thomas is such a popular cruise destination is that it’s duty-free shopping is almost unequaled.  Because St. Thomas belongs to the US Virgin Islands, residents of the US have the added benefit of getting a $1600 duty-free exemption per person ($3200 per couple), twice that offered to travelers from other countries.  What this means for you is that you only have to pay duty on the amount of your purchases which exceed your $1600 exemption.

Those duty-free exemptions are one reason why Charlotte Amalie draws hordes of shoppers on the days when cruise ships pull into port.  During the busiest tourist season, it’s not unusual for half a dozen cruise ships to dock here, adding upwards of 20,000 people to a city with a native population of about 50,000!

But you don’t have to be part of the crowd, if you prefer your cruise to St. Thomas be a little less hectic.  St. Thomas has a lovely serene side for those who take the time to find it.  You can arrange a tour of its charming historic district with delightful Danish architecture, or escape to Water Island.  Enjoy exquisite food at one of its amazing Frenchtown restaurants, or escape from St. Thomas altogether aboard the ferry which will have you on much less crowded St. John in just 20 minutes!

The ferry to St. John departs from the Red Hook Marina in east St. Thomas, where you can take in the sights of Heritage Gade, the replica of a Caribbean village.  Spending an hour in Red Hook is a great way to get a taste of what life is like on St. Thomas away from the active scene at Charlotte Amalie.

Your cruise ship staff will have all the information you need about getting around on St. Thomas, and will also have maps you can carry with you to help you negotiate your way through the Charlotte Amalie shopping district.  Your cruise line will also almost certainly offer the opportunity to book the St. Thomas on shore excursion of your choice. Onshore excursion options include activities like island tours, horseback riding, private sailing charters, and trips to duty-free shopping outlets which are within walking distance of the dock.

Regardless of how you arrive there, you’ll never regret your visit to St. Thomas.  Arriving on a luxury cruise ship, however, will make your visit everything you’ve dreamed it could be!

Frenchman's Reef & Morning Star Marriott Beach Resort

The Caribbean island of St. Thomas, one of the US Virgin Islands, has an astonishing 44 beaches on its 32-square-mile landmass.  It also has a mountain ridge standing fifteen hundred feet above its thirteen-mile length.  No matter where you go on this island jewel, you’re always within view of either the glistening blue waters and sparkling white sands of the Caribbean beaches, or the refreshing green of its hillsides.  St. Thomas is the sort of vacation paradise that makes many people think a holiday there is probably beyond their means, but nothing could be further from the truth!

How can you and your significant other or family find a way to enjoy all that St. Thomas has to offer, without worrying every moment about the cost of your vacation?  You can do it by booking your vacation at one of the many all-inclusive resorts on St. Thomas.  These all-inclusive resorts come in a variety of sizes, offering a wide range of vacation options, and each of them has its own specific regulations.  So, as long as you examine what is and is not available at each of them, you’re sure to find one where you can immerse yourself in the delights of St. Thomas!

St. Thomas is home to a number of world-class resorts, some of the best duty-free shopping and nightlife in the Caribbean in the island’s capital city of Charlotte Amalie, and plenty of recreational opportunities.  Golfing, scuba diving, snorkeling, and deep-sea fishing excursions can be included in your all-inclusive vacation package.  If you prefer something simpler, a less expensive all-inclusive vacation can still include accommodations in a luxury beach side hotel with meals, transportation to the island’ s major tourist attractions, and plenty of time for quiet strolls in secluded coves!

Many of these all-inclusive packages even include the price of alcohol (although there is, with some of them, a limit on the total number of drinks.)  You can select a vacation tailored to your needs as a single traveler, as a couple, or as a family.  Some all-inclusive St. Thomas resorts do have age restrictions, so make sure you clarify that before booking your stay.  These St. Thomas all-inclusive vacation resorts are designed for activities inappropriate for children, but there are other resorts where you’ll experience the perfect family vacation.

At the Wyndham Sugar Bay Beach Resort and Spa, you’ll be overlooking the beach, with the mountains behind you, as you’re surrounded by dense tropical forests.  The Resort has a magnificent rock-grotto waterfall in its complex of three dazzling freshwater pools.  There is also an outdoor spa with private sunning decks, from which you’ll get a breathtaking view of the resort’s private beach and bay.  By purchasing an all-inclusive vacation package here, you’ll get your kids admission to the daily “Kids Klub” program designed expressly for those between four and 12 years of age.

The all-inclusive vacation resorts at the Marriott Frenchman’s Reef includes not only your room accommodations, but a complementary welcome drink and gift.  You’ll have your choice of unlimited snacks and meals at  a number of the resorts restaurants, as well as  unlimited soft drinks and house-brand alcoholic drinks.  You get one hour of free use of either a kayak or paddle boat and unlimited use of other non-motorized water sports equipment.  This resort also has its own tennis courts and health club, as well as on-site activities in which you can participate at no additional charge.

At all the St. Thomas all-inclusive vacation resorts  you can spend a few days simply soaking up the sun, swimming the crystal blue waters, hitting the links, and so much more.  With all your meals (and plenty of cocktails!) included, this is the opportunity for the vacation of a lifetime!