Thirteen more days in paradise, final
Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2015 4:21 pm
Part one: http://www.virgin-islands-on-line.com/v ... =1&t=27616
Part two: http://www.virgin-islands-on-line.com/v ... =1&t=27624
Day eight
Woke up to another very overcast day and so decided to spend the morning at the villa.
The sun came out around lunchtime and I made lunch of grilled tuna flatbreads using the leftover tuna from last night’s dinner at Oceans 362.
The iguanas at Coqui all came out to lounge in the sun as well.
This one decided to go for a swim in the pool
This one opted for a tasty lunch
We decided to go and explore some of the south shore beaches. We went to Hart Bay first.
On our first visit to St. John, we stayed on Hart Bay, and had not been back since. The trail down is pretty easy. The house with the white roof is the cottage we rented back in 2003. When we rented it there was no front wall, just screens that you rolled down and secured with velcro. It was like a big tent. It has been renovated since then.
We also went to Klein Bay. We did not stay long because I was not sure if we were supposed to be there or not. There are two parking spaces at the beach but there is a sign saying the beach is the private property of the Klein Bay Homeowners Association. We had not been back to Klein since probably 2005 and that sign was not there then.
After lunch we headed to the beach. We tried Trunk but it was much too swelly so ended up back at Maho again. We enjoyed floating in the water. I did not want to leave but we had a reservation at Asolare, so reluctantly left and rushed back to the house to get ready and then headed over. We had a table on the rail with a fantastic view.
It was Valentine’s Day so the menu was a four course prix fixe. Since these items are not on the regular menu I am not going to provide any review of them as it would not be useful.
Salad courses were an Asian slaw
and a fennel salad
second course was shrimp
and a green thai curry soup
Mains were corvina and scallops.
Desserts were chocolate bread pudding and chocolate smore.
This is our traditional spot for our last night meal on St. John. The setting cannot be beat, and their cocktails are very inventive. That said, if we are on island for Valentine’s Day again, I think we will go to the vow renewal on Trunk instead of dinner out.
Day nine
This was supposed to be our travel day, but thanks to blizzard number four (I think), we were off to St. Thomas for two more nights. We packed up and said goodbye to Coqui and then headed to town for some shopping and brunch. I meant to go to Donald Schnell to get some more tableware, but ended up convincing John to buy a wall sculpture at Best of Both Worlds in Mongoose that used up our whole gift shopping budget. Oh well. I will go to Schnell this summer.
We ended up at Rhumblines. We started with a mango gazpacho (delicious! I am not sure if this is on the regular menu, but if it is I am always going to order it. It is basically a super juicy mango salsa.)
then I had eggs benedict with Portobello mushrooms and spinach
and John had an omelet with Andouille sausage, cheddar, and shrimp.
Returned the car and just made the 1PM ferry. Goodbye St. John until this summer
Our room at Frenchman’s Reef was a corner room with very nice ocean views.
I was not sure what to expect from this resort but overall it was nice. I think the property was renovated a couple of years ago.
Welcome rum punch
RumBar
[
Main pool with infinity edge and swim up bar (there are four pools if I remember correctly. I never go in hotel pools so I could be wrong.)
Terrace area for events
Dinner at Havana Blue was excellent. Great setting.
We liked it so much we made a reservation for the following evening before leaving.
We shared a mahi mahi prickly pear seveche
then yucca-encrusted mahi with Malaysian red curry risotto and jicama slaw
and chile-backened tuna with wasabi potatoes.
Too full for dessert. We spent some time after dinner out on the deck at RumBar taking in the lights of St. Thomas at night.
Day ten
Woke up to a really overcast day which eventually led to huge downpours. We had breakfast at Coco Joes, which is a cute spot on the beach.
My Denver omelet, minus the ham
John’s eggs benedict
Checking our email we saw that JetBlue had once again issued a travel waiver for the day of our rebooked flight due to yet another storm. This was getting ridiculous! We spent the afternoon on the beach trying to
decide what to do, huddling under a beach umbrella during the showers.
(inserting sunny photo of beach from another day instead of what it really looked like, artistic license
)
Finally we decided to rebook (AGAIN) for two more nights. We really debated heading back to St. John as we found an opening at a Westin pool villa, but ultimately decided to just stay on St. Thomas as our rebooked flight was now departing at 1PM, and we also figured our chance of getting a Jeep on St. John was less than zero and the Westin beach is not that wonderful. The hotel issued us the “stranded passenger” rate for our extension and said we would not have to change rooms, which was very kind of them.
I did realize that I had a little problem at this point though. You know how we all tell each other to pack a suitcase, then take half of the clothes out and bring twice as much money? Well, I did that this time, and by day three in the resort I was seriously running out of things to wear. I was borderline against the other ladies at the resort from the beginning anyway. Most ladies were wearing heels and full makeup. I had two pairs of shoes with me: my everyday tevas, and my “fancy” purple tevas. My makeup was a bottle of tinted sunscreen and a tube of lip balm. The ladies on this resort liked to get dressed up. I did not even bring a hairbrush.
I have “resort” clothes in my closet at home, I just did not bring them with me because frankly beach caftans with sparklies on them and sequined flip-flops look ridiculous on St. John. They definitely would have worked at Frenchman’s though. Of course, being the frugal New Englander that I am, I refused to spend money on any more resort wear knowing I had a ton of it at home. So, if anyone saw the lady with the frizzy hair, t-shirt and cutoffs walking around at Frenchman’s last week? That was me. Next time I am still taking half the clothes out of my suitcase and bringing twice the money. But if we are traveling in the winter again, I am also throwing in one sparkly beach cover up and a pair of fancy flip flops. Just in case.
Dinner was at Havana Blue again, and again was excellent.
The only miss was my cocktail, which was too sweet, but I should have known better than to order something with flavored vodka in it (in this case, strawberry).
We shared crispy sea bass lettuce cups to start
then I had the panko crusted chicken stuffed with manchego cheese, garlic and cilantro, (tasty but HUGE. I took half of it back to the room for the next day), which came with tempura asparagus and dirty rice.
John had a plancha lobster with yuzu beurre blanc and a manchego potato “air” (basically frothed potatoes).
We shared some ice cream topped with espresso for dessert
Day eleven
Started the day with breakfast at Aqua Terra, which is the hotel’s buffet. I could not help but compare it to Caneel’s as it was not that much cheaper. Where is my juice bar with soursop, guava, and papaya juices? Not here! The view was nice though—over to Charlotte Amelie.
After breakfast we went to Morningstar Beach. It was crowded but we found a couple of loungers in the shade and read books all day. The island had gotten something like 14 inches of rain over the past two days so we were not able to get in the water.
Late in the afternoon we headed to SandBar for Taco Tuesday: ½ price tacos and margaritas.
We tried the fish tacos (quite good)
and the chicken ones (OK).
Lots of iguanas on the resort
More book reading until it was time to do something really touristy: kayaking at night in a kayak with a glass bottom lined with lights.
Neither John nor I had ever been kayaking before but I used to go canoeing so figured we would be OK. And of course, we were. It actually turns out that John is a much better kayaker than me haha.
My only complaint is that there were too many people on the tour. I think there were 14 kayaks in the water, plus the guides, so people were often bumping boats. Our mistake was going on the early tour, we saw the late tour going out and that group only had four kayaks. Anyway, it was interesting.
John and I tooled around a bit and did our own thing close nearby rather than crowding in to try and see the turtles the guides were pointing out. After all, we have seen more than our share of turtles in much less crowded circumstances on St. John! We did see some tarpon feeding, and some squid, which was cool. We decided that overall we really like kayaking so that definitely made the tour worth it. We are going to try it a couple more times up here with a guide and then if we still feel the same way after that, we are going to get one for ourselves.
After kayaking we were hungry (and thirsty since we decided cocktails before kayaking the first time would be a very bad idea haha). It was kind of late though so we just went back to our room for cheese, crackers, the other piece of my chicken from Havana Blue, and wine on the deck.
Day twelve
Last full day (for real this time) It was a beautiful day so we decided to skip breakfast and head right
to the beach.
Our original plan was to go back to St. John and take a taxi to Trunk, but we could see that it was really swelly, and there were six cruise ships in port, so we decided to stay put. It is easy to make decisions like that when you have another trip to St. John already booked and paid for. Beach was crowded again, but we found a shady spot under a seagrape tree. Since we skipped breakfast we opted for an early lunch at SandBar.
Had blackened shark bites
a chipotle Caesar salad with blackened shrimp
and a plancha lobster with yucca.
Went back to the beach and spent the afternoon jumping in the waves. Oddly enough, I decided this was my favorite beach day! Maybe because I spent so much time in the water without getting cold.
Sometimes things happen that remind you that you are at a big resort. Like this: later in the afternoon we were hanging out on the balcony of our room. Suddenly we heard someone on the lawn below calling through a megaphone: “Hey you! People on the balconies! I see you! Get down here! FREEEEEEEE food! FRRREEEEEEE drinks! Jewelry raffle!” Yup. Manager’s reception.
One of my favorite things about the view from our room was watching the cruise ships pull out. I have no interest in ever cruising, but I do like to watch the big ships.
Dinner was (shocker) at Havana Blue. Again.
The starters were fantastic. Spicy tuna crispy rice bites, and manchengo fritters.
John got the snapping whole snapper
and I had the garlic shrimp.
There was a lovely sunset.
Key lime creme brûlée for dessert
Day thirteen
We had lunch at the Sunset Grille after checking out of the hotel.
Jerk shrimp salad:
Open faced mahi sandwich:
Grouper with roasted peppers, corn and tomatoes:
And then it was time to leave. Flight home was a little bumpy, and we arrived home to find our house covered in the largest icicles I have ever seen. There was one on the front of the house that was three feet wide and 2.5 stories tall! We had to have it taken down professionally as it was running water into our garage. There is another one growing on the back of the house that I think we are going to have to have taken down too. It is not leaking anywhere—yet---but it is HUGE. Dealing with the headaches related to all that is a little easier thanks to all of the relaxing we did on this trip.
Overall, we did not accomplish a lot on this trip, but we still had a great time. St. John is still by far, eternally by far, my favorite, but we were pleasantly surprised by our St. Thomas stay. I would not hesitate to stay at Frenchman’s Reef again for a couple of days on either end of a St. John trip if I had to.
St. John February 2015 favorites:
Favorite beach: Maho
Favorite snorkel: east end
Favorite restaurant: Havana Blue
That’s it for now. Until this summer, Cheers!
Becky and John
Part two: http://www.virgin-islands-on-line.com/v ... =1&t=27624
Day eight
Woke up to another very overcast day and so decided to spend the morning at the villa.
The sun came out around lunchtime and I made lunch of grilled tuna flatbreads using the leftover tuna from last night’s dinner at Oceans 362.
The iguanas at Coqui all came out to lounge in the sun as well.
This one decided to go for a swim in the pool
This one opted for a tasty lunch
We decided to go and explore some of the south shore beaches. We went to Hart Bay first.
On our first visit to St. John, we stayed on Hart Bay, and had not been back since. The trail down is pretty easy. The house with the white roof is the cottage we rented back in 2003. When we rented it there was no front wall, just screens that you rolled down and secured with velcro. It was like a big tent. It has been renovated since then.
We also went to Klein Bay. We did not stay long because I was not sure if we were supposed to be there or not. There are two parking spaces at the beach but there is a sign saying the beach is the private property of the Klein Bay Homeowners Association. We had not been back to Klein since probably 2005 and that sign was not there then.
After lunch we headed to the beach. We tried Trunk but it was much too swelly so ended up back at Maho again. We enjoyed floating in the water. I did not want to leave but we had a reservation at Asolare, so reluctantly left and rushed back to the house to get ready and then headed over. We had a table on the rail with a fantastic view.
It was Valentine’s Day so the menu was a four course prix fixe. Since these items are not on the regular menu I am not going to provide any review of them as it would not be useful.
Salad courses were an Asian slaw
and a fennel salad
second course was shrimp
and a green thai curry soup
Mains were corvina and scallops.
Desserts were chocolate bread pudding and chocolate smore.
This is our traditional spot for our last night meal on St. John. The setting cannot be beat, and their cocktails are very inventive. That said, if we are on island for Valentine’s Day again, I think we will go to the vow renewal on Trunk instead of dinner out.
Day nine
This was supposed to be our travel day, but thanks to blizzard number four (I think), we were off to St. Thomas for two more nights. We packed up and said goodbye to Coqui and then headed to town for some shopping and brunch. I meant to go to Donald Schnell to get some more tableware, but ended up convincing John to buy a wall sculpture at Best of Both Worlds in Mongoose that used up our whole gift shopping budget. Oh well. I will go to Schnell this summer.
We ended up at Rhumblines. We started with a mango gazpacho (delicious! I am not sure if this is on the regular menu, but if it is I am always going to order it. It is basically a super juicy mango salsa.)
then I had eggs benedict with Portobello mushrooms and spinach
and John had an omelet with Andouille sausage, cheddar, and shrimp.
Returned the car and just made the 1PM ferry. Goodbye St. John until this summer
Our room at Frenchman’s Reef was a corner room with very nice ocean views.
I was not sure what to expect from this resort but overall it was nice. I think the property was renovated a couple of years ago.
Welcome rum punch
RumBar
[Main pool with infinity edge and swim up bar (there are four pools if I remember correctly. I never go in hotel pools so I could be wrong.)
Terrace area for events
Dinner at Havana Blue was excellent. Great setting.
We liked it so much we made a reservation for the following evening before leaving.
We shared a mahi mahi prickly pear seveche
then yucca-encrusted mahi with Malaysian red curry risotto and jicama slaw
and chile-backened tuna with wasabi potatoes.
Too full for dessert. We spent some time after dinner out on the deck at RumBar taking in the lights of St. Thomas at night.
Day ten
Woke up to a really overcast day which eventually led to huge downpours. We had breakfast at Coco Joes, which is a cute spot on the beach.
My Denver omelet, minus the ham
John’s eggs benedict
Checking our email we saw that JetBlue had once again issued a travel waiver for the day of our rebooked flight due to yet another storm. This was getting ridiculous! We spent the afternoon on the beach trying to
decide what to do, huddling under a beach umbrella during the showers.
(inserting sunny photo of beach from another day instead of what it really looked like, artistic license
)Finally we decided to rebook (AGAIN) for two more nights. We really debated heading back to St. John as we found an opening at a Westin pool villa, but ultimately decided to just stay on St. Thomas as our rebooked flight was now departing at 1PM, and we also figured our chance of getting a Jeep on St. John was less than zero and the Westin beach is not that wonderful. The hotel issued us the “stranded passenger” rate for our extension and said we would not have to change rooms, which was very kind of them.
I did realize that I had a little problem at this point though. You know how we all tell each other to pack a suitcase, then take half of the clothes out and bring twice as much money? Well, I did that this time, and by day three in the resort I was seriously running out of things to wear. I was borderline against the other ladies at the resort from the beginning anyway. Most ladies were wearing heels and full makeup. I had two pairs of shoes with me: my everyday tevas, and my “fancy” purple tevas. My makeup was a bottle of tinted sunscreen and a tube of lip balm. The ladies on this resort liked to get dressed up. I did not even bring a hairbrush.
I have “resort” clothes in my closet at home, I just did not bring them with me because frankly beach caftans with sparklies on them and sequined flip-flops look ridiculous on St. John. They definitely would have worked at Frenchman’s though. Of course, being the frugal New Englander that I am, I refused to spend money on any more resort wear knowing I had a ton of it at home. So, if anyone saw the lady with the frizzy hair, t-shirt and cutoffs walking around at Frenchman’s last week? That was me. Next time I am still taking half the clothes out of my suitcase and bringing twice the money. But if we are traveling in the winter again, I am also throwing in one sparkly beach cover up and a pair of fancy flip flops. Just in case.
Dinner was at Havana Blue again, and again was excellent.
The only miss was my cocktail, which was too sweet, but I should have known better than to order something with flavored vodka in it (in this case, strawberry).
We shared crispy sea bass lettuce cups to start
then I had the panko crusted chicken stuffed with manchego cheese, garlic and cilantro, (tasty but HUGE. I took half of it back to the room for the next day), which came with tempura asparagus and dirty rice.
John had a plancha lobster with yuzu beurre blanc and a manchego potato “air” (basically frothed potatoes).
We shared some ice cream topped with espresso for dessert
Day eleven
Started the day with breakfast at Aqua Terra, which is the hotel’s buffet. I could not help but compare it to Caneel’s as it was not that much cheaper. Where is my juice bar with soursop, guava, and papaya juices? Not here! The view was nice though—over to Charlotte Amelie.
After breakfast we went to Morningstar Beach. It was crowded but we found a couple of loungers in the shade and read books all day. The island had gotten something like 14 inches of rain over the past two days so we were not able to get in the water.
Late in the afternoon we headed to SandBar for Taco Tuesday: ½ price tacos and margaritas.
We tried the fish tacos (quite good)
and the chicken ones (OK).
Lots of iguanas on the resort
More book reading until it was time to do something really touristy: kayaking at night in a kayak with a glass bottom lined with lights.
Neither John nor I had ever been kayaking before but I used to go canoeing so figured we would be OK. And of course, we were. It actually turns out that John is a much better kayaker than me haha.
My only complaint is that there were too many people on the tour. I think there were 14 kayaks in the water, plus the guides, so people were often bumping boats. Our mistake was going on the early tour, we saw the late tour going out and that group only had four kayaks. Anyway, it was interesting.
John and I tooled around a bit and did our own thing close nearby rather than crowding in to try and see the turtles the guides were pointing out. After all, we have seen more than our share of turtles in much less crowded circumstances on St. John! We did see some tarpon feeding, and some squid, which was cool. We decided that overall we really like kayaking so that definitely made the tour worth it. We are going to try it a couple more times up here with a guide and then if we still feel the same way after that, we are going to get one for ourselves.
After kayaking we were hungry (and thirsty since we decided cocktails before kayaking the first time would be a very bad idea haha). It was kind of late though so we just went back to our room for cheese, crackers, the other piece of my chicken from Havana Blue, and wine on the deck.
Day twelve
Last full day (for real this time) It was a beautiful day so we decided to skip breakfast and head right
to the beach.
Our original plan was to go back to St. John and take a taxi to Trunk, but we could see that it was really swelly, and there were six cruise ships in port, so we decided to stay put. It is easy to make decisions like that when you have another trip to St. John already booked and paid for. Beach was crowded again, but we found a shady spot under a seagrape tree. Since we skipped breakfast we opted for an early lunch at SandBar.
Had blackened shark bites
a chipotle Caesar salad with blackened shrimp
and a plancha lobster with yucca.
Went back to the beach and spent the afternoon jumping in the waves. Oddly enough, I decided this was my favorite beach day! Maybe because I spent so much time in the water without getting cold.
Sometimes things happen that remind you that you are at a big resort. Like this: later in the afternoon we were hanging out on the balcony of our room. Suddenly we heard someone on the lawn below calling through a megaphone: “Hey you! People on the balconies! I see you! Get down here! FREEEEEEEE food! FRRREEEEEEE drinks! Jewelry raffle!” Yup. Manager’s reception.
One of my favorite things about the view from our room was watching the cruise ships pull out. I have no interest in ever cruising, but I do like to watch the big ships.
Dinner was (shocker) at Havana Blue. Again.
The starters were fantastic. Spicy tuna crispy rice bites, and manchengo fritters.
John got the snapping whole snapper
and I had the garlic shrimp.
There was a lovely sunset.
Key lime creme brûlée for dessert
Day thirteen
We had lunch at the Sunset Grille after checking out of the hotel.
Jerk shrimp salad:
Open faced mahi sandwich:
Grouper with roasted peppers, corn and tomatoes:
And then it was time to leave. Flight home was a little bumpy, and we arrived home to find our house covered in the largest icicles I have ever seen. There was one on the front of the house that was three feet wide and 2.5 stories tall! We had to have it taken down professionally as it was running water into our garage. There is another one growing on the back of the house that I think we are going to have to have taken down too. It is not leaking anywhere—yet---but it is HUGE. Dealing with the headaches related to all that is a little easier thanks to all of the relaxing we did on this trip.
Overall, we did not accomplish a lot on this trip, but we still had a great time. St. John is still by far, eternally by far, my favorite, but we were pleasantly surprised by our St. Thomas stay. I would not hesitate to stay at Frenchman’s Reef again for a couple of days on either end of a St. John trip if I had to.
St. John February 2015 favorites:
Favorite beach: Maho
Favorite snorkel: east end
Favorite restaurant: Havana Blue
That’s it for now. Until this summer, Cheers!
Becky and John
