USVI-On-Line

Thank you all for your help. I put to good use the info. I learned on here, some in my group may have even called me a "know-it-all" I am going to try and keep this short and sweet.

We traveled Dec 8-16th. We were on island with Olga.

Traveled from Dulles on American with a stop in San Jaun, no problems. Made it from airport to Red Hook ferry dock on a Sat. within 1 1/2hrs. I thought that was pretty good.

The group: Me, DH, our 2 1/2 year old, my dad, brother, 2 brother-in-laws and a sister-in-law.

Dh and I are the only ones who have been there before.

Rented Coral Rays from Destination St. John and a Dodge Nitro from STJ Car Rental. I loved the Dodge and the convience of STJ Car Rental. We used there lot to park in, nice.

It had been 5 years since we were there and I don't think the rest of our group was prepaired for the road, Centreline rd. at night (our first night) scared the s%^# out of us. We used North Shore rd. from then on. The road up to Coral Rays is paved about 1/2 way then is dirt rd. We got use to it, but the first couple of times were thrilling to say the least. See my review of Coral Rays for more info, but we loved it. There is alot of room for a large group and the hot tub rocked. We sat in it every night with our rum drinks and listened to music from Island Blues. We woke up one moring to a friendly scorpion in our kitchen. I wish I would have got a pic. but my dad was quick to take him outside away from my curious 2yr old.

Beaches we visited: Maho on our first day, great 1st day beach, easy access, turtles, sting rays and a good snorkle to the far left.

Salt Pond: Good snorkling, enjoyed the walk, found a nice shady spot to let baby girl play in the sand.

Cinnamon Bay: Snorkled out to the cay, to me it was okay, I really didn't see much and the beach was crowded with cruise shippers (naked cruise shippers who didn't mind changing on the beach, the guys in our group enjoyed this beach )

Caneel Bay: I really liked this place. Snorkled to the far left past the ferry dock. It was a great snorkle, I guess I didn't think I'd see that much and Iwas really impressed. I also liked having a bar right there next to me when I got done snorkling. If i ever have the money I would like to stay here with hubby for a couple of days.

Franics bay: This was our groups favorite beach, we went here a couple of days. Great snorkling, not crowded, good beach for baby and fishing around the corner for hubby and brothers.

Trunk Bay: We lucked out, went early stayed to the far right and had a blast here. It was crowded (well crowded for STJ, but not anything like the beaches in Ocean City MD in the summer!) Last time we went we didnlt spend much time here, I;m glad we went back to trunk.

I'll follow up with resturants, crazy things that happened, and people we ran into....stay tuned

Sounds like a fun trip! We never made it to Caneel or Francis; I'd like to check those out some day!

How did your daughter do with the travel?

We had a GREAT time. My daughter did so wonderful! She was really excited and talked non-stop. I thought traveling with a toddler would have been harder, but it was really easy, we also had a big group of family to help.

Great start keep it up

We are going with our 2.5 year old next month. We travelled with him since birth and we will also have lots of hands to help.

Is there anything you wished you would have taken for her that you didn't?

Anything you wished you would have left at home?

PA Girl -


You are going to have a blast.

I took dry snacks and ceral in our luggage. We did not have to buy any of these things and it was nice to have them on hand when she got hungry.

I over packed her clothes, since we had a washer and dryer I washed clothes a couple of times and probably could have left some clothes at home...oh well, better be safe than sorry. I also packed her some toys from home. Not needed, we were not at the villa very much. I should have packed just her baby, 1 book, a couple of washable markers, and 1 of the books that you can write on and erase. That was all she played with.

We also did not need the stroller at all. This was something I thought really hard about. In the end I should have left it at home. We only used on the 1st day at the airports, we never used it again.

Sunblock, the first day I was really worried about the sun and covered her face with "no tears" sunblock. My poor baby's eyes were on fire. I switched to a sunblock stick for her face and we never had another problem. I also kept a 50sph hat and sunglasses on her.


Thats all I can think of, feel free to ask any other questions.

Have fun!

Thanks for the feedback.

We definately will not take a stroller. I intend to strap his carseat to a luggage cart (the small personal kind) for transport thru the airports. We will see how well that works.

PA girl-when are you going to be on island? Our trip is 2/23-3/1 and we'll have a 3 yo and a 1 yo. If you're there the same time, maybe we can meet up on the beach at some point!

krislbi - We will be there the same time, sounds good. I'll drop you a PM with the details.

sounds like a wonderful trip so far.

Thanks for the report, and also for your villa review. Coral Rays is on our short list for the next trip. I'm glad to know about the driveway in advance!