USVI-On-Line

We have locked down the house!! We are 3 couples staying at Palm Hill Villa from July 6 - 13. We love the Maria Bluff location, being out near the point and close to the water. The house looks great and Destination St John saya it is better looking and currently better furnished than the fotos show.

Now to the questions... one couple is newbies and they will only be able to come down for the 7 days the house is reserved. The other 2 of us are relative vets and completely get St John.

We want to spend a couple of extra days - which would put us coming down on July 4th. Destination St John said this may not be great since all the streets will be closed near town for Carnival. I understand this but thought if we stayed at Gallows of Estate Lindholm we could prbably get to the condo from the dock that late in the day.

Do you folks think traveling in would be a problem on carnival day would be a problem? Do you think gallows or estate lindholm would have a problem with that arrival date or reserving 2 nights only?

Oh, I would love to push it to coming in on the 3rd but my wife is not so keen on leaving our 2 year old for so long (understandably). 2 extra nights was about all I could bargain her into.

I think next year will be the first year for the little one to come down to StJ.

Pia covered the arrival options, but I think the bigger problem may be getting someone to rent for two nights. Last year we arrived the last night of Carnival on St. Thomas and we really had to look for someone that would rent for less than three nights. We didn't try Caneel or the Westin, but both St. John and St. Thomas properties were the same and said it was because of Carnival. This year we are coming a couple of weeks later and haven't had that problem for the days before we get in our villa.

Call Richard at Suite St. John. He owns units at Gallows Point also I think he has other property near there as well. He is great to work with. Rented from him in the past. I'll have to find his website for you, but if you google it, it should show up.

We arrived on July 4th (the last day of Carnival) in 2007 and there wasn't a room to be had on STJ, not that anyone would have rented us one for one night if they had availability. We also heard horror stories of how hard it would be to get around if we were on-island that day.

We stayed the night on STT and it was kind of a nice way to slide into vaca. Even though it meant "moving" twice, it was actually refreshing to get off the plane and NOT have to do the usual taxi-ferry-car rental-villa tour-grocery shopping routine and just be able to spend the evening getting on island time. If you would consider it, we stayed at Green Iguana and it was awesome (VERY clean, VERY cool) and we stayed at Villa Santana one other time and thought it wonderful too.

Last year we newbies arrived to STJ on the 4th of July. It was a little difficult to get a taxi from the ferry, but a nice couple living on STJ helped us, and we succeeded - had to pay a little more than normal. We have rented a room for 2 nights on Serendip Condo. It was a nice room, and we could walk from there to the carnival places (but had a taxi back because of the steep street going up). We had such a funny day and are glad that we did it (you can read about it in my TR: Linne's diary, part 2).

Linne

Thanks for all the suggestions folks

I had forgotten about your July 4th arrival Linne - thanks for the reminder. I will have to go back and re-read it. It seems as though it was HOT and CROWDED and you wanted a painkiller

So it sounds do-able but maybe not optimal. I will call around to see who will rent for 2 nights.

I am also starting to think maybe St Thomas for a couple days is an option. We have never done anything there expect land and catch a cab to the ferry.

Thanks again!