Don’t let the headline fool you.
St. Thomas is just as sunny as the rest of the Caribbean.
That’s not my complaint with the island. It’s just that the other locations in the Caribbean I’ve visited are so amazing.
U Turn: If I return to St. Thomas I will definitely make some different decisions. My first will be to avoid the shopping area in the port. Once is enough for me. We ended up just kind of wasting our day because we just lost track of time.
First of all, we kinda boxed ourselves in. When family members found out we’d be in St. Thomas, they asked us to do some Christmas shopping. They said that jewelry deals were supposed to be SO AMAZING. So, we planned to hit a few jewelry stores and then take a ferry to the nearby island of St. John’s to spend the rest of the day at a beautiful beach.
That is not what happened. Not even close.
We walked into the shopping district and immediately became overwhelmed. Street after street after street of jewelry boutiques and tourists shops. And almost everyone of them had someone outside trying to lure us inside. I felt like I was on Canal Street in New York City.
We spent hours, HOURS, looking for the perfect piece of jewelry. It was hot, I was annoyed, we were hungry. IT. WAS. HORRIBLE.
We finally became discouraged and manhandled enough that we just bought some random bracelet. It didn’t even really look like something the person we were shopping for liked … and I’ve never seen her wear it.
We ended up at a little, out of the way, restaurant and grabbed a quick bite to eat. It was nothing to write home (or blog) about.
By this time we’d missed our ferry and didn’t have time to get to St. John’s, the beach and back to St. Thomas before our cruise ship left for the Bahamas.
We decided to try to save the afternoon and paid for a shuttle to take us to a popular beach on St. Thomas. Apparently everyone else had the same idea, because PEOPLE WERE EVERYWHERE.
We tired to find a tiny place on the sand to put our towels and then walked toward the water. And there were jellyfish warning signs up. Because, I mean, of course there would be. (That’s why everyone was on the beach instead of in the water.) Husband ignored the signs and went for a quick swim. I stuck my toes in. Then we were just done.
We paid a shuttle to take us back to the port, skipped the last minute shopping rush, and walked back on the ship to our rooms.
This is one thing I really like about cruising. If you don’t like the place you’re in, you’ll be somewhere else the next day!