St. Croix trip report
 

Spent a week this month in STX and had a fabulous time. Thanks to all who helped.

Getting there: We hadn't specifically targeted STX or the Caribbean. It was our 25th anniversary and I took the time off, just looking for the best deal in that time frame. About midnight one night, I got an e-mail about a USAir fare "mistake." Woke the DW up and asked if she wanted to go to STX. Groggily she said yes. Booked three tix from Harrisburg, PA-Charlotte-STX for under $650. Total. First class.

Instead of driving 45 minutes to IAD or BWI, we drove 90 to Harrisburg, a small but very nice airport. Trip was non-eventful and it was cool to see the free rum samples at the baggage claim. I couldn't partake because I would soon be driving a right-handed car on the left side of the road.

Driving to the condo at Colony Cove was a challenge because I hadn't studied the map well (and after 25 years knew my partner wasn't much of a map-reader ...), but the roads became much easier to figure out soon.

Colony Cove shared a nice beach with the neighboring complex and there was plenty of sand with good snorkeling off the beach. There was a nice restaurant, Breezes, at the far end of the beach (rum-flamed lobster) and a more casual place Smugglers' Cove with interesting murals that made us glad our son stayed in the condo that trip.

We visited both Christiansted and spruced up Fredricksted and both were interesting stops. C-town had some interesting shops along the boardwalk -- although we're not much for shopping. We grabbed some quick lunches at the Brew Pub, got roti at local food hotspot, Singhs, and grabbed some ribs (excellent) at a stand on the edge of the old town. Sorry we missed Kendricks, which loved fabulous and got great reviews. Had some goat and chicken roti in F-town and ate it out by a beach.

At sunset in C-town, there's the tarpon feeding at Rum Runners on the boardwalk and the fish are huge, close to 5-feet. We toured the old Danish fort and walked past the Hamilton house.

On Tuesday night, Hotel on the Cay (the island in the harbor) has a buffet and show. It's about $25 for ribs, chicken and fish. Great rum drinks. The show was fun, starting with a mocko jumbie (stilt walker), a steel drum band (much fun) and a glass/fire walker. It finished with a bit of limbo. It was more touristy than the stuff we usually do (hike/swim) but was big fun and the people were extremely nice.

We swam at Cane Bay one day and had a huge chunk of beach to ourselves.

Highlight was the trip to Buck Island. Wonderful underwater trail through coral "grotto." We were the only boat there and had just 9 snorkelers. It was as good or better than the snorkeling we've done at the GBR and Kona. Water was warm and gorgeous. Also made a stop at Turtle Beach on Buck Island, which is the most beautiful combination of beach setting, sand, water clarity and warmth that I've ever seen. Can't recommend Big Beard's highly enough. On the way in they announced that you can go again for half price. If we had time, we would have. Nice folks, great trip.

We visited the Cruzan rum distillery -- six fifths for $20? What a deal! On the last day we made a stop at the Whitt Plantation, which was very nice and informative.

Lovely place, lovely people -- not a great place for partiers but for beaches, snorkeling and quiet fun amid some cool Danish colonial architecture, it was darn near perfect.

Thanks for posting!!! We loved stx as well!!!

Sounds like you had a really fine last minute trip. And I can't believe the fantastic deals you got for your airfare!

Thanks for sharing. We have friends on St. Croix and I am looking forward to visiting them in the near future. Can't wait to go to Buck Island as I am a complete snorkeling nut.

We leave Sunday for STX - we, too, love it there! Glad you enjoyed it. Wish I could have found that deal!! We're paying almost that amount per person.

How's the food at the Tuesday night buffet and show? We'll be there in a few weeks, and deciding between that one, Divi or Carambola for our Jumbies and steel drum fix.
Thanks!

The food's a decent buffet -- not fine dining but fresh and tasty. I had the ribs and fish but not the chicken. My guess is the other two resort choices might be somewhat fancier. Carambola definitely draws a higher-end crowd.

But we enjoyed the friendly staff, tasty drinks and thought the food was fine for an AYCE show. We heard it was "regional fare" but there wasn't that much of it, a small disappointment.

How were you notified by e-mail about the mistake? We also live in Harrisburg and would love to get great deals too.

We were tipped off by a fare-watcher alert. Don't have the e-mail. Can't recall which site it was. From what I can tell, it's not specific airports so the odds of a Harrisburg deal happening again aren't high. Airline deals appear very sporadic -- only a few per year nationwide that i've seen. this one just happened to work for us. I do use the FareCompare plugin with firefox that works very well.

To LornaD. . . we just attended the Carambola's Friday Night Pirate's Buffet - they have a great selection of food and the mocko jumbies were entertaining. We made a 7:30 reservation so that we'd just be finished eating in time for the show at 8:30. Be sure to make a reservation as a lot of locals attend this event.