St. Thomas - rent a car or not?
 

Hi, we're going to St. Thomas for about 5 days and are debating whether to rent a car. It seems like most people advise to. We're only wondering if the main roads are easy enough for tourists to use (we're seasoned drivers, have driven on left in England). Also, if we stay at the Wyndham Sugar Bay, is that close enough to walk to the Red Hook ferry, for example? Or would that be a taxi ride by itself if we didn't have a rental car? Is there parking available at the ferry? Any advice around this subject is appreciated.

I think it's worthwhile. We rented a car for a day when we were in St. Thomas. We found the driving good. It enabled us to go up to Paradise Point and see Red Hook, we definitely got our money's worth. I really liked our day with the car.

i loved having a car on st. thomas - but i like this everywhere. you can not walk from sugar bay to red hook - or to anywhere else for that matter.
yes you can park at red hook, but it's a bit of a nightmare. many people park on the street and it gets really crowded. you can however rent from an agency that will let you take your car to st. john. you will need a vehicle on st. j to get to any beaches.
yes the main roads on st. thomas are fine for driving. hilly but not as narrow as some in england.

thank you for your replies. I think we will go ahead and rent a car. We leave tomorrow, so I'll post on how this worked out. It just seems like taxis can really add up there!

To update, we did rent a car and requested an economy car. Thrifty said they were out of those and upgraded us to a Jeep, which we turned out to be really happy with on the steep roads and hilly turns. There are some severe potholes just north of Red Hook also! We definitely recommend renting a car if you plan on doing more than just staying at your hotel - we used it a lot and even ferried it to St. John (thanks, Virginia!). Having it there meant we could see much more, and on our schedule. The driving is not bad because the speeds are low and the cars are left-hand drive (steering wheel on left, American-style). Cannot imagine doing all the things we did with just taxis, it would have been impossible, and incredibly expensive.

hi einah235, welcome home although i suspect you'd just as soon still be on st. thomas. glad the car worked out for you.