{"id":4209,"date":"2025-08-07T22:00:49","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T02:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/romeyn.me\/?p=4209"},"modified":"2025-08-13T16:09:42","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T20:09:42","slug":"us-virgin-islands-vacation-2025-day-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/romeyn.me\/?p=4209","title":{"rendered":"US Virgin Islands 2025 Vacation – Day 1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Amanda and I are on the island of St. John, one of the U.S. Virgin Islands, for Garrett Frady\u2019s marriage to Kayla Palmer.\u00a0 <\/span>(Garrett is my sister\u2019s step-son.). We left home yesterday to spend the night in Burlington, VT as we had a very early flight out of Burlington this morning.<\/p>\n

We started our trip with dinner at Al\u2019s French Frys<\/a>, a classic diner in Burlington near our hotel and the airport.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s a favorite spot of ours.\u00a0 <\/span>When we got to the hotel, the airport conditioning in the room wasn\u2019t working.\u00a0 <\/span>Two techs spent about half an hour on it before giving up.\u00a0 <\/span>We were transferred to a different room.<\/p>\n

Our flights were both on time and uneventful.\u00a0 <\/span>We traveled from Burlington to Atlanta where we had a short layover before traveling from Atlanta to the island of St. Thomas.\u00a0 <\/span>St. John has no airport, so anyone going there must get there by boat.\u00a0 <\/span>When we got the the airport we de-planed by stairs.\u00a0 <\/span>They moved a stairway to the rear of the plane (where we were sitting) and we actually got off before most of the other passengers!\u00a0 <\/span>We had a bit of a walk to the inside of the airport terminal building–we had to walk nearly around the entire building before we got to the entrance.\u00a0 <\/span>When we walked in the first thing we experienced was a welcome counter with free shots of local rum.\u00a0 <\/span>I knew this was going to be a special trip!<\/p>\n

Never having been here before, we used a travel agent to book the trip.\u00a0 <\/span>The travel agent was obviously not one that deals with VRBO and\/or AirBnB and so we ended up at The Westin on St. John–a full service resort.\u00a0 <\/span>The Westin has its own counter at the St. Thomas airport and we were shuttled from there to the St. Thomas Port Authority where we boarded a private ferry owned by the resort that took us to their private dock on St. John.\u00a0 <\/span>As we got off the boat we were again greeted by staff who gave us rum drinks.\u00a0 <\/span>(We had each had rum punch at the bar at the Port Authority.)\u00a0 <\/span>A golf cart took us on a tour of the resort on our way to our room.\u00a0 <\/span>No, not a room…a small suite.\u00a0 <\/span>We have a bed, a full kitchen including a dishwasher and breakfast island and full-size fridge, a living area with a couch and a chair, a dining room table that seats 4, and a washer and dryer so we can do laundry if we want.\u00a0 <\/span>We also have a balcony with a nice view of the hill across the bay, though we can\u2019t see the bay itself.\u00a0 <\/span>We are up on a hill above the main part of the resort.<\/p>\n

After getting settled and unpacked, we called for a cart to take us back to the main lobby where we looked at the gift shop and the deli\/convenience shop they have here.\u00a0 <\/span>We also met with the concierge who gave us some information and advice.\u00a0 <\/span>After that we took a taxi into town about a mile away where we ate at High Tide, a wharf-side outdoor restaurant in Cruz Bay.\u00a0 <\/span>We picked a table for 2 at the railing right next to the beach where we had a perfect view of the looming sunset, which happened about 20 minutes after we got there.\u00a0 <\/span>It was beautiful and amazing.\u00a0 <\/span>We had coconut curry chicken which was delicious.\u00a0 <\/span>High Tide serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner.\u00a0 <\/span>I know we will be back before we leave!<\/p>\n

We returned to the resort by taxi.\u00a0 <\/span>Amanda caught a cart back up to the room.\u00a0 <\/span>I walked the short distance to the local market to see about some snacks and toiletries.\u00a0 <\/span>I walked back to the room.\u00a0 <\/span>I changed and went to the small pool that is shared between our building and the one next door.\u00a0 <\/span>I had the entire thing to myself.\u00a0 <\/span>It had a little grotto\/waterfall and a small raft.\u00a0 <\/span>I floated there for almost half an hour and watched the moon rise over the palm trees on the hillside and did my best not to think about anything.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When I got back to the room Amanda and I watched the new episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds while she worked on her latest cartoon.\u00a0 <\/span>Now I\u2019m typing this.\u00a0 <\/span>And now I\u2019m going to bed!<\/p>\n

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The suite life.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Some of the local wildlife.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The semi-private pool for our building.<\/p><\/div>\n

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More local wildlife.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The High Tide bar and Restaurant in Cruz Bay<\/p><\/div>\n

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A shot of the bar.<\/p><\/div>\n

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My bride and me.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The view from our dinner table. Worthy of a travel brochure, if I say so myself!<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amanda and I are on the island of St. John, one of the U.S. Virgin Islands, for Garrett Frady\u2019s marriage to Kayla Palmer.\u00a0 (Garrett is my sister\u2019s step-son.). We left home yesterday to spend the night in Burlington, VT as we had a very early flight out of Burlington this morning. We started our trip […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/romeyn.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/romeyn.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/romeyn.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/romeyn.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/romeyn.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4209"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/romeyn.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4299,"href":"https:\/\/romeyn.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4209\/revisions\/4299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/romeyn.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/romeyn.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/romeyn.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}