Most recently my family and I went on the Celebrity Edge. We were one of the first cruises to leave a US port in over 15 months. If you want to hear all about that unique experience, be sure to check out my previous blog post.
But while we were sailing on the Celebrity Edge, one of our ports of call was the beautiful St. Thomas. A US Virgin Island, this is a popular destination for cruises. While my family has been to St. Thomas on cruises many times, we actually never stay on the island, we always venture out to the near by St. John since this this is one of our favorite places in the world.
St. John is only accessible via boat, so if you want to visit the island you must fly or cruise into St. Thomas and take a ferry ride over to the island.
On our most recent trip, we did that just that. But because of COVID we had a bit more adventurous trip to St. John’s than we normally do.
On St. Thomas there are multiple ferry locations you can use to get to the neighboring islands. There is one at the end of the island called Red Hook and another one near the cruise terminal. Because of COVID and the lack of cruise ships into St. Thomas, that ferry stop was closed, and we had to take an open air taxi to Red Hook.
Unfortunately, taxis in the islands are not like taxis in the US. You are often piled in with multiple other parties who are stopping at other locations. What is normally a 30-minute drive from the Cruise Terminal to Red Hook took us closer to an hour after making stops along the way.
Once we arrived at Red Hook, we purchased our ferry ticket and waited about 30 minutes for the ferry to arrive. The ferry operates once an hour to take passengers to St. John and the high-speed ferry ride is approximately 15 minutes.
Once arriving in St. John, the ferry takes you to the bustling downtown where there are plenty of local shops, waterfront restaurants, and taxis ready to take you to anywhere on the island.
Once again we got in an open air taxi to take us to our favorite beach, Cinnamon Bay. We were once again piled into an open air taxi with other visitors. While most people hit up the famous bays like Trunk Bay or Honeymoon Beach when visiting St. John, we opt for a more secluded less know bay where only locals or regular visitors go.
Cinnamon Bay has been somewhere we have gone since I was a kid but haven’t been back to in over 10 years. The drive took about 30 minutes after dropping other visitors off. But once we arrived and saw the crystal-clear ocean the long journey was well worth it. Cinnamon Bay is the perfect place to relax on the beach and in the water and what makes this bay so special is the reef right off shore. You can swim a couple feet from the sand and see an incredibly active reef.
After about an hour or so enjoying the beach, we had to unfortunately get ready to go back to catch the 4:00pm ferry so we made it back in time for a 6:30pm all aboard time.
This is where the trip got stressful….
Since Cinnamon Bay is not as popular, there are no taxis waiting to pick beach goers up. We waited about 20 minutes on the side of the road until we could flag down a taxi to take us back to the ferry dock. Knowing we were a full island away and needed to catch a ferry this was incredibly stressful knowing if any taxi would come and stop by or be able to hold a family of 4.
Thankfully an empty taxi drove by and we were able to get to the ferry dock. We fortunately already purchased our tickets, but upon arrival at the ferry dock we noticed the long line of locals and visitors waiting to make the 4:00pm ferry. We were so nervous we were not going to make the boat.
After about a 20 minute wait in line we slowly inched out way to the front, we made it on the ferry as one of the last passengers! While on the ferry we met another group, who was from our cruise (it was very easy to tell who cruise passengers were, with our branded Celebrity Masks). We arranged with them to get a taxi back to the cruise port together so we would fill up a taxi and not have to make extra stops.
This plan worked out perfectly!! We made it in plenty of time back to the cruise terminal and even had time to enjoy the shops for a little while longer until our all-aboard time.
While the day was stressful with travel, the hour we spent on my favorite island, at my favorite beach in the world was truly worth it.
I highly recommend anyone visiting St. Thomas to make the extra effort to visit St. John. I am already looking at planning a trip to the USVI so I have more time in my happy place!
