Sorry for the delay, heres my trip report from St. John.
Sunday – flight was delayed out of JFK so we only arrived on St. Thomas around 830. We payed the $120 or so to have the Westin pick us up straight from the airport and take us over to St. John on their own boat. Totally worth it. We docked at the Westin’s marina and were met on with music playing and free drinks! They gave us our room keys right at the dock and then brought our luggage to our room a few minutes later.
Monday – I picked up the car from Conrad car rentals. We caught the Westin’s afternoon “round the island” tour. The guy took us around on one of those pick up truck/open taxi’s. It was really nice. He stopped at a bunch of overlooks and at an old sugar processing plant. Then we went on the Westin’s sunset cruise. It left at 5 and sunset was at 5:55. It was a cloudy so we just enjoyed the nice boat. I tasted my first pain killer. It was amazing.
Tuesday – We slept in and then packed up our room to move to another room with that had a patio. Then we headed out to Trunk bay. Spent a couple of hours there. We rented snorkeling gear and went snorkeling in the reef. It was ok. Water was very rough and visibility was low so we couldn’t really see anything. Then we headed into town. First we went to Mongoose Junction and walked around the shops there. I bought locally brewed bottles of beer. They were very good. Then we headed to the main town, Wharfside village. Sat at a bar to drink (pain killer for me and diet coke for Miri). Walked around a bit more. Bought a huge (later we found out delicious) Mango for $5 from a lady selling fruit at a corner stand. Then we went to this little shop (
http://www.ourmarketsmoothies.com/) where a guy took whole coconuts, chopped the top off and put in a straw. I mixed some rum into mine. It was amazing. He taught us two “life lessons”. One about always be nice to every one and another about having mercy. He was very entertaining and charged $4 for the coconut + $5 for the rum. Then we came home, watched some friends and went to sleep.
Wed – We met the dive instructor at 9am at the pool. Miri got her first intro to diving. Then we spent the rest of the morning sun baking and playing in the pool. At 1:15 we headed to the dock and got onto the dive boat. It was just the two of us together with the dive master and captain. Miri did her first real dive. It was amazing. I was sooo happy. Then we came back and went back to the pool to relax. At around 4:30 we went back to the room to change and headed out to Dennis beach. It’s a tiny deserted beach that is down a path that breaks off from peace hill. It was like a 10 minute hike down and we stayed there for like 30 minutes until just before sunset so we would still have light to go up. Miri got some nice shots of the almost sunset though. Then we drove further up a bit, past cinnamon bay. We headed back, stopped at the supermarket, rented a video then came back.
Thursday – We booked in 10am spa sessions. It was absolutely heaven. Then we headed out on our round the island excursion. We circled the whole island and explored every publicly accessible road. Good thing we had a 4x4 jeep.
Friday – Shabbos started early so we didn’t have much time. The supermarkets had tons of kosher food. The one closer to the Westin even had “fresh” packaged Challah. We got ready for Shabbos and then at like 12 we rented a 10’ dinghy from the Westin and took it around to Trunk Bay. I must say, that was the highlight of my trip. It was amazing! I pulled up to the far end of Trunk bay to let Miri and our stuff off the dinghy. Then I had to take the dingy about 100’ out, tie it up to the mooring and then swim back. It felt like I was in heaven.
Shabbos – Shabbos was just nice and pleasant. We had a ground level room with a little table and two chairs right outside and had the seudos there. We spent most of the day around our room so that we wouldn’t have to lock the door. (doors are opened with a key card, I tried getting a room with a regular key but they don’t have any) When we did, inevitably get locked out, I started explaining to one of the custodians why we needed them to open our door for us and they were like “oh, your jewish” and opened it right away. We went to the kitchen in the Westin’s restaurant and got hot water for our coffees Shabbos morning.
If you've got any questions feel free to PM me