My husband and I and our grown children spent at week at Coconuts villa on Gifft Hill. We left Logan airport (BOS) at 9:30 or so AM and flew direct on Jetblue to St. Thomas. Everything went smoothly on the flight. Arrived about 2:00 PM local time. Met a really nice taxi driver at the airport named Ivan who welcomed us there. He ended up being our driver and gave us a history of St. Thomas as we drove. The taxi to Red Hook was about $20 per person. In case you don't know that's quite a drive across the mountains of St. Thomas with curvy roads but beautiful views (45 minutes). They make stops along the way for anyone else in the taxi. From Red Hook the ferrys leave every hour for St. John. I believe it was just under $10 per person depending on your suitcases. A beautiful refreshing 20 min. ride to St. John - a good way to start off your vacation. Sea spray on your face and sunshine on your shoulders! We were met at the dock by a representative of our villa who had our 4 wheel drive jeep all ready for us. We followed her up the hill to the villa. A totally amazing beautiful place. We had six in our party and they had two separate buildings - one with two bedrooms and a loft over the great room with two beds. The view was unbelievable looking right at St. Thomas, beautiful landscaping with flowers and fruit trees. I think I will run out of adjectives. I would highly recommend this place to stay. It not only had a fully equipped kitchen but also a state of the art stainless steel kitchen outside under one of the decks, where we grilled a few of our meals. Extras were a full sized pool table, a huge telescope, pool and hot tub, and a full side projector and movie screen. Check out their website.

All the food we ate out at local places was excellent. But our favorite restaurant was Chateau Bordeaux overlooking the BVI's. We also liked the Fish Trap and Iguana Grill in Cruz Bay.

We found Dolphin Market to have the cheapest bottled water. But the Marketplace had fresh meat and an excellent deli, a little more expensive. There is also a pharmacy in that complex for whatever you forgot or need. We in fact needed something for our itchy bugbites which we think were the "no-see-ums". They loved my husband and his legs and back looked like he had chicken pox. They rest of us not so bad.

One thing we were surprised about was the number of people we saw at the beaches we went to. We did not hike to any but just drove to those such as Cinnamon Bay - my kids snorkeled there and marvelled at the beautiful blue and yellow fish. They think they saw a barracuda as well. Trunk Bay and Maho Bay's parking lots were filled with taxi's. I don't know if we were there at a particularly busy time or what. The water was beautiful. I guess we expected more privacy. We have been to all the BVI's and St. Croix and found beaches that were deserted there.

I recommend driving around the island in both directions as far as you can go. Great photo opportunities and visits from the donkeys and goats. Also saw a very large hog beside the road. I was surprised driving to the east end that once you got there, it was just dead end.

Cruz Bay was always bustling. Mongoose Junction is a very nice place to walk thru day or night looking at the local shops or stopping for a tropical drink. My children really enjoyed going down to The Tap Room at night - they said it was the only brewery on the island (?).

St. John is a beautiful island, very lush. We did have one day of downpours and wind but the rest of the days were lovely.

On another note, we were saddened to hear that the oil refinery on St. Croix is closing. While there, we had met several nice people who worked there and that was their only means of support.

Anyone who visits St. John will marvel at God's creation. We even were awoken one morning after the rain by the hugest
rainbow that crossed the sky with its brilliance and was so close we felt we could reach out and touch it. What a beautiful sight.

We left St. John on the 20th and reversed our journey. The only hitch we had was that our Jetblue flight was supposed to stop in San Juan and then onto Boston - but it didn't. When we were about to leave, the pilot said we were skipping San Juan and going directly to Boston. That messed up our driver who was picking us up at the airport as he was waiting for our flight from San Juan which they told him was cancelled. But all ended well other than we had to come back to a little snowstorm and 20 degrees - a shock to your system.

So friends, check out Coconuts Villa, be sure to type in Gifft Hill after it (Google it). We give it five stars. We give the little bitey bugs no stars. Life is short, don't put off a trip of a lifetime - because of any excuses.