St. Thomas Review
We arrived in St. Thomas on a Wednesday, at the height of rush hour. Wednesday is traditionally the busiest day in port. There were 8 ships in port with a total of 16,000 additional people on an island of just 51,000 people. To say the least the traffic was heavy. Our taxi driver asked if we minded a detour to avoid the heavy traffic by the port. It was quite an adventure we twisted and turned up roads that were no bigger than alleys. At times he drove on the sidewalk to get around the mess of cars. Finally we arrived at our destination Marriott’s Frenchman’s Reef.
The Hotel - Frenchman’s Reef and Morning Star are 2 beautiful hotels that function as 1. Frenchman’s is situated on top of a cliff overlooking Charlotte Amalie Harbor. Morning Star is located on the beach and offers garden view and ocean view rooms in several two story buildings. We used Marriott award points and chose a resort view room at Frenchman’s. The room was quite spacious with lots of room to store our suit cases and snorkeling gear. In each room there is a small refrigerator and a separate ice maker (very convenient). The room was brightly painted with tropical colors.
Hotel Features and events - The hotel has 3 pools. Two pools are connecting and are located at Frenchman’s Reef. They offer pool basketball, volleyball, a whirlpool and complimentary floats. One of the connecting pools has a swim up bar. The staff at the pool offers cocktails and lunch delivered to your lounge chair. The 3rd pool is located down at Morning Star and is more shaded and subdued and also offers a whirlpool. Also down by Morning Star are 2 tennis courts, a game room and a sand volleyball court. Other activities include ping pong and the daily iguana feeding, a must see for kids of all ages. Every Wednesday the hotel manager hosts a Bon Voyage party to say good bye to all the ships. They offer Cruzan Rum punch drinks and discuss each ship as it passes by. On Monday evening the hotel manager also hosts a cocktail party featuring Pina Coladas with Cruzan Rum. Down at the beach there are lounge chairs, umbrellas and complimentary floats for hotel guests. Cruise passengers are charged $15 for 2 chairs and an umbrella. There is also a restaurant, bathrooms and bar available to all. The beach is very nice although it drops off steeply at the waters edge. Facing the ocean to your right are rocks were you can snorkel if the water is calm. We saw lots of fish including, trunk fish, parrot fish and angel fish. Even if you do not snorkel over by the rocks the fish can be seen swimming around you as you wade in the ocean.
Restaurants – There are 5 restaurants and 2 food markets at the resort.
- Captain's Cafe – Our least favorite restaurant because of the service. It was incredibly slow. Although we were offered complimentary wine while we waited for our dinner we were disappointed. Apparently there was a new chef and he was having trouble keeping up.
- Coco Joe's off Da Beach Bar – We dined here the first night at the Caribbean Buffet $40 per person. Nice variety of foods for the buffet all very good quality. We also ate here for lunch. Although expensive it was very convenient. They have hanging hammock chairs that were great to relax in while you are waiting for a table. Upstairs is the game room with a pool table, air hockey and a few video games. The kids were very happy to play while they waited for their food.
- Presto Marketplace (Deli) - Open 24 hours and located at Frenchman’s Reef. They offered a wide variety of items, including cereal, milk, juices, cheese, snacks, salads, pizzas, sandwiches and even alcohol. Although extremely convenient it was expensive.
- Sunset Grill & Bar (American) – Nice view and simple menu of salads, burgers and Caribbean entrees. The menu can be ordered by the pool from your lounge chair as well.
- Tavern on the Beach (Eclectic) - Our favorite restaurant at the resort. One of our best meals on the Island. Very interesting menu offering seafood, beef, pork and poultry. For appetizers we had a mango salad and a calamari salad both very good. Entrees were also interesting. David had an herb crusted salmon and I had a filet with a blue cheese sauce. Zack enjoyed a 5 spiced chicken dish and Matt had his standard chicken nuggets. Desert was a wonderful Key Lime Pie with a walnut crust. Very expensive ($25-40/entrée) but worth the cost.
- Windows on the Harbor - Beautiful restaurant located at Frenchman’s Reef. It over looks the harbor and the seating is tiered so all the table have a good view. It is open for breakfast and dinner. They offer a wonderful breakfast buffet for $11 or $16 per person. The $16 buffet includes all of the items and the $11 is just the cold items. For dinner they offer an ala carte menu or on Friday night a Seafood buffet for $40 per person or on Sunday a brunch for $40 per person. The seafood buffet was good and did offer several entrees for those who do not eat seafood. Sunday brunch was also good but it included many of the items from the Seafood buffet.
- Star Market (Deli) – A small version of the Presto market located at Morning Star
Hotel Staff - We had read quite a few reviews of the hotel and several people felt the staff was not very friendly. We found this not to be the case. Nearly all of the people we met (with the exception of 1 bar tender) were wonderful. One of the best features was the Adventure Center located in the Frenchman’s lobby. They offered tour bookings as well as restaurant reservations and general advice. When the hotel became very busy around Christmas the staff was still kind and courteous. They cheerfully made dinner reservations for numerous guests. They even called the National Park at St. John for us to determine snorkeling conditions. They basically acted as the hotel concierge and did a wonderful job.
Off Resort Activities
St. John - We visited St. John twice. Each time we took the car ferry from Redhook. The first time we took Republic Barge and the 2nd time we took Boyson. Boyson was much better; the ferry was cleaner and the staff more professional. Both cost $27 round trip. We had rented a car from Avis and were told we could take the car to St. John but if something should happen to the car it was our responsibility to get it back to St. Thomas. The first time we went to St. John we neglected to call the National Park service and check on the snorkeling conditions and were disappointed to find that a northern swell was making it nearly impossible to snorkel at Trunk Bay. We instead drove to the Westin resort and spent the day there. The kids loved the water trampolines and the lunch was wonderful at their beach restaurant Snorkels. We ended up taking a snorkeling excursion by boat from Cruz Bay Water sports located at the resort. The snorkeling was wonderful. They took us on another side of the island that wasn’t as affected by the northern swells. We saw more fish than we could count and even saw a sting ray. On our second try to St. John we went on Christmas day and there were two Holland America ships in Cruz Bay. Although the beach at Trunk Bay was crowded the snorkeling trail was not. It was wonderful. Lots of fish and coral to see and the facilities at the park were also good. We at lunch at the snack bar and they had showers and changing facilities as well. After lunch we headed to Cinnamon Bay for more snorkeling. Although the coral was not as nice as Trunk Bay there were many fish and the beach was not as crowded. Cinnamon Bay offers camping facilities and again had showers and a restaurant. We headed back to town and shopped at the few stores that were open. Cruz Bay has nice quaint shops and restaurants.
|