City vs. Rural

You NEED to rent a car. That way you can see all of the island, and judge for yourself the traffic. I think overall STX has the most polite drivers I have ever seen>

Where in heaven's name are you driving at, Terry? - I need to go there! Between the road rage on the highway and Sunny Isle, I feel like I'm about to play bumper cars with people who don't understand the road has two sides, and that they should pick one...only one...not right down the middle...

Ginablaze, wherever you go, be particularly careful at night on the switchbacks...well, during the daytime too, because you can't see any headlights...and keep your window cracked to listen for car horns, as a lot of people will toot their horn as they go into a blind curve.

Here in Arizona, it is very rare for someone to let you "in" in traffic. Plus the horn here is usually accompanied with a hand sign and a "F*#* YOu". There it seems that everyone toots to let you in, say hello, whatever. When I started driving there it was like what did I do to that guy? Until I realized they were being friendly.

Yes the roads are narrow with a lot of growth near the road, and new drivers probably tend to not stay over far enough, but all in all, it seems much friendler than here in the states. We have had 3 unexplained traffic shootings in the last few weeks here in the South East valley. Not to mention the ones that started with road rage. We have two street racing related deaths in the past week as well.
The freeways at rush hour is 15 mph or stopped. Yes I know at rush hour Sunny Isle is like that as well.

You're right, of course - I was being a little sarcastic! One bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch...but every now and then you get the jerk on the motorcyle who just goes around everyone stopped to turn, or you let one person in line and suddenly there are 15 who never even nod to acknowledge you did something nice...amazingly, the taxi drivers seem to be the most courteous in a lot of ways, which surely is a nice change from the states!

I love the horn tooting - there's more on STT than STX, but it's just a nice way of acknowledging someone - plus, you're sure of their intent if they honk AND wave you out! Honking before going into a curve is surely a blessing - our driveway is in a blind curve and we listen, honk, and then FLOOR IT to make sure we're in!

Hello,

We don't have any cities ;). We have a main town on St. Thomas, similarly on St. John there is a main town and on St. Croix there are two. On St. Thomas, everything outside of town is called the country.

There are hotels/inns in the towns and in other areas of the islands so tourists aren’t confined to one area although on St. Thomas many of the resorts are on the east end of the island. Also the main tourist shopping areas on each island are in town.

The utilities on each island for the most part are offered by the same companies so not much to compare there.

We don't have LA traffic because we don't have LA freeways or population, however we do get traffic that can cause what would take 5 minutes to drive with no traffic to take 45 minutes. Traffic jams happen in particular areas; ie. downtown at lunchtime, around the cruise ship dock around 4-5pm when taxis are trying to get visitors back to the ship, folks are getting off of work etc.

As for finding an apartment and convenience... it depends on where you will be working. If you are working on the east end of the island you'd likely want to live out that way too... if you were working downtown then you could stay downtown or just above town etc.

You might order the Settlers Handbook and a couple other books to learn about the islands. You can find some at http://www.vitraders.com under Relocation Guides.

--Islander