STX crash course

Where are you staying?

My favorite place to eat is under a shady tree with a packed lunch. You should seriously try eating a packed meal at least once in the forest or on a deserted beach. It will probably turn out to be your most memorable meal.

A fun evening for me consists of sipping a glass of Cruzian Rum, reading a good book, thinking about what I accomplished during the day, where I went wrong, and how I'll do better tomorrow. If your hotel room has a balcony or if there's a pool, you can talk about these things with your husband and other visitors.

As far as other things go, trust your intuition. If you like what you see on the island over your first few days here, you will probably be happy living here. If you see lots of things you don't like, you probably don't want to move here. Drive and walk around a lot and try to get off the beaten tourist path, because if you move here, you won't be hanging around the touristy places much.

There are plenty of things that are wrong here, but a lot is right. You figure out ways to work around the bad stuff, like anywhere else.

Congrajulations, and I hope you have a good time!

I have not yet recieved information as to which hotel we will be staying at all I know is that we leave for STX on Monday morning and we return on Sunday afternoon. I plan on driving around the island as much as possible to get a fair idea of what it is like. I think that the hotel we stay at should be close to Hovensa.
-Becky

I don't think there's any hotels close to HOVENSA. Although, if he's there for a refinery job, they may be putting you up in camp housing.

There's some really excellent restaurants in C'sted, but none of them would be accurately described as "cheap": Kendricks and Bacchus come to mind. Case Place in Gallows Bay is cheapER. The Brew Pub on the waterfront has reliable pub fare. Good on-the-beach restaurants in F'sted include Sandcastles and Sunset Grill.

H20 is good, and Carambola has a great Friday night all-you-can-eat buffet.

For cheap, you can always hit Cheeseburgers on the East End. AND, as a bonus, you get to watch on-duty police officers get drunk! (Seriously, I have pictures from last night.)

The island pretty much shuts down at night. For "unique," I guess, you could try the casino.

Have fun!

VB

Becky
There are so many great restaurants on St Croix you will have a hard time choosing. Reread some old messages here and get some ideas. Night life usually consists of going out and listening to some live music. The Avis (newspaper) will give you an up to date schedule. We always enjoy Cheesburgers on the east end.

A move from Indiana to St Croix would be a "major" change...

Goes to show you I don't too much about STX. My huband is looking into accepting a job from a company contracted by Hovensa. I'm pretty sure we'll be in a hotel and not the housing but since HR is still planning our trip I don't know much. I'm pretty nervous about moving that far but I lived on the South South Side of Chicago so I'm not scared of the type of crime. As long as it's not as bad as Gary, IN I'll be fine. In Gary there are sections where if your stopped by a red light your better off running it so you won't be shot or robbed. There isn't anything like that right??? I'm assuming that. Anyways, thanks for the input. I'm thinking that making my own lunch and then just going out for dinner may be the best option for me. So many restaurants so little time....

Becky,
If you go into Christiansted, you could try RumRunners. They have a wide variety of choices and prices. Everything from Sandwiches and Hamburgers (excellent and very reasonable), to Lobster and complete Fondue dinners (on the upper side). The atmosphere is great, and they have a great happy hour. It's right on the boardwalk at the Hotel Caravelle. We've always had really great food there.

Well we stopped at traffic lights all the time and have never been shut at 😉
We did make our own lunch and then went out for dinner. Our hotel included breakfast. I did bring my own coffee and number 2 filter. I just had to make sure one cup of coffee is good. Small simple restaurants the local use are often only open for lunch. We likes Tutto Bene a lot. The RumRunners was good as well and priced well. Over all you really can get a good meal on STX. It just will run you in the $20 range. Desserts are a little harder to come by. Most of the restaurants use ready pre made desserts. However, if you ask nice they will let you know that and you will find one or the other place you indeed use a local bakery. We found 2 restaurants which did. Tutto Bene was one of them.

Iris

Oh my goodness I have completely forgotten about coffee!! I'm a serious coffee fanatic and I would like to know if there are even coffee shops down there, are there??

Becky, I was in STX in May and there was a new coffee shop that just opened in the Caravelle Arcade. Can't remember the catchy name but their variety of coffees were fairly good.

Thankyou! Thankyou! Thankyou!

Becky,

We had the biggest, hottest cup of coffee I've ever had in a restaurant at a place called The Golden Rail, an outdoor cafe located at Gallow's Bay-- across from Schooner Bay Condo's down by the fast ferry landing. Then on wandering around the little streets in Gallow's Bay we stumbled on a little internet/coffee house that was airconditioned and nice. Also RumRunner's had a great breakfast with pretty good coffee. (if you sit by the water it's fun to feed the crabs toast and pancake pieces! scared me at first when they came begging, until I realized they weren't interested in my toes-- only my toast!) On Strand Street in Christiansted there's a shop called The Royal Poinciana that has specialty blends that they'll grind for you right there.
Or do like we did, go to the grocery store, get some Maxwell House and make your own coffee with filtered cistern water! Best coffee on the island--- or maybe it was the view of Buck Island from our balcony that made it seem that way... We're already missing our vacation!

Hello,

Favorite places to eat: I had good lunch experiences (service, food, view) at Off the Wall, Fort Christian Brew Pub and the Mermaid at Buccaneer Resort. Dinner: Bachaus, Tutu Bene, Rumrunners.

What is fun to do at night? You could check out the crab races... if there is a pig roast going on at the Eco-Camp that would definately be a unique evening outing. The Caribbean BBQ at Protestant Cay... If there is a Jump Up while you are there, that might be worth attending.

Things to look at as a prespective resident: go into the grocery stores and look at prices and products and service; check out the roads and transportation, neighborhoods, if you have kids the schools, beaches and other recreational activities, gyms, churches, work for you??, banks, atm machine availability, clothing shopping, movie theatre, talk to some residents...

Have a good time and I look forward to hearing about your experiences and thoughts.

--Islander