"Wandering" around St. Thomas

[MandAmommy]

Bear with me as my search function is acting like a fool today but I know someone can help. We stop in St. Thomas in a few weeks and have a beach excursion scheduled, but we started chatting today about canceling that and just looking around on our own. We have young children, so mainly we wanted to head to an area with some neat shops and restaurants...I always hear about shopping there, but mainly for jewelry and we won't be in the market for that....Is there an area easily accessible near the port where we could kill a few hours?

 

[bumbershoot]

ETA this first paragraph. There is a shopping area just after you get off the ship near Havensight. It's all Diamonds International, etc, type of places. There's nothing really interesting, IMO.

The more "town" part of town, however, is only easily accessible if you take the taxi in. And the taxis are big open-air van/jitney type things...they are nothing like what you expect a taxi to be like.

I thought it was a mile and made my family walk. It was more like 2 miles. Along a busy road. And if I'm remembering correctly, they drive on the left side of the road, which makes it slightly more frightening in terms of "which way do I look?" for those used to driving on the right.

But there was a nice chocolate factory (very tasty chocolates, and since we were there early enough they had it delivered to our stateroom!), a Mexican restaurant called something like Greengos, and that's all I noticed that wasn't just tourist stuff. My son and I were offered $100 for our Nike Free 4 shoes.

Oh wait, there was ONE amazing place right near the port (just across the street) called The Barefoot Buddha. It's a restaurant and giftshop and their food was DELICIOUS.

But if I had it to do over again, we would have had food at The Barefoot Buddha, then had a taxi take us over to Magen's Bay for the day. Especially since we (Freedom of the Seas) was the ONLY ship in port that day, it would have been amazing.


Though it's hard to regret our new, second set, of bamboo sheets from Cariloha. (although you can buy those without being on a cruise LOL)

 

[Sytrace]

When we were in St. Thomas in January, there was a shopping area right as you exited the port. They had tee shirt shops, liquor stores, a couple of jewelry shops and they were all close together.
I think a little way further was an entrance to the chair lifts that we saw running.

In Tortola, there was a shopping area downtown that we walked to, but the traffic patterns were crazy. The pier area was being refurbished and most of the shops there were closed. We are going back in September and will get excursions for both of those ports next time.
It was a last minute cruise that had most of the times we wanted to go on an excursion booked up.

 

[nordkin]

It depends on which harbor you come in to. There is a new harbor much further away from town. The shops in town are the typical tourist trap jewelry stores and t-shirt shops. The open air market is the same way. There is a bus for $1 a person, but you have to say you are going to Wendy's or they charge a much larger fare for the cruise terminal. Wendy's is less than a block away. A local told us about the bus the last time we were there, but the bus looks exactly like the open air taxi, you have to ask.

 

[Sytrace]

Ahhh... that explains that. We were in port with two Princess ships on either side of us and a Holland America that looked like it would be tendering people in. Definitely tourist traps.

 

[MandAmommy]

These are all excellent replies, y'all! Thank you! I think we will stick with our beach excursion I appreciate each of you!

 

[MUN]

These are all excellent replies, y'all! Thank you! I think we will stick with our beach excursion I appreciate each of you!

For a great beach, I recommend Magens Bay. The beach is huge, and the water is clear and clean.

 

[steves100]

I recommend Linqvist beach, MUCH less crowded than Magens Bay