St. John Day 1: We Survived the Ferry Boat

Some time around May 2021, at one of our pool Sundays, my friend Melissa and I decided we needed a beach vacation. Because of the pandemic, I hadn't been on a "real" vacation in two years and it had been even longer for her. We didn't want to deal with COVID testing to re-enter the US so we chose another of the US Virgin Islands, St. John. With only a couple of months to plan and what seemed like all US travelers making the same plan, the pickings for lodging were slim and reserving a Jeep was even slimmer. I finally found a nice little condo in Cruz Bay and a very expensive Jeep on St. Thomas.

As with our trip to St. Croix, we had a somewhat early morning flight so Melissa came over and spent the night before at my house. We had enough time at the airport to grab some coffee for Melissa and some McDonald's for me before our 9a flight. Five hours later, we arrived on St. Thomas. The Jeep wasn't ready when we arrived but after a semi-short wait we loaded everything into our dark green Jeep and made the 30 minute drive to the St. John car ferry.

This was the most nerve-racking part of the trip for me...backing the Jeep into a tight space on a bobbing car ferry. Ugh. We had lots of direction.

We made it as the last car on the boat and they raised the ramp.

We enjoyed the fairly smooth 20 minute ride over to Sl. John.

We arrived on St. John around 5p and it was a short drive to our condo where we met the leasing agent who gave us a tour. It was only a one-bedroom but it was convenient, clean, and new. Ours was on the second floor.

This trip, no grocery store run was needed. I used a service on St. John where you place an order for your groceries ahead of time and they stock your kitchen for you. It was a smart move. I had made dinner reservations for most nights on the island since it was more crowded than usual with tourists and COVID had created a labor shortage. Tonight was a reservation night and it was for 7:30p at Banana Deck. We had some time to kill before then and we were craving our first island drink. We made the relatively short walk into town to Beach Bar.

The walk to town started off walking down a very long, very steep hill then up a shorter, less steep hill to arrive at the cemetery outside of town. Across the street, a peacock was hanging out.

We arrived at Beach Bar and sat at the bar for our first island drinks. Melissa ordered a pina colada and I ordered what would become our nightly staple, a BCBBBC which was basically a pina colada with banana cream and bananas made with Blue Chair Bay rum. This was one of those places with good music, a sense of humor, and a beautiful sunset.

Banana Deck was just across the street so we stumbled over after our drinks for dinner. We hadn't eaten since the early morning McDonald's so we were starving and tired. And Banana Deck was slooooooooow. We started out with conch fritters which they forgot about and then when we reminded them, they brought them out overcooked.

For dinner, we both had the blackened shrimp and mahi mahi with broccoli and rice. It was fine but nothing special. Banana Deck would not get a repeat visit.

After dinner, we both just wanted to go back to the condo and relax. Unfortunately, that required walking up that very long, very steep hill that we came down into town. We thought...how bad could it be? The answer is "always take a taxi back to the condo" bad.