St. John recommendations?

[woowoo]

We are booked for St. John in January.  We've rented a cottage on the Coral Bay side of the island (for just the two of us, cannot wait) but we'll have a jeep so we can go anywhere.

Any recommendations for beaches we must check out?  Activities?  Restaurants (nothing fancy, we do a lot of fancy dinners for our jobs so we're looking for awesome, hole-in-the-wall great food).  We'll be there for 9 days so we'll have lots of time.

Thanks!

[orangello]

Oh, you are going to LOVE it - we've been all over the Caribbean, and it's one of my top 2 spots.

Food - Miss Lucy's restaurant in Coral Bay was hands down my favorite meal - chill, great spot on the beach, just the best atmosphere. The grouper reuben, conch fritters, and homemade hot sauce are the stuff dreams are made of, lol! Also, this is random - Colombo's is a little trailer on the main island road that serves smoothies and drinks. Definitely stop in - it became an afternoon tradition as we were done snorkeling, on our way home. If you get into the main town, there's a great deli in Mongoose Junction - Deli Grotto.

Hiking - we hiked the Reef Bay Trail, and if you're in to hiking, this is a good one. Bring more water than you think you need, and be prepared for the last half mile to be steep. The ruins at the bottom and beach down there are a nice spot for pictures and to lounge a while, it's pretty inaccessible, so there's NO ONE there. Not a great swim location I don't think, the water was pretty rough. There seemed to be a few other interesting trails out on the Coral Bay side of the island, but we ran out of time to check them out. We did hike the Lind Point Trail to Honeymoon and Solomon beaches. It was nice, and there's a great viewpoint to see the main town from, but overall not the greatest hike or beaches.

Snorkeling - you can pretty much hop in anywhere and see good stuff. We snorkeled most of the time we were there - Leinster Bay and Waterlemon cay were the highlights, especially the bay - we swam with Tarpon, I saw a reef shark, and we had a HUGE eagle Ray swim under us for a while. Maho Bay is the place to go for turtles and rays - just tons of them over there. If you can swing it, take a boat out to some of the cays in the surrounding waters, there was amazing snorkeling out there.

Ugh, writing this has made me so jealous, lol. Have fun!

[soozy87]

I second Deli Grotto. We were there for a week and went there 3 times. My H and I did the National Park trial hike. It was interesting and free, but you have to sign up ahead of time. Snorkling was great everywhere, we stayed at Gallows Point Resort and snorkled right off of the resort beach and that was some of the best that we saw. Overall it was an awesome trip! Have a great time!

[woowoo]

Thank you both! We are counting down the days! It will be a new adventure for us, we've never vacationed where we didn't have the entire trip planned for weeks prior.