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Help me plan a honeymoon (Virgin Islands preferred)
Saammiel
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So, the wife and I are going to start planning for our honeymoon in June-ish. The current favored destination is the US Virgin Islands. Reasons for this are;
It is cheaper than Hawaii
It is less poverty stricken than other common honeymoon spots
I mostly want to relax and have no interest in eco tourism for my honeymoon (hi Costa Rica)
It is an English speaking area and my foreign language skills have atrophied to the point of uselessness
No need for a passport
I hate long air plane rides
None of the above is intractable and I would be willing to consider altering them, but the Virgin Islands seems like a pretty good compromise, so I am primarily interested in people's experiences there. Questions include;
What are good accomodations?
What are some fun things to do other than sipping fruity alcoholic drinks on the beach?
What are the good beaches?
How much can I generally expect to spend?
How concerned should I be about driving on the left side of the road?
Will it be unholy hot in June? (reasons for that timeframe are because of her work schedule)
It is cheaper than Hawaii
It is less poverty stricken than other common honeymoon spots
I mostly want to relax and have no interest in eco tourism for my honeymoon (hi Costa Rica)
It is an English speaking area and my foreign language skills have atrophied to the point of uselessness
No need for a passport
I hate long air plane rides
None of the above is intractable and I would be willing to consider altering them, but the Virgin Islands seems like a pretty good compromise, so I am primarily interested in people's experiences there. Questions include;
What are good accomodations?
What are some fun things to do other than sipping fruity alcoholic drinks on the beach?
What are the good beaches?
How much can I generally expect to spend?
How concerned should I be about driving on the left side of the road?
Will it be unholy hot in June? (reasons for that timeframe are because of her work schedule)
Saammiel on
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I clicked furiously to type a witty response... but to my dismay there was more to the thread title. Sorry I could not be of help
Can't help you with the rest of it (never having been, specifically, to the Virgin Islands) but I can help with these last two.
Driving on the left isn't that bad, after about the second hour. A lot of rental cars will now even have a little arrow affixed to the inside of the windshield ("We drive over here" <---) You'll be fine. Take it slow, and try to get a car with automatic transmission.
June will be warm, for sure. Stay out of the sun during the peak hours (11-3:30 or 4) and stick to the coasts (by which I mean the hundred feet or so closest to the ocean). The heat will build up significantly as you move inland even a little bit. The west side of the island will tend to have ocean breezes, which will be cool(er).
I do not drive and I stayed with a friend of mine who lives there, so I can't help you on accommodations or rental car questions.
I can tell you it is SUPER HILLY, so if you are not used to driving up and down hills you may have a problem. Get a 4-wheel drive if you can. The roads are bad. Lots of them might as well be hiking trails- all dirt, hairpin turns, and narrow.
Also people are crazy breakneck drivers there.
There will be goats and donkeys in the road you have to drive around at some point.
I recommend St. John, you have to take a ferry there (the airport is on St. Thomas), but it is less populated and the beaches are BEAUTIFUL. Drive to the shore from anywhere, you'll find something stunning.
Go snorkeling. At least get a snorkel map, that'll tell you where some of the good beaches are. But Go Snorkeling. There are awesome tropical fish, coral of all kinds, just amazing stuff. When I was there I saw stingrays, cuttlefish, and a giant sea turtle. The turtle was way chill and let me get really close (I did not touch of course, though I could have). I'll never forget it.
Food is expensive. Like, 7 bucks for a can of soup expensive. You might as well go to a resturant and have someone make it for you. And there are some mighty fine resturants there.
Liquor, however, was as cheap or cheaper than you'd find in say, New York (where I live), and available everywhere. And I mean EVERYWHERE. You can buy rum at the gas station, I kid you not.
The drinking age is 18 (which helps explain why the roads are so bad), and thus no one will ever card you. They chill about the boozin' there.
And don't underestimate the value of doing nothing but drinking rum on the beach. That is one excellent time to be had.
Oooohhhh, almost forgot. WEAR SUNSCREEN. As high SPF as you can get, and reapply every two hours at least. Especially if you are in the water at all. The equatorial sun there is KILLER. I thought I had enough sunscreen on, then I went snorkelling for three hours and it all washed off... I still have the tanlines. I went in September. It was the most amazing burn I've ever had the misfortune to experience.
Someday I hope to own something big enough to have its own helicopter
We are planning a trip to Jamaica and have found an all inclusive package that includes all food, beverages, including alcohol, as well as all your activities (jet ski's, golf, para sailing, snorkeling, scuba, ect. ect.).
You can expect to pay around $2,000 per person, but that figure can go up or down dependent upon travel arrangements, resorts, ect.
Trust me though, having everything you could possible do all paid for in advance means you never have to stress about money, and can do things on the fly with out pre-planning.
I'll argue against a cruise, that is unless you plan to invite a bunch of other friends along.
The only benefit is you'll get great sleep.
Out side of that your drinks are all inclusive, juice, milk, and water are, but pop and alcohol are not.
Additionally most people on cruises are in bigger groups, and you'll find them at all the activity stations and food stations, and usually they are not that friendly and are more interested in getting what they want then allowing you to join in.
The gambling for the most part is a rip off, an example is that for every hand of poker played the house took 25%, yeah, great fun there.
Also, depending on the company, they will try to upsell you on specific merchants/companies at each port.
For us it was "Diamonds International", seriously, every damn port seminar was about how you could get cheap jewlery. It was even on the TV's in you room.
They also attempted to scare people into using the cab company at each port ran by "Diamonds International", whose prices where 3x that of the government ran port authority shuttle.
The maps they hand out for tourist activities are predicated on which ever vendor pays them the most money, not on, say, the best safety record, or value. They also only have the vendors who have paid on their maps, nothing else. So unless you prepare in advance you'll be getting lack luster experiences that are extremely over priced.
They also will tell you about mandatory gratuities, and offer you to be able to pay them up front, but even if you do pay upfront you'll be pressured into spending more during the whole trip.
I DO NOT recommend a cruise unless you are going with a big group of people, do research about your ports independently before you even leave, and are willing to pay extra for a bunch of stuff that they don't even mention.
Hell, even the internet access had hidden fee's all over the place.
Trust me man, all inclusive is the way to go.
Edit: to elaborate, for our honeymoon we went on a 7-day Royal Caribbean cruise to the western Caribbean, including Belize, Cozumel, and some other ports. It was something like $2,500 for both of us after all was said and done, including taxes and tips and alcohol and port excursions and so on. We had a relatively large room with a balcony. We went ziplining in the jungle, rafting through caves, and touring Mayan ruins. It was wonderful, relaxing, stress-free stuff.
What company did you cruise with? We where with Carnival
See above, sorry I didn't say more in the first place.
So the alcohol was included? Or did you have to pay extra? And what about activities?
The main benefit we found on our last all inclusive is that we only ended up spending about $300 for souvenirs and tips, after that everything else was free.
It was nice to be able to order room service with drinks when ever we wanted, to golf every day(though did have to wait up to thirty minutes twice for the tee time), and do other activities when we felt like it.
The food was varied with different places to eat, or order room service from.
If they had a cruise like that I would be all for it:!:
(I will note however that after air travel and the package price it was just under $5,000 for seven days/six nights)
I think it depends on what you're interested in doing, I guess. The idea of sitting around in one place for a week doesn't sound appealing to me, but island-hopping can get expensive and you have to keep packing and unpacking. Also I don't like golf. :P
The alcohol was extra, but we didn't buy a lot: he'd get a beer with dinner sometimes, I'd get the after-dinner dessert drink, we'd have cocktails once or twice a day. We bought the unlimited soda thing for like $25 and I drank Coke until I got diabeetus. (Not really.)
We pre-paid the tips like you mentioned, I forget how much it was, but like you said I preferred to have it done in advance so I wouldn't have to worry about it. When the time came, they gave us slips that we stuck into envelopes to give the various people so they'd know we didn't stiff them.
We also paid our activities in advance, but they weren't more expensive than if you'd tried to set them up separately. And again, didn't have to think about it, just showed up and had fun. For a couple of ports, we just wandered around the city and took pictures instead of doing an official thing.
Room service was free unless you ordered from one of their "special" restaurants (Johnny Rockets or some Italian-themed place). There were at least three meal options I can think of, but we ate almost every day in the main dining room, because they give you so many kinds of food to choose from. The change of scenery wasn't that big a deal to us. Also you could order more than one meal at a time, so if you wanted to try both the lobster and the steak, no problem. I ate sooo much.
And by the way, I've been to all-inclusives before, in particular one in Punta Cana. I agree that it's nice to just wander up to the bar and get whatever, or go to a different restaurant, or hang out on the beach and parasail or snorkle. But for me, it's all about being able to see new spots, so being stuck at one resort was not very fun. We went on a couple of neat trips, like one to an awesome artists colony, but overall I wouldn't do it again. It just didn't do it for me.
Edit: also, the boat we were on had miniature golf, a basketball court, a rock-climbing wall, and a skating rink. Yes, ice skating on the open sea. It was kind of surreal.
So I suppose I just won't recommenced a cruise on Carnival then. :P