Even hipsters have to take beach vacations every once in a while. As far as hip goes, though, St. Thomas is pretty much the most un-hip vacation one can take (beside a cruise, that is). It was hard to be excited about getting away from the New York winter when the haters over at weather.com were telling us to expect rain the whole weekend. Terrific. Of course knowing that forecasting the weather is about as accurate as predicting Oprah Winfrey’s weight on any given day, I held out hope that we would get five days of brilliant sunshine and blue skies.
Good call! This was the view from our balcony at the Marriott Frenchman’s Reef during one of our many trackmeet moments during the weekend, when we were sent sprinting from the beach in a hail of very aggresive rain. And then, as tropical weather is want to do, the sun came out to burn me to a crisp.
There’s honestly not much to do on this little island other than sit in the sun waiting for skin cancer to set in. Watching the pukies from the cruise ships come and use the beach I’m paying hundreds if dollars a day to use is somewhat unnerving, and hearing them order their kids to “grab daddy a beer” made me want to drown them in the clear blue, bathwater temperature sea.
I swear to you, we did nothing but sit and eat and then eat again. We ate the first night at a place called Mim’s Seaside Bistro. It rained on us while we ate all-you-can-eat shrimp. The second night we were off to a nice joint called Hervé where I ate a really good bouillabaisse and got drunk on red wine. The third night brought Craig and Sally’s, which was cozy and good, but like all the restaurants on St. Thomas was incredibly overpriced. The prices actually rivaled some of the best places in Manhattan, and there were folks wearing shorts and Hawaiian shirts.
People asked us if we snorkeled. Nope. Did you go to St. John? Nope. Did you go to the downtown area and buy some shit that will sit in your closet until you have your kids sell it for ten cents at a garage sale in Montclair some day? Definitely not. We figured the iguanas had it right–just sit in the sun and chill.
