This five-day route is for travelers who want the full US Virgin Islands picture in one trip: the Danish colonial capitals, the national park on St. John and the reef and night-water trips of St. Croix. It moves at a steady but humane pace, with one island hop per phase and no back-to-back travel days. You’ll use safari taxis (open-air truck buses) on St. Thomas, the inter-island ferry to St. John, taxis and the VITRAN bus around St. John, then a seaplane or short flight to St. Croix, where a rental car makes the last two days work.
Day 1: Charlotte Amalie, Fort Christian and Magens Bay
Landing on St. Thomas and sleeping in
Charlotte Amalie puts you next to the downtown ferry dock for tomorrow, so the first evening costs you nothing in transit. Spend the morning in the old Danish grid: the brick-red walls of
Fort Christian, finished in the 1680s and the oldest standing building in the territory, then the 99 Steps and the narrow alleys of former warehouses behind Main Street. Duck into the …
read more 👉This five-day route is for travelers who want the full US Virgin Islands picture in one trip: the Danish colonial capitals, the national park on St. John and the reef and night-water trips of St. Croix. It moves at a steady but humane pace, with one island hop per phase and no back-to-back travel days. You’ll use safari taxis (open-air truck buses) on St. Thomas, the inter-island ferry to St. John, taxis and the VITRAN bus around St. John, then a seaplane or short flight to St. Croix, where a rental car makes the last two days work.
Day 1: Charlotte Amalie, Fort Christian and Magens Bay
Landing on St. Thomas and sleeping in Charlotte Amalie puts you next to the downtown ferry dock for tomorrow, so the first evening costs you nothing in transit. Spend the morning in the old Danish grid: the brick-red walls of Fort Christian, finished in the 1680s and the oldest standing building in the territory, then the 99 Steps and the narrow alleys of former warehouses behind Main Street. Duck into the side lanes when cruise passengers fill the jewelry shops. After lunch, a safari taxi or a shared cab (US$10 to 15 per person) runs over the ridge to Magens Bay, a sheltered 1.6 km curve of sand on the north shore with a US$5 entry fee. The water there is calm enough for a long, lazy swim, which is exactly what a travel day needs.Days 2-3: Cruz Bay, Trunk Bay and the North Shore to Coral Bay
The 45-minute ferry from the Charlotte Amalie waterfront (roughly US$13 to 15) drops you in Cruz Bay, St. John’s only real town, a few blocks of open-air bars and food trucks where the park begins at the edge of the streets. Base here for two nights. Day 2 belongs to Trunk Bay, a short taxi ride along North Shore Road, where the marked underwater snorkel trail runs around a small cay just off the beach (amenity fee around US$5). Go early, before the day-trippers from St. Thomas arrive around 10am. On Day 3, head east to the Annaberg Plantation Trail, a short loop through the windmill and boiling-house ruins of an 18th-century sugar estate, with interpretive signs that are frank about the enslaved labor that built it. From there a flat shoreline path leads to Leinster Bay and the swim out to Waterlemon Cay, where the current around the islet brings in turtles, rays and big schools of blue tang. Finish in Coral Bay on the island’s far side, a scrappy sailors’ settlement of boats at anchor and roadside bars, then take a taxi or the US$1 VITRAN bus back over Centerline Road.Days 4-5: Christiansted, Salt River Bay and Buck Island Reef
Ferry back to St. Thomas in the morning and hop to St. Croix by seaplane or small plane (about 25 to 30 minutes, US$90 to 150 one way). Sleep two nights in Christiansted, whose yellow Fort Christiansvaern and arcaded boardwalk make it the best-preserved Danish town in the islands. Pick up a rental car, because St. Croix is big and spread out. In the afternoon, drive 15 minutes west to Salt River Bay National Historical Park and Ecological Preserve, the only documented spot on US soil where Columbus’s crew landed in 1493, with a mangrove estuary that doubles as one of the Bioluminescent Bays of St. Croix. A guided night kayak tour (US$55 to 75) is the move here; book a date near the new moon, when every paddle stroke glows. Day 5 starts on the Christiansted boardwalk with a half-day boat to Buck Island Reef (US$80 to 120), a protected national monument with an elkhorn coral barrier and an underwater trail that is the best snorkeling of the whole trip. In the afternoon, drive west for a tasting tour at the Cruzan Rum Distillery (around US$10 to 15), then end in Frederiksted, where the long cruise pier and the low Victorian facades face west for a clean ocean sunset.
If you can squeeze in an extra dawn on St. Croix, drive to Point Udall, the easternmost point of US territory, where a stone sundial marks where the country’s first sunrise lands.v2.webp){kind=logo}
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