TAKEN BY A SAINT!! By SALLY JESSY RAPHAEL

When I was a young woman I lived in Puerto Rico for many years. One of my big treats was to make the short trip over to St Thomas. The high end shopping was terrific, especially for camera, china and crystal. There were quite a few wonderful restaurants and I fondly remember sitting one evening with Bobby Short at Sebastian's listening to Sylvia Syms. So the island has always held a special place in my heart and I've returned there many times over the years, albeit, for very short visits. Therefore, I was quite excited to recapture some of the fond memories when a friend of mine suggested that we take our husbands to the island for a longer visit.

We flew down on American Airlines and returned on Continental. The round trip price was $697 per person. We stayed at the Wyndham Sugar Bay Resort and Spa and for four nights we paid $510 per person or approximately $250 a night for the room. The other couple brought their daughter who stayed in their room and so the four nights cost them $1314.00. Should one wish to book a single room, the four night would have been $916. I mention this because I thought the price was quite reasonable and, as an aside, to let you know that we paid our own way. You never know when you read a travel piece, how much of a trip was comped.

We didn't know it then, but we should have been super delighted to find out that the the jitney service from the airport to the hotel, there and back, was included in our package. Why the super “delighted”? Why am making such a big deal of the jitney fare? Because the ordeal of getting around the island was so ridiculous, we've all agreed that it will be along time before we venture to St. Thomas again!

Nostalgia aside for me, the image will have to remain just a memory. Here's the killer! It's very costly and difficult to rent a car. For the days that we were there, none were even available, although we only tried through our hotel and did not go directly to the car rental companies. The reason for this is the roads are not the best. The terrain is very hilly. There are no lights on most roads outside the city and, as you probably know, no one drives on the opposite side of the street in the states,
so the five of us were fearful of coming around the bend late in the evening and forgetting which side of the road we should be on.

So like most tourists, we were at the mercy of the Saint Thomas taxi mafia. We were told time and again that the fares have to be per person. No way around it! The Wyndham Resort is on the other side of the island from the city or for that matter from any night life. There was just one other hotel, less than a mile away. Since our evening high heels wouldn't carry us very far, we called a cab and this added $50 to our dinner bill for ¾ of a mile. Shopping, dining and sight-seeing kept running up huge fares for as many as six one way trips a day. This turned our budget vacation into a much more expensive trip then we had anticipated. By the way, we are not talking about private cars. We made our way around on the mini-local buses, usually sharing with eight or nine people and wondering if the Saint Thomian's were paying as much as we were.

Back to the hotel! We chose the Wyndham because I felt that the chain had a very good reputation. The one in Saint Thomas is not elegant or special in anyway, the rooms being very “motel 6”. The staff, at best, was cold and perfunctory with the exception of Glenn in the casino who really aims to please. The casino is mostly automated with electronic croupiers. The only other human besides Glenn was the cashier. The hotel did provide free snorkeling equipment and, believe it or not, bumper boats! Parasailing over the Virgin Island was spectacular and cost $75 per person, even though they strongly encourage you to go up two at a time ( The ride was a good 15 minutes or more, which is unusually long, so it made sense to go up by two's). Tipping was like everything else, encouraged!

A big disappointment was the Main Street of Charlotte Amalie which as turned into a very tacky, low rent collection of keychain and T-shirt shops along side of tons of commercial jewelry stores selling bottom-end trinkets. Except for A.H. Riise, gone are the beautiful crystal and china that use to be at the Continental store; gone are the discount cameras and electronics and unfortunately gone are Sally and her friends.
None of which will return!!