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We are planning a trip to St. Thomas for 6 days. What is the recommendation on renting a car? Our hotel is right on the beach. Do we need a car rental?
Hello Sam,
A car rental is useful and good if you plan on doing a lot of things (beach hopping, different restaurants, island drives, sight seeing, shopping, take it over to St. John...). If you plan on hanging out most of the time at the hotel then using taxis when you want to go out is fine - they are abundant.
--Islander
Thanks Islander! Based on your feedback I think we should rent a car. We definitely dont want to spend a whole week at the hotel.
We are leaving for St. Thomas on May 14. This is our first trip to St. Thomas and we are staying at Bolongo Beach club.
We are definitely excited about our trip.
We have been to STT many times on cruises, usually take the ship's tours or find transportation to the beach. However, this time we will be with family and think a rental car is the best option so we can do some beach hopping, etc. Plan to go to Red Hook, Secret Harbour, Sapphire Beach, etc. Only concern is driving on the left side of the road. Will it be frantic or is it easy to adapt?
Thanks.
It doesn't take long to get used to driving on the left. You just need to remind yourself each time you get in the car to "keep left." We tended to revert to our right-side driving in places like parking lots, and our tendency was to first look the wrong way to check for oncoming traffic. A few surprises of seeing cars coming the "wrong" way jolted us out of this practice.
The 2 most important thing about driving on the island (STJ/STT) are that you have to :
1. Remember to LOOK in the right direction when making a turn or coming out onto a crossroad from your resort, etc....In the states, we look to the left first...because this is the oncoming cross-traffic closest to us. On the island, you look to the right. If you look the wrong way and go out, thinking all is clear, you'll most likely cause and be part of an accident.
2. Note the pitch of any hill you are on and don't pull up too close to cars in front of you...as man ycars are manual transmission and cars need to drify back to get going. Beware of hills with a history sliding incidents and avoid them, if possible (Jacob's Ladder on STJ).
