March 2019
Celebrity Summit pulled into Fredericksted(population: 1,000) port at the western end of the island of St. Croix(pronounced like “croi”), and we could tell it would be a little sleepy town where nothing much happened. We decided to get off the ship after an early lunch of a cheeseburger and a beef hot dog.
Dark clouds gathered overhead, and big drops of rain started to pour down as we got off the gangway. March on, no turning back, we declared.
There was a tourist information office right at the exit of the port. Some ladies handed out maps and things, and samples of local rum and baked goods were offered to us with smile outside of this office even though the office itself was closed for Sunday. We waited for the rain to ease up standing under a canopy, and it seemed we could pretty much see the whole town from there.
We were quite right about the size of this town: small. The whole island’s population is around 50,000. A few restaurants and some shops line the street right along the water, and that was pretty much it.
We walked around as much as we could to get the feel of the place, but it really was just a little sleepy town. Whatever rain damage we had got dried up quickly, and we were good as new by the time we were heading back to the ship after an hour or so.
The tourist information office had free WiFi, but it didn’t work well. After trying to get online for a while, we gave up.
The other big town on St. Croix is Christiansted (population 3,000) and a taxi shuttle was offered for $16 per person, round trip, from outside of the tourist information office. We didn’t try to go there. It is supposed to have more historical sites and restaurants than Frederiksted, but it was a rainy day.
Christopher Columbus landed here in 1493 and was attacked by the natives. Dutch, English, French all came and went. Denmark sold Saint Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John to the United States in 1916 for a sum of US$25 million in gold. So that was the beginning of U.S. Virgin Islands.
This is the kind of place people go to in order to get away from it all and just hang out at the beach, and getting away from it all does not come cheap in this part of the world.
Small Wide World 