I have just returned home from my latest trip. My sister, Lisa, and I went to St. Thomas, USVI over Easter weekend. Silly us, we booked the trip back in January while returning home from the Bahamas without looking closely at the calendar to realize we would miss Easter with our families. But I believe they made it just fine without us. I attended church on Palm Sunday and Holy Thursday prior to leaving on Good Friday.
In the last blog, I discussed the steps necessary for the Status Match Merry Go Round. The very first step was to get the Wyndham Business Earners credit card from Barclays Bank. That also played a part in this trip. The signup bonus for that card is 50,000 points after spending $4,000 in the first 90 days. Lisa had been to St. Thomas several times during her career working for the airlines and remembered staying previously at a Wyndham property on the island. She looked up a date in April and saw that we could stay at Margaritaville Vacation Club near Coki Beach for just 15,000 points per night. We both quickly researched airfare and found an American Airlines flight out of DFW airport for only 20,000 miles round trip. And I was able to book a rental car using a portion of my Capital One VentureX $300 annual travel credit. It was turning out to be a very inexpensive trip! Just what we like. 😊
Our flight left Saturday morning, so we spent Friday doing errands around our hometown then headed off to Dallas. Of course, we had to stop by Choctaw Casino in Durant along the route. I’m still trying to learn a good strategy for craps and they had some video craps machines. I did pretty good at those, then took some of my winnings and “donated” them at the nearby slot machines. The traffic in Dallas is always crazy. It came to a standstill in McKinney, so we took that opportunity to grab dinner and do a little shopping at Trader Joe’s for snacks for our trip.
We checked into Hyatt Place in Grapevine. Fortunately, I had booked it prior to the point increase – it was only 5,000 points for the stay. And they allowed us to leave our car parked there for free for the duration of our trip and we had a free shuttle to the airport Saturday morning. Quite a bargain for 5,000 points!
We arrived at the airport Saturday morning with plenty of time to spare so we enjoyed the Capital One Lounge. They had a good breakfast selection, and we were able to grab a sandwich and salad and more snacks from their grab and go section. Our flight was going to be non-stop and nearly 5 hours in length. The incoming flight ended up being delayed so we were able to leisurely make our way to the gate. Our plan of booking one aisle seat and one window seat with hopes that no one would choose a middle seat paid off. We had the row to ourself!
Once we arrived at St. Thomas, we headed to the Budget Rental Car booth to pick up our economy car. As mentioned previously, I booked it through Capital One using a portion of my $300 annual travel credit. I know that my credit cards have collision insurance and we both have our personal policies, but the lady at the counter convinced us to go ahead an purchase the liability insurance. Had it been in the states, I would have foregone that since between my personal insurance and the credit card insurance, I would have been covered. But we were outside of the continental United States and I was not the primary driver and they drive on the left side of the road – better safe than sorry! Since Lisa had driven here before, I gladly let her be the driver while I watched the GPS. It was about a 30-minute drive to our resort, over the winding hills with skinny roads.
Margaritaville Vacation Club was very nice. The grounds as you arrive are very manicured with flowering shrubs and nicely mowed grass. The staff was very friendly and informative. We came into contact with many people within minutes of arriving and they were all very sweet and helpful. There were buildings on the hillside and smaller buildings around the pool and restaurant. A golfcart was available to shuttle us and our luggage to our room after check-in. We decided our room was in a perfect location on the front side of a hillside building that overlooked the property.
We woke up Easter morning to roosters crowing outside our room! We were surprised to see chickens and chicks just wandering around. Our plan for the day was to take the car ferry over to St. John. It was a short 20-minute ride. I thought it was interesting that the ferry only had a ramp on one end, so the cars had to back on to the boat. We stopped by the Virgin Islands National Park building first thing to get my stamp. This was number 24 of 63 National Park visits for me. The National Park includes a historic sugar plantation, hikes, beaches and snorkeling. The National Park occupies two-thirds of the island of St. John. We went to the beach at Cinnamon Bay for a bit, then grabbed a lunch of bagels and cream cheese from the park general store. That was much cheaper and we thought even tastier than the sandwiches that they were selling from the food trucks. We continued down the island to Francis Bay and did a short hike, then on to Annaberg Sugar Plantation. A ¾ mile hike along the beach landed us at Leinster Bay where we snorkeled with sea turtles! It was a beautiful Easter Sunday on St. John.
When we arrived back to St. Thomas, we stopped in Red Hook for dinner at Duffy’s Love Shack. It was a fun little bar & grill. We split a huge order of jerk chicken nachos and had a frozen drink. And there were chickens walking around inside the restaurant!
Monday, we headed to Sapphire Beach for some more snorkeling. It took us a little bit to find the sweet spot for snorkeling. The reef appeared dead in many places. Once we found the spot with fish, we saw a lot of varieties of colorful fish. The beach was beautiful and started to get more crowded as we were leaving. Lisa knew of an ice cream shop (Udder Delight near Magen’s Bay) that served milkshakes made with Kahlua! Oh my!! The salted caramel milkshake made with dulce de leche ice cream and Kahlua was so good! We ran back to our room for lunch (more bagels & cream cheese!). After lunch we drove through Coki Beach area, but decided to go back to Sapphire Beach. Dinner Monday night was at Iggie’s Beach Bar & Grill at Bolongo Bay.
Tuesday came and it meant it was time to leave. We spent the morning walking around the property, checking out all the sites we hadn’t made it to yet. They had a coffee shop and a fitness center. There was a pool at the lower level near the restaurant and also an infinity pool on the hillside with an awesome view of the Bay. We checked out of the resort and headed to Mountain Top, 1,500’ above sea level and home of the World Famous Banana Daiquri. The view over Magen Bay was amazing. We picked up a t-shirt or two and then headed back down to sea level and made our way to the airport.
Returning our rental car was easy. Our itinerary for our flight home was not the best. We were scheduled to fly from STT to MIA to IAH (Houston) to DFW – with a 5 hour layover in Houston – too short to get a hotel so we had resorted to the fact that we would likely be finding a chair to nap in. We went to the American Airlines counter to check our carry-on bags so we wouldn’t have to drag them on three flights. I asked at the counter if by chance there were any flights we could change to that would get us into DFW that night. The sweet woman working the ticket counter found us a flight from MIA directly to DFW that would get in around midnight. AND I had been upgraded to Business Class for the first flight. Since this flight was over the dinner time frame, I also received dinner on the plane. I chose the beef which was like a roast with macaroni & cheese and cheesecake. It was pretty good for airplane food.
The connection in Miami was short so we briskly went straight from one gate to another not stopping for anything. When we got to that gate, I had been upgraded to Business Class on that flight as well! Lisa was 3rd on the list and had not cleared the upgrade yet so she went ahead and boarded to her original seat. Before the plane left the gate, she had received a text that she also had been upgraded to Business Class. For reference, I am Platinum status and she is Gold. There was a delay in taking off. We had made it out to the runway when one of the instrument panels did not check out on the inspection so we had to return to the gate for maintenance. We ended up leaving about an hour late.
We arrived back to DFW around 1:30am. I made reservations while on the runway in Miami with the same hotel we stayed at Friday night. The price had increased to 9,500 points since the time I made reservations back in February. But that’s ok, we were able to sleep in a bed and not a chair in the airport terminal.
It was a wonderful trip and very little out of pocket money was spent – primarily for food and drinks.
Here is a summary of the points and miles used on this trip:
| Airfare | DFW > STT > DFW | American Airlines | 20,000 AA miles |
| Hotels | Grapevine, TX | Hyatt Place | 5,000 points |
| St. Thomas | Margaritaville Vacation Club | 45,000 points (3 nights) | |
| Grapevine, TX | Hyatt Place | 9,500 points | |
| Car Retal | St. Thomas | Budget / Capital One | $208 (used Capital One credit) $134 add’l insurance paid at counter |
| Food | DFW | Capital One Lounge | Free breakfast / to-go lunch |
| St. Thomas | Margaritaville | $$$ | |
| St. John | Park General Store | $ | |
| St. Thomas | Duffy’s Love Shack | $$ | |
| St. Thomas | Iggie’s Beach Bar & Grill | $$ | |
| Entertainment | Car Ferry | St. John | $65 (bring cash!) |
| Hiking / Snorkeling | St. John | Free | |
| Snorkeling | Sapphire Beach | Free |
Absolutely loved our trip!
Thanks for going.