4 Day Cruzan Adventure

4 Days on the Island of St. Croix!

St. Croix has become one of our family's favorite vacation destinations. So much so that my sister and her husband went from vacationers, to property owners, to full time residents! How cool is that!?

As you can imagine, we do our best to visit as often as possible, and we especially love going when the weather in the midwest is cold and snowy. This Valentine's Trip was a shorter get away, but we packed it full of fun and adventure. Our scheduled trip was Friday-Tuesday, with a hiccup that didn't get us back until Wednesday. So we really only had 3.5 days and 4 nights, so lets talk about all of the great things we fit in while we were there and then I will share our travel experience & point usage details.

Friday - travel day.

We arrived around 4pm got our luggage, got to the condo, changed into SHORTS and T-SHIRTS (yay!) and then headed to dinner. We went to Castaways of St. Croix for dinner and drinks then an "early" hang out night as a family playing card games and relaxing from the early morning.

Saturday - BEACH DAY.

The girls were dying to get to the beach, so we went to our favorite one - Hotel on the Cay (Key). We spent almost 5 hours there playing in the sand and water. There is clear water, soft sand, pretty good sand, cold drinks and chairs/umbrellas/cabanas available for rent. If you are into snorkeling there is usually some good sealife to be seen - sea turtles, rays, conch, and plenty of fish. They also have life music and things on a regular basis. Plus we found a large jenga game to play in the shade for a little while when we were taking a break from the water. We grilled out at my sister's for dinner which was amazing.

• Pro-tip - if you go grocery shopping and cook for yourself down there, I'd stay away from the pork, it's just....not very good, lol. Beef and Chicken are good, but something about their pork just doesn't hold up to home.

Sunday - Agrifest Day.

Ya'll I had no idea this was even a thing, but my sister was excited to check it out, and apparently so was the whole island. People fly into STX just to go to Agrifest. I'm talking every rental car on the island was booked for the weekend! It was pretty cool, they had all sorts of lifestock, local fruits, veggies and plants. Live music, vendors with all sorts of things for sale, a big bounce house obstacle course for the kids, and of course all sorts of FOOD! We had a few different things but the pates are definitely the star of the show - beef, chicken, shrimp, conch...plus many more. And you have to try them from different stands, because they are all different and delicious! It was fun, but by mid day, it was obvious that we had been running these girls ragged between the late nights, swimming and sun, a nap was required between the Agrifest and dinner. Dinner was at Rum Runners on the Boardwalk in Christiansted. We were pretty happy with our choices, but the thai curry mussels appetizer was the crowd favorite.

Monday - Back on the water, after some lunch!

Chicken Shack for lunch- another all time favorite we try to hit each time we visit. The menu is larger than it needs to be - just get the 1/2 chicken everytime! It comes with rice & beans and either salad or johnny cakes. I'd recommend the johnny cake, but you can pretend to be healthy and get a salad - I just never have. After that we went on a tiki boat with Tropical Tiki Tours West out of Fredricksted. This was awesome, a boat ride out to our spot, then we anchored out and got to swim around and enjoy the ocean. They supplied floaties for us and we brought our snorkles/goggles again for our little guppies. They can't seem to get enough of the water! This trip was awesome and we will definitely be doing it again. After the boat we spent a little time at the Fredricksted playground, which is the best one we have found on the island and then headed to the Leatherback Brewery for dinner, drinks and darts. We had a blast hopping in on the Monday night open league and the girls were able to run around and make some new friends.

Tuesday - Last Day :(

So it was one last trip to the beach! This time we walked to the beach near the condo. There were more waves here (unlike Hotel on the Cay which is always calm). I was a bit surprised that both girls actually loved playing in the waves, even though they got tumbled more than once. We did that for about an hour before we needed to get cleaned up and make sure our bags were all packed. We got everything loaded up and headed to lunch at Maria's Cantina in Christiansted. The food was delicious, take appropriate caution with their hot sauce - because even the hot sauce fanatics were sweating when they were using their white hot sauce! After lunch wrapped up it was time to head to the airport, but we got a bit derailed because our plane was delayed. So we stopped for 1 last drink at Leatherback Brewery (it's very close to the airport) before we departed.

Overall the trip was incredible. We packed in so much fun and got to spend all of it with my sister and BIL. I always love getting to see them bond with the girls and catching up with them playing games in the evening is one of my favorite things. We always start planning the next trip back before we leave (and I am daydreaming of my early retirement home down there while I type this - hopefully)

We booked all of our flights through the Chase Travel Portal with points we have built up from referrals, signup bonuses and spending. We have a Sapphire Reserve and with the upcoming changes to points usage, we took advantage of the 1.5x that we were able to get for these flights.

On the way there, we flew Delta through Atlanta (O'hare > Atlanta > St. Croix). On the way home we flew American Airlines through Miami (St. Croix > Miami > O'hare). Our flight home was delayed out of STX, which we knew before we left but there was a lot of different moving parts and if we didn't get to at least Miami, we were going to be stuck on the island for 2 days, and that was feasible with work and school. We were about 20minutes late for our connection in Miami, so AA put us up in a hotel and gave us some food vouchers and we had a few flights to choose from to get back to Chicago. We picked one a bit later in the morning so we could sleep in.

For accommodations, we did a sleep and fly through Hyatt for the night before we left. We have some points with Hyatt that we transferred from Chase, however the pt vs $ rate wasn't very lucrative, so we paid cash for this hotel. It was so nice to leave the van parked there and just shuttle to and from the airport, and was definitely a savings on paying for airport parking.

In St. Croix we were lucky enough to stay in my sister's condo, and she drove us around everywhere, so no hotels/air bnb's/car rentals for this vacation.

Our travel/points strategy may be changing up a bit going forward as Chase's rewards are dramatically changing and Hyatt is looking to alter their points structure as well. But for now that is where we have focused our CC rewards. We did sign up for an American/Citi card ON the flight home to get the on-board miles bonus, so we will be looking forward to maximizing those deals and benefits going forward. If you need more tips/tricks on CC points, check out wegetpoints.com.