The two major towns in St. Croix are easily doable in a day if pushed either by taxi or car. We didn’t test the public buses between the two though that is usually a favorite thing of mine. Frederiksted is located on the western end of the island and Christiansted is somewhat on the northeast sector of the island.
Let’s look at Christiansted first which is where we started. The shopping is not the best in the town center but a pleasant walk away is the fort–Fort Christiansvaern. You can actually park here and walk to the town center easily and still explore it too. There are other interesting historic buildings to discover on your own as well. We enjoyed this part, especially poking around the old Scale House (which is nice when it is hot outside). We learned about Alexander Hamilton here.
- Fort Christiansvaern
Christiansted is nice enough and there are shops that have items most tourists would want but there is also a small mix of local shops and places you can poke around in looking for something different. Not my favorite spot in the Caribbean for shopping but you can spend some time there. It is nice not to see the usual shops all clustered in one spot, which is its charm.
Christiansted has a nice boardwalk with surprisingly good food and restaurants along it. We ate at Angry Nates several times and had excellent food. There were a number of hotels in the town center as well and I can imagine that they are busy during season – not September when we were there. We saw fishing boats and dive boats (such as the one in the photo below) pull up to the docks here.
Frederiksted had some shops and a really good cafe called Polly’s that had incredible food and was right across the water and near the Pier. I had a four cheese grilled cheese sandwich and some hot tea which was incredible and the owner was extremely nice. There is a courtyard and some small shops contained in it as well. It is a nice compact historic town that dates to the mid 18th century and includes Fort Frederik.
The shops are all within walking distance of the Pier in case anyone is coming in from a cruise ship. The beaches are also not too far from the town center – just north of it in fact.
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