Bikini’s on the Beach, Honeymoon Beach, St. John, US Virgin Islands

The Virgin Islands have many nice, quiet beaches unspoiled by commerce, and no island has more than St. John. Over 60 percent of the island is a National Park. We visited a number of unspoiled beaches on previous trips, as well as Caneel Bay, which is now closed — and utterly devastated. This time, Scott (Hammons, of the annual barbecue Hammons) suggested Honeymoon Beach.

Honeymoon Beach is a nice sandy beach, about 1500 feet long. There is natural shade from trees and more shade available for rent. You also can rent paddle boards and kayaks and goggles and anything else you might want at a beach. But who needs all that?

We just jumped in. The water was sensational — cool and refreshing, and clear as glass. Clear enough that you could stand chest-deep and look down and count your toes. Of course, you already know how many toes you have, so you don’t really count, but you can see the individual toes. It was delightful, and we spent a lot of time in the water.

Honeymoon Beach is a nice family beach with no one acting as if they were on their honeymoon. Best of all, Honeymoon Beach is partially spoiled. It has a beach bar, Bikini’s on the Beach, where you can obtain food and the liquid refreshment that is part of a full beach experience.

Bikini’s has a good beach bar look, here shown with me, for scale.

(I don’t wear John Morgan shirts every day.) And Bikini’s has food — fish tacos, burgers, chicken sandwiches, salads to which you can add fish or chicken — lots of stuff.

We eventually decided to eat, by which time Bikini’s had announced “No more fish.” The boys got burgers, the girls got chicken wraps, and the kids got hot dogs.

The burgers were pretty good, large (good) but over-packed (bad). As I say, it was pretty good, and certainly wonderful, well above average for beach fare, in terms of providing fuel for a day at the beach. After all, context is important. The winner, though, was the lowly chicken wrap. It actually was a chicken Caesar wrap with croutons for some crunch.  The chicken wrap was a big hit.

We stayed around for a while longer, until we had to hurry back to St. Thomas for a sunset cruise, about which more anon. But it was hard to leave. You don’t really have to do anything there. You can just sit on the beach and look at the water and the fleet of catamarans and a few single-hulls anchored in the bay.

This is a lovely beach, a lovely setting, a lovely way to spend a day, about as far from all of the … stuff of Washington DC as you can get. Give it a try.

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