My wife and I just made a great seven day cruise to Saint Thomas with Norwegian Cruise Line in the beautiful Escape ship. Being our first time in Saint Thomas we decided to buy a shore tour and we picked this one which was advertised onboard: Discover St Thomas & Magens Bay. The Tour Operator is Virgin Excursions. We gladly paid the fee excited to get to know the famous Magens Bay plus other interesting places such as Black Beard's Castle and other notable landmarks. What could go wrong!?
A taxi took our group to a high point after a short drive where we could take one or two pictures of the ocean on that side of the island. Nice but not particularly interesting view. Then the taxi left us in Magens Bay which we enjoyed very much, but for just an hour or so, since he would pick us up again to visit the other points of interest. After pictures and a little swiming we left the Bay and the driver took our group to Black Beard's Castle. Here the story was different... We were left on what it looked like a patio where a guy dressed as a pirate was telling a story about Black Beard through a microphone. After five or so minutes he was done and then invited the visitors to go to the top of the small tower behind him to take a look and take pictures. He also said we could use "his" pool and have some drinks in "his" bar. "Is he the owner?" I thougth...
The view from the tower is nothing to kill for but up we went. From there you find "tour personnel" every now and then that tells you this way or that way. Sure enough we saw the pool and the bar... but how in the world would you want to get into a pool in Saint Thomas when you just left beautiful Magens Bay...? Conclusion, the famous Black Beard's Castle is just a bar with a pool and a small tower from what you can look at the bay.
Then the tour expects you to continue walking down towards downtown while you stop by to visit a couple of "notable houses"... The houses have nothing interesting, really. They look like somebody just found few old things, put them around and then instructed a couple of ladies to tell the tourists that they were really old and that's it. Almost without noticing we were at the bottom of the walk in the downtown. There you supposedly have the chance to buy jewelry at very good prices. Well, we are not into that. So the fact is that we left left Magens Bay too soon and spent half of our tour wasting our precious time visiting tourist traps. Norwegian explains in the fine print on the ticket that they just offer the tours onboard as a convenience but had no control over the operators. So my advise is: save your money and don't buy this tour, get a taxi, that for far less, can take you to Magens Bay and spent your time swimming, laying on the beach drinking a beer with the best company in the world, your loving wife. As a closing note... the cruise with Norwegian was just awesome! read more
