Our anniversary trip to St. John was the first time either of us have ever been to the Caribbean and we just fell in love.  The turquoise waters and the beautiful white sand beaches are incomparable.  We could have stayed twice as long and never tired of the crystal clear water and the beauty of it all.   With the exception of our one rain day, we spent a bit of time every day on a different beach.  We now have our favorites, but it's all pretty spectacular.

Our first day there we hiked to both Salomon and Honeymoon Beaches.  They are very close to each other and just about a mile from the national park visitor's center.  We loved the parks that we had to hike in to, we always found they were less crowded than the others.  Both beaches had very still and calm waters and the water was so warm it was as pleasant of an experience as you could get.  Plus, the palm trees coming up out of the sand at Salomon were just picturesque and reaffirmed that we had arrived to a little piece of paradise. We stayed for the sunset and ended up hiking out in the dark - we did not want to leave!

Monday (day 2),  after finally finishing the slowest hike on the planet along the Reef Bay trail, we visited Hawksnest Beach.  This beach was a large, curved beach with waters just as beautiful of those at Salomon.  We even watched a small wedding go down that evening.  One of the perks of St. John is that 80% of the island is national park and all beaches within the national park are public.  Thus, making a beautiful place to have an intimate wedding.  (Or spend a day snorkeling and soaking up the sun.)

Our third beach day (which was actually our fourth day in St. John),  was a pretty awesome day.  We started the day out with a stop at the Annenberg Sugar Plantation ruins and then hiked to what ended up being our favorite beach and snorkeling stop:  Denis Beach.  This beach was more secluded and even less populated, which was awesome.  We were so content there and it took a little bit of effort to pick ourselves up to move to a different beach to watch the sunset.  We had heard Trunk Bay is the #1 beach on the island and has amazing sunsets, so we figured we should probably visit it at some point.  We regrettably packed up our stuff and moved along to Trunk Bay.    Once we got there, we weren't disappointed.  It was a lovely, long, beautiful beach with what would have had great views of the sunset had not the clouds gathered at the horizon line.....  We could see why people aggregate there during the peak beach hours.   We returned on the following afternoon, slightly earlier, to give the sunset another try.  We had better luck the second night and stayed for the tranquil and beautiful sunset.

Our last evening in St. John we visited Cinnamon Bay.  It was unfortunate we didn't get there earlier in the trip, we'd love to go back.  This was another incredible beach/bay and the sunset from there was just as beautiful as from Trunk Bay.  We didn't get there until after 5pm, so prime beach time was passed and it was a nearly empty beach.   (In almost every case we shut down the beaches each night.  We loved the peacefulness of it but by the end of the trip when we were covered in bug bites, we realized WHY we were the last ones left.... dusk = bugs.)  Nevertheless, we had a pretty cool sunset and were sad when we had to pack it up and say goodbye to the beaches of St. John.    It was the perfect beach-end to our trip.

We're sold with the beaches of St. John.  Best beaches we've ever been to!