I’m not sure about other couples out there but when we had kids sometimes our marriage found itself on the back-burner. Life got busy and between running our own business and what seems like a daily minute to minute schedule with the kids we found ourselves on auto pilot. Just going through the motions. Almost like a defense mechanism so we didn’t get overwhelmed. Don’t get me wrong, we love being parents and all the joy our children bring us, but just as important as our role as parents is our relationship as husband and wife. Because of this 3 years ago we decided that once a year we would take a vacation as husband and wife, no kids.
The reason was two fold- both equally as important. Time away without distraction to focus on each other. A week to devote to relationship and remind us of all the little things that made us fall in love in the first place. The second reason was for to us to show our kids on a daily basis what a healthy relationship looks like. Both Makayla and I were lucky enough to grow up with parents who demonstrated this to us on a daily basis and we want to provide the same to our kids.
This year our trip coincided with Makayla’s (and our friend, Elyse’s) 30th birthdays so we decided to do a combined trip to St Johns in the Virgin Islands.
The 8 of us filled the week with day trips to some of the most spectacular beaches and capped off each of our evenings with incredible food and great company. I need to reiterate how great the food is. We would go back just for the food.
St John from Harris Films on Vimeo.
Here are some of our favorite St John restaurants:
– Cruz Bay Landing
– The Beach Bar (Crab Wantons are amazing)
– Asolare (this was more of a fine dining experience, but with an incredible view of cruz bay.
-Skinny Legs Bar and Grill – A little bit of a hike from cruz bay, but the food is fantastic.
Here are some of our favorite St John beaches:
-Cinnamon bay
-Trunk Bay
-Honeymoon beach (this was our fav!)
-Maho Bay
-Oppenheimer Beach
St John is also a great island for hopping to a couple others that are pretty close by. We decided to take a chartered boat tour to Virgin Gorda to see The Baths (definitely make sure you check the cruise ship schedule otherwise it will be swamped with people) and a quick stop at Jost Van Dyke to visit the famous Soggy Dollar Bar. Definitely recommend doing this!
As we closed out our trip we both agreed that St. John is definitely one of our favorite islands in the Caribbean. A close second to St. Barths. After almost 10 days away we left feeling refreshed, smiling at each other like we did on our honeymoon and ready to be the best parents possible.
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