The wife and I visited St. Thomas for our birthdays in October. Yes, I'm finally getting around to uploading the pictures. You can see them here:
St Thomas Image set 2013
Overall I liked St. Thomas. The people were friendly and the climate was great. The food and customer service on the other hand were, unfortunately, sub-standard. Most of the waiters/bartenders are mainlanders who have relocated to the Isle because it's known as a party destination. So while they're going to be friendly, there's also a very slim chance they understand the basics of customer service. In other words, you're going to have to wait a minute to get a refill on your water, and your drink might run dry while they're talking/flirting with someone at the other end of the bar.
The restaurants in St. Thomas are 100% geared toward the mostly older crowds coming in from the cruise ships. This means that things tend to be bland, and the menus are surprisingly Lower 48 American. Gone are the island staples that you might want to try, replaced with hamburgers and chopped beef "steak" and dry grilled chicken. You can still find conch fritters but they're watered down to the point that you might as well be eating a hush-puppy. The food is edible, and in some places outstanding, but you're not going to find the island classics there that you wanted to find.
Amazingly, the best food we ate was at The Bluebeard's Castle Resort specifically The Greek food at Room with a View, (it's off menu, typically offered as a special) and the breakfast at the pool bar. The huevos rancheros at the pool bar, cooked in the back, on a skillet and hot plate FWIW, were among the best I've ever had.
Great places to visit include Bones Rum in the central shopping district of Charlotte Amelie, and Duffy's Love Shack in Red Hook the former for their pour your own rum drinks and the latter for their arrangement of specialty rum drinks that come with their own glass you can keep. Right across the street from Duffy's is a pretty decent Irish Pub, with good bar food to provide you with some much needed filler to soak up all the rum you're going to drink.
Overall my takeaway from St Thomas was this: God did his job, making the Island stunningly beautiful, and then man came along and messed it up with terrible poverty and a high crime rate that make most of the island an undesirable place to be at night. Outside of duty free shopping, the biggest industry on the island appears to be pan-handling, at times this can get aggressive. While we were there (over 4 days) there were 5 reported assaults of different types at night. It's too bad because St. Thomas has a lot of natural beauty.
So, if you go, be sure to stop in at most restaurants that appear to be dives, take lots of pictures of natural beauty, buy duty free and take a trip up to Bluebeard's and eat some food. You're better off buying a bottle of rum at duty free and a 2-liter of Coca-Cola to drink in your room then you are heading out to a bar at night. You'll save money and it's a lot safer. Nothing good happens on St. Thomas after midnight.
It is stunningly beautiful (in parts) during the day though, especially when the sun is shining and the water is blue.
