Sand Castle on the Beach

The Hotel

Sand Castle on the Beach occupies a long, slim parcel of beachfront on Veteran's Shore Drive, a mile south of the town of Frederiksted at the western tip of St. Croix. The west coast is the island's quiet half, Frederiksted is the smaller of the two towns, the cruise pier sees roughly a quarter of the Christiansted day-tripper traffic, and the long flat beach that runs south of the town is the only address in the U.S. Virgin Islands where the sun sets directly over the open Caribbean. Sand Castle has occupied the same site since the late 1970s; the property has been owned, run and progressively renovated by the same family-anchored ownership group for the last twenty-plus years, and it is recognised as the most explicitly LGBTQ-welcoming hotel in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The 21 rooms are spread across five categories, all of them on the beachfront line and most of them with direct sand access from the patio or terrace. The basic room is the Queen Studio (310 square feet, queen bed, small kitchenette, private terrace, the cheaper booking); above that are the King Studios with the larger sea-facing balcony, one-bedroom suites with a separate sitting room and a full kitchen, the Beachfront Villas (one- and two-bedroom freestanding units with private decks), and the larger two-bedroom suite that takes a group of four. The interiors are tile floors and white walls, ceiling fans and air conditioning, local-artist watercolours on the walls, unfussy, well-built, and recently re-done in the bathrooms and the kitchenette finishes.

The beach is the entire proposition. A 400-foot stretch of soft white sand, calm shore-break, a coral reef about 100 metres offshore that provides good light snorkeling, and the direct west-facing view that delivers the sunset every evening of the year. The hotel runs two oceanfront swimming pools (a quiet pool at the south end of the property and a livelier pool with the swim-up bar at the north end), complimentary kayaks and snorkel gear, and a beach pavilion that doubles as the wedding venue. The Pier, Frederiksted's working cruise pier, is a 10-minute walk north and one of the better shore-dive entries on the island; the operators in town will arrange a boat dive on Frederiksted Pier's resident seahorses, eagle rays and octopus.

Dining is the on-property Beach Side Café, an open-air restaurant on a deck above the sand, breakfast and lunch every day, dinner three nights a week in season, with the local-catch fish, conch and Cruzan-rum cocktail programme that the west-coast establishments do well. The week's pattern is usually two or three on-property dinners and the rest of the week walking 10 minutes north into Frederiksted for the small dining scene there (Polly's at the Pier, Lost Dog Pub, Turtles Deli for daytime). Service is the central strength: a small staff, mostly long-tenured, and a checking-in process at the front desk that feels less like a hotel and more like arriving at a friend's house, the explicit positioning of the property is that everyone is welcome, and the staff lives it.

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