Mike Roberts

2025 Website Refresh and Migration

2025-11-19T00:00:00Z

I’ve had a personal website for nearly 30 years, and a personal blog for nearly 25. For the last 15 years or so I’ve used Wordpress to host both, but for various reasons I decided it was time for a change.

The new world

I’ve used a couple of “static site generators” for my work sites, and this one uses a similar tool - Eleventy. I chose Eleventy partly because it’s popular in some of the online communities I frequent these days, and also because it’s implemented in JavaScript - a language that I’ve become fairly familiar with of late.

The site is hosted on AWS using CloudFront and S3, and deployed with CDK, since I’m very familiar with doing this. :)

Migration process

The migration is complete as of November 2025, but I actually started this process about a year ago.

At that time I downloaded an export of my Wordpress site source, and also scraped the rendered version of the site (I think with SiteSucker, but it might have been something else). I created the AWS hosting at that time, uploaded the scraped version to AWS, and switched over DNS.

That got me off of Wordpress hosting but now I couldn't make any changes, plus also the rendered version had all kinds of Wordpress gunk in it. So the migration was only half complete.

I knew there were a bunch of tools out there that could help in the move from Wordpress to Eleventy but since I just got a bunch of Claude Code on the web credits this month I decided to let an LLM take a swing at it. I created a GitHub repo containing both the Wordpress export, and rendered site, told Claude I wanted to use Eleventy and keep all my links working, and let it go.

The first pass - which didn't take Claude long, just a few minutes - actually did the bulk of the migration work pretty successfully and saved me a huge amount of time setting the base system up, and migrating all my posts. I knew I was hosting in CloudFront, and so I'd also told Claude to extend the existing CloudFront function to handle redirects.

There was really only one miss, which is Eleventy's (in)famous off-by-one problem for dates. Given some direction Claude fixed that.

Apart from that there were a bunch of iterations on mostly styling and navigation changes - which weren't so much migration as me wanting to change things up with the new system.

Maybe now I have a new site I'll post more. :)

Feeds are working of course, and there even category feeds. See here

If you see any problems or have any questions the drop me a line, or contact me at @mikebroberts@hachyderm.io on Mastodon, or at @mikebroberts.com on BlueSky.

What is the steady state of LLMs and software development?

2025-08-19T00:00:00Z

Originally posted on my LinkedIn page.

In my last AI-related post I described my angst about how the possibly massive impact of GenAI on software development is also so divisive in the industry. This post is different - if GenAI is going to write a lot of the software we write, how does that become a sustainable part of our process / Software Development Lifecycle? In other words, what's the steady state we're tending to?

This has come to my mind because of a few things. On one hand there's the discussion of disposable vs durable software, which both Charity Majors (here) and Ross Pettit (here) have written about. On the other there are the many anecdotal reports I hear of engineers having to review thousand-line changes on the regular - mostly filled with LLM-generated code.

The problem: validation

Engineering teams are faced with tricky choices when they use LLM-generated code for a production application. Should they validate the code the LLM has generated, and if so, how?

These questions aren't new - any industrial software team needs to wrangle with whether they perform code review, and how much and what type of testing they perform. But there is significantly different context when an LLM is in play, e.g.

An LLM can generate code far faster than a human. So when human review is required the proportion of an engineer's work is going to be more skewed to "review" than "write"
An LLM may generate code that is beyond the knowledge of a team member to provide effective review on
For human-generated code there's already been a review-cycle within the developer's own head, whereas an LLM is hallucinating all-the-time (it's just that sometimes the hallucinations are useful).
Engineer-written automated tests usually test at various levels of the code base - e.g. external "integration" tests vs. "unit" tests that thoroughly cover edge cases of domain logic. But when an LLM has designed and written the complete internal design of a codebase an engineer may not know where best to write unit tests, requiring slower integration tests to cover more business logic.

Disposable vs Durable

For "disposable" software we may not care too much about these questions - we can just throw something into production and see if it works. If it does, great, if not then get the LLM to fix it. Or just not worry. YOLO.

Frankly I'm not worried about what happens with the process around disposable software, it will work its way out. I know some people think that all software is going to become disposable and ... well, I don't agree. I would really rather my bank balance doesn't spontaneously drop to zero, nor all air-traffic-control systems in the world stop working. Call me old fashioned if you like.

My concern is what are we doing with "durable" software, a subset of which is "anything that's involved with the movement of money". Which is ... quite a lot of the software in the world.

For durable software we need to make sure that the system is (a) acting as intended at the time it is specified, (b) continues to act that way as changes are made over time, and (c) doesn't cost the world to change. I know, I've already lost the YOLOers with these quaintly boring concepts.

Two solutions

Personally, I only currently see two reasonable possible steady states for "durable" applications or components:

A - LLMs generate and maintain all the code, and humans only perform external system testing. The internal design and implementation is a black-box.

B - LLMs can be used as a tool, but all code must continue to be reviewed and understood by human members of the team.

(A) is a super interesting theory. Taken to its logical conclusion it means we no longer care about things like design, underlying language, code duplication, etc. As long as the code works in the functional and non-functional ways required, then it's valid. It's also a very fast way of building software, absolutely fitting with everything I see about agent swarms, and the like.

Unfortunately I just don't believe it's realistic, for durable software specifically. I think an LLM can write code; I'm yet to be convinced about all the other things that go into building software, like security, performance, etc. Maybe we can write code in small enough components that each component works this way, and humans join them all together ... but that seems a stretch. Also, there's always logic in the joins, and who writes that logic? I've seen this game of software pinball before.

If (A) does come to pass then by far the most valuable people on a software team are those that can write effective automated integration tests. Because we're going to need A LOT of them. So all you QA people, get ready!

(B) means that we're basically using an LLM like a super-charged IDE. We can write code faster, but at the end of the day the SDLC remains unchanged. We're going to need to make sure senior engineers aren't burned out just reviewing 10,000 line PRs all day, but that's definitely possible with better use of agentic LLM rules and some team culture guidelines. Personally, I suspect this is where we are headed, but I don't see how this fits into what people are saying about "10X improvement in development speed".

My best guess is that today many companies aren't settling on either of these strategies. I can't help but imagine, therefore, that the amount of unreviewed, untested, barely maintainable code being shipped today for durable systems is sky rocketing. I know one answer is "But LLMs will solve that down the road", and if so I look forward to being proven wrong. Or more than likely using an LLM, and my own experience, to fix the mess.

My GenAI existential crisis

2025-07-19T00:00:00Z

Originally posted on my LinkedIn page.

I'm having something of an existential-crisis this week re: Gen AI in software development. I’ve never seen something, that possibly has such huge consequence, be so absolutely divisive among people I respect and am friends with.

Sure, Emacs vs Vi; tabs vs spaces, those were also big fights, but those things never had the potential to upend the entire industry. And if my pro-Gen AI friends are right, it will. And if my anti-Gen AI friends are right, it’s a flash-in-the-pan that’s ethically disgusting, and doing real harm.

But here's a problem: if software development is to be 10 to 100 times faster (which is what some people I respect say [1]), then no matter of concern about the ethics is going to matter, since capitalism will (unfortunately) win. In that scenario devs who don't want to, or can't, use Gen AI will be the economic equivalent of hobbyists. [2]

So as someone who still wants a job in software for the next 10 - 20 years I find myself forced to work with GenAI, if nothing else as a hedge. But I find this motivation troubling.

FWIW, I do think GenAI is a useful tool, but I feel the revolutionary aspects of it - at least for long-term maintainable software - are unproven. I suspect in good hands it will be evolutionary and in bad hands leave a mess for others to cleanup later. I also think at some point that the GenAI vendors will start charging what this stuff actually costs and make the case for it far less certain.

But these are just educated guesses, and if I'm wrong where does that leave me down the road?

I know how this sounds - in the software industry we've heard so many cult-like pronouncements of "trends that you have to jump on or be left behind" - Web3 / blockchain, the metaverse, model driven development, etc. And of course none of those DID overhaul the industry. What's different to me this time is how many people I know saying "this IS the thing".

Optimistically, I think the skills I (and other developers) have will be easily transferable, if necessary, once all of this has settled down. And further, my strategy at the moment is to try to use GenAI every week, to try to learn how to use it better, but not to rely on it.

Even if this isn't the biggest change in software in decades, it's certainly the biggest argument. I wish we could get back to disagreeing about whitespace - there was a lot less riding on that.

[1] https://lnkd.in/eti8StCa

[2] It would be nice to say that they were artisans, but the value of software is judged on what it does, not what it looks like or how it's made. If a GenAI-using company can end up writing some software that is functionally identical to the same software written by a non GenAI shop, and sell it, sustainably, for 5-10% the price, I can't see many people buying the non GenAI version.

Visiting St John, US Virgin Islands

2023-02-25T00:00:00Z

One thing my wife and I like to do every year in the middle of winter is go on vacation somewhere warm and sunny. Because we live on the east coast of the United States we usually go to the Caribbean, which can be easily reached via a 4 hour flight from our home in New York. We’ve been lucky enough to visit a few islands over the years, but the one we keep going back to is St John, in the US Virgin Islands (USVIs). Since I just finished my fifth trip to the island I thought I’d share some thoughts (and some of my photos from over the years) of one of my favorite places on Earth.

View from Caneel Hill

What is St John?

St John is the smallest of the three main islands in the USVIs. The USVIs are pretty much “in the middle” of the Caribbean - north-west of most of the smaller islands, but south-east of Cuba and the Bahamas. The USVIs are a territory of the US - they are officially part of the country of the United States, under US federal control, but (like Puerto Rico) don’t have statehood.

St John is close - about a 20 minute boat ride - to St Thomas, the capital of the USVIs. St Thomas is a major cruise port, and also has the main airport of the islands. Despite the geographical proximity of the two islands they feel completely different. St John is much quieter, but still has plenty to do. Part of the reason it’s quieter is because the sea and air ports are over in St Thomas, but partly it’s because half of St John is a federal national park.

St John is about 10 miles long and 4 miles across, so it’s pretty small. But in that small area it has an incredible amount of variety - beautiful beaches, breathtaking walks through mountainous rainforest, history, lovely people, and great restaurants and bars.

And one other thing: St John is not St John's - that's a different place in the Caribbean. :)

Why do I enjoy St John so much?

Here’s what I like from a sunny vacation - excellent beach time, interesting places to go walking, good food and drink. St John has the best of all three of these things that I’ve come across in the Caribbean.

St John beaches are beautiful and relatively quiet. I’ve never had a beach to myself there, quite, but I’ve also never had a problem getting a shady spot. The bigger beaches have car parking / food / drink / chair hire / etc. St John isn't really a “sceney” place - it doesn’t have the “cachet” of more “fashionable” islands (*cough* St Barts *cough*), so you won't have big beach parties or groups of people wanting to be admired. Thank goodness.

Honeymoon Beach

St John’s beaches and bays are also renowned for their snorkeling. I’m a weak swimmer so I don’t typically snorkel that much, but this year I plucked up some courage (with the help of a “noodle” float) and got out in the sea. Turtles, rays, and of course many varieties of fish are easily visible.

If all I wanted was beaches though there are plenty of other islands. But another aspect to St John is the walking / hiking. Because half of St John is a national park there are well tended trails in abundance. None of them are that long - you’re unlikely to go on a 15 mile epic hike there - but most of them have a good amount of elevation change through wonderful nature as well as interesting ruins to look at, and spectacular views.

The Ram Head trail

And finally the food and drink. We’ve always stayed in Cruz Bay - the main town on the island where people typically arrive. Cruz Bay has an embarrassment of good restaurants and places to drink considering that it’s on an island of only 5000 permanent residents. From “reasonably high end” - think 3 course prix fixe style - to bars on the beach where you can sip on a fruity cocktail with your feet in the sea.

Cocktails at the Rum Hut - one of my favorite ways to spend happy hour

What does a week in St John look like?

This year Sara and I went to St John with friends for the first time. The first week - while everyone was there - was something of a “St John Greatest Hits”. Here’s what we got up to.

Day 1 - Arrive

We got to St John the way that most people do - fly to St Thomas, then get a ferry from St Thomas to Cruz Bay. At present there are 3 different passenger ferries running between the two islands. The most frequent runs every hour and takes 20 mins, but it requires a longer drive across St Thomas. Our preferred option - if the timing works out - is to get the Crown Bay ferry which is a 5 min taxi ride from the airport, and then 45 mins on the boat across to St John.

We usually end up arriving late afternoon, and check in to our accommodation. We’ve always stayed walking distance from the center of Cruz Bay, so once we’ve unpacked we’ll head back into town.

Our first night we usually like to be pretty chill, so this time we took our friends to one of the bars along the small beach next to the ferry port. The Beach Bar is a classic Cruz Bay dive-ey place, and it’s often our first and last stop of a vacation. Next door, Rum Hut has better drinks and food though.

The beach-bar-beach at Cruz Bay

Day 2 - Walk to Honeymoon Beach

My favorite of the north shore beaches is Honeymoon Beach (see first photo above). It’s not the biggest, but it’s usually the quietest beach that also has concessions - food, drink, and chairs for rent. This year the food and drink were especially good, although everything was a touch more expensive than the other beaches.

I love Honeymoon for two reasons - it’s super chill, and because of how we get there … which is to walk into “downtown” Cruz Bay, then 1 mile through the national park along the Lind Point trail. For whatever reason most people don’t know that this is possible! But it’s just a beautiful short walk along a ridge line running along the coast. At one point the trail splits - we took the very-slightly-more-strenuous route (the “upper” trail) on the way to the beach to visit the viewpoint overlooking Cruz Bay.

View of Cruz Bay from Lind Point trail viewpoint

After a few hours reading / swimming / snorkeling / just listening to the waves and looking at the boats in the bay it was time to head back, again along the Lind Point trail. After getting “home” and showering off the sunscreen and sand we headed back into town . We usually like to go to a nicer restaurant on our second night. Our favorite restaurant the last three times we’ve been to St John has been Extra Virgin, and so we’d made a reservation to eat there on the second night of this trip. Most St John restaurants do “modern american” style cuisine, but with a heavy caribbean element. Expect plenty of local fish, plus pasta, etc.

Day 3 - Reef Bay Hike

As I’ve mentioned already, half of St John is a federal national park, run by the very same organization of park rangers that work in Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, etc. In St John the National Park Service works hand in hand with the non-profit organization “Friends of Virgin Island National Park”. One of the things that “Friends of” do is run various activities - from guided hikes to educational seminars. Our absolute favorite of these activities is the Reef Bay Guided Hike.

Nice valley. Let's walk down it, shall we?

The hike itself starts pretty much right in the middle of the island, several hundred feet above sea level. It winds its way down a long, forested, valley to the sea. Along the way are ruins, centuries-old stone carvings, and all kinds of nature. The Guided Hike is wonderful way to do this journey for 3 reasons:

1 - “Friends of” organize transport to the trailhead - you just need to get to Cruz Bay.

2 - The guides are super knowledgeable and friendly - you’ll learn a lot about both the nature and history related to the walk.

Really old carvings

3 - Instead of having to walk back up the valley you get picked up by a boat at the end! The boat drops you back in Cruz Bay.

So this is the point where we see the dinosaurs, right?

If you want to do this hike then book ahead early - it typically sells out a few weeks ahead of time during high season.

On returning to Cruz Bay we engaged in a traditional Caribbean activity - happy hour! There’s something special about sitting at a beach bar, sipping on a cocktail, at 4 o’clock in the afternoon on a weekday, while all your friends are slaving away at work somewhere cold. Happy hour can easily slide into an early dinner, followed by an early night after a full day.

Did someone say happy hour? Taking a load off at High Tide.

Day 4 - Boat trip & Lime Out

New to us this year was chartering a boat for the day. There are a mind-boggling number of options for who to do this with. We went with Captain Jug Charters - with the namesake captain, his able colleague Becca, and their boat JuggerKnot. They were PHENOMENAL and I very highly recommend them.

Our boat for the day

We did a full-day charter - from about 9am until 5pm. During this time we circumnavigated the island, with plenty of commentary from Jug and Becca; snorkeled in three different spots; and also visited one of the most unique bars in the world - Lime Out. Depending on what you want a charter will adapt the itinerary, but this worked well for us.

Most of our gang, plus Captain Jug and Becca

First - the snorkeling. A good charter will know where to go for good snorkeling according to the weather conditions, and our group had a breathtaking time. As I mentioned earlier though - I’m a weak swimmer and I hate being out of my depth. But Jug got in the sea with me and helped me relax and get used to using a “noodle” float, the snorkel and mask, plus helped me with my first spots - a couple of turtles, and a starfish. The hour doing this set me up for the rest of the trip.

Our first snorkel was at Maho bay, which is also home of one the most popular north shore beaches. Maho is known for two things - calm seas, and turtles. Even if you’re not doing a boat trip I recommend visiting Maho by road for snorkeling.

So then, Lime Out. It’s a swim-up taco bar in the middle of a bay. You can only get there by boat. Yes, it’s ridiculous. And yes, it’s brilliant. At Jug and Becca’s superlative suggestion we actually only had cocktails at the bar itself, then ate the tacos back on the boat. Becca put our taco order through before we got there, and they had magically appeared back on the boat after we’d got back from our cocktails.

Lime Out

The bar itself is a barge, basically. You don’t go inside, but it has seats in the water around the edge or (much more fun) has floating “lily pad rings” where 6 people can sit facing each other while sitting in the sea. You then shout your order to the bar staff on the barge, and they then push your drinks / etc. across the water on a float. Genius. The cocktails were great, the experience was absurdly fun, the tacos were surprisingly good, and I thoroughly recommend it.

The most ridiculous place I've ever drunk a well made cocktail

After a full day at sea we eventually got back to our villa to shower, and then had a lovely light meal at Longboard.

Great boat trip. Huge success.

Day 5 - A day in town

After a couple of busy days, day 5 was much more relaxed. We spent it walking around town, a bit of light shopping, plus some obligatory food and drinks.

Some highlights:

We had lunch at The Tap Room - home of St John Brewers, who actually brew some great beer on premises. Plus they make some good pizza.
The Tap Room is in Mongoose Junction - small “mall”, or at least St John’s take on one. It’s actually really nicely done, with a bunch of small shops, etc., architected in a fun way. Places we particularly like in Mongoose Junction are Scoops - for ice cream, and Bajo el Sol - for art. There’s also a small deli which is good for getting sandwiches before heading to the beach, and Greengos - a Mexican bar / restaurant. Plus lots of shops for clothes and souvenirs.
Mid afternoon we like to have a coffee, but we also like ice cream, and perhaps a first cocktail of the day. So why not have all three in one? Cruz Bay Landing makes a good coffee cocktail. Sit at one of their tables, or get one to go.
My favorite spot to let two or three hours slide by is underneath the tree on the beach outside High Tide, next to the ferry. Yes, that’s weirdly specific. But I challenge you to pull up an Adirondack chair on the sand, have a couple of beers, and watch the world go by from there, and not have a grin on your face.
After that we walked the 50 feet or so along the beach back to Rum Hut to have some early dinner, before heading back to our villa to play some card games.

Day 6 - Cinnamon Bay

February in St John usually has excellent weather. About 80 degrees fahrenheit / 27 celsius, occasional showers that usually stop after 10 mins (but give great rainbows while they last), and some wind to take the heat off. And that weather usually leads to calm seas on the north shore beaches. But for the first time since we’ve been going there there was a marine warning on the morning of day 6, with high waves.

Our group was unperturbed though, so we headed to Cinnamon Bay. Cinnamon is particularly interesting for a couple of reasons. Firstly there’s a well-loved campground there. We’ve never stayed there, but have heard good things. Second, there are a couple of good walks. One is short and flat, but it goes through ruins and has lots of useful signs. The other goes up the hills into the forest, and there’s a spur trail to a particularly good ruin with great views at America Hill.

Which is all well and good, but we stuck to the beach. :) I was happy sitting on the sand with a book, while the others played in the waves.

Big Surf, St John style (at Cinnamon Bay beach)

We like Cinnamon a lot. Because of the campsite it’s very down to earth, even for St John.

This was, amazingly, the first day where we needed to get ourselves to somewhere other than just Cruz Bay, so we took a taxi. I talk more about taxis later.

For the evening we went to our second meal that we had a reservation for - Zozo’s. Zozo’s is currently located at the site of the former Caneel Bay Resort (Zozo's has had a few homes in its history.) Caneel Bay Resort used to be one of the fanciest places on the island to stay, but it was destroyed by hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017. For reasons that are far too long and complicated to get into here, it hasn’t (yet) been rebuilt, and it might never be. Zozo’s is the only thing that’s been put back together. One of the reasons the resort was so special (we never stayed there) was because, even for St John, it’s in a breathtakingly beautiful spot. So dinner at Zozo’s - especially if you get there around sunset - is spectacular. We felt the food didn’t quite live up to the location this year, but it’s still worth a visit.

Zozo's restaurant

The view from our table

Day 7 - Salt Pond Beach and Ram Head

This was the last full day for our friends who were staying for a week. We headed to the opposite end of the island from Cruz Bay for one of my favorite little walks in the world - Ram Head, plus the great beach at Salt Pond.

There are some ... strange ... cacti on the walk to Ram Head

Getting out to this part of the island is more tricky. The easiest way is if you’ve rented a car, but we hadn’t done that. So we did something new for us and took The Bus. Yes, St John has a bus! It goes from Cruz Bay to Salt Pond and runs … sometimes? Officially it’s every hour, but on this day it was every other hour. But it got us where we needed and was cheap - $1 each way per person.

Salt Pond is on the south shore, so while the north shore beaches were still getting pounded with high waves, Salt Pond beach was calm, with great snorkeling. Salt Pond beach doesn’t have any concessions though - one toilet is the only comfort you get!

"Going rustic" at South Pond beach

While I like the beach at Salt Pond, the real highlight for me is the hike to Ram Head. It’s not long - only about a mile and a half each way, but there are still a bunch of different things to see, and the view from the end is gobsmacking. A lot of the walk is not under trees - so make sure to either go early, or to be considerate of the sun.

Looking out from Ram Head

To get to Salt Pond you go through the only other “town” on the island - Coral Bay. Which is really a small village. If we’d had a car we’d have stopped in Coral Bay on the way back, and gone to Skinny Legs - a fun dive bar that makes a good burger. But because we were using the bus we headed straight back to Cruz Bay.

Our final dinner as a group of 6 was at 1864 (named after 18 & 64 - the latitude and longitude of St John). 1864 is the “sister” restaurant of Extra Virgin - where we'd gone on day two - so it has a similar vibe, but slightly more chilled, and with a different menu.

1864 has a great space, and like most restaurants on St John doesn't believe in windows

The following morning the first of our friends got back on the Crown Bay ferry to start their journey home.

And that’s a week on St John!

Other notable recommendations

While we tried to fit all the “greatest hits” into one week we couldn’t cover everything we like in St John, so here are some other places to consider if you visit.

Beaches:

Trunk Bay is the other big north shore beach I haven’t covered. It’s huge, and has an interesting snorkel “underwater trail” - which has seen better days but is still worth a visit. On the road before you get to Trunk Bay is a great overlook which is worth stopping at.

Trunk Bay

Brown Bay beach & trail is an out-of-the-way spot, so is always quiet. No concessions or toilet, but great to get away from the "huge crowds" (hahahaha) of St John.

Walks:

The Caneel Hill trail is a steep walk that starts right in Cruz Bay next to Mongoose Junction. At the top there’s a viewing platform with, yes, fantastic views (see the top of this article). From there you can walk further and end up on the north shore road or (my preference) reverse course for about a quarter mile then branch off and land up at Honeymoon Beach.

Bars and Restaurants:

The Terrace is the other of the “fancy 3” restaurants we’ve been to, along with Extra Virgin and Zozo’s. Snag a balcony table for sunset if you can, but you'll need to make a reservation.

The Windmill Bar is a couple of miles outside of town, and is a wonderful happy hour spot. Great views, good local music. Taxis will take you there and back. Check out their web cam!

Happy Hour at the Windmill Bar

To take a break from the beach bar vibe head to The Wine Store - which is what it says, but has tables and serves wine by the glass along with small bites. Great for when you want to ease back on the rich food a little. It’s a little tough to find, it’s tucked away behind all of the “Wharfside” places like Rum Hut. It’s also under new ownership as of a few months ago, and I preferred it this time to when we went previously.

New bars and restaurants are always opening. Our find of this trip was The Refinery - a small rum cocktail bar which had only been open two weeks when we went. While it’s among a group of dive bars (it’s next to Woody’s, e.g.), it’s actually comparatively classy.

Lovango Rum Bar is next to The Terrace, and above Drink. It can be noisy, but if you catch them when it’s not too loud it’s worth it for a great cocktail and tasty pizza.

Lovango Rum Bar

Other:

If you'd like to tour the island on land rather than by boat I recommend Jenn's tours. We got a full-day tour with her 3 years' ago on our third trip to St John, and she certainly showed us a bunch of places we hadn't seen before.

There are a lot of places that will rent you snorkel gear. We went to Beach Bum on our most recent visit (they're right by the ferry dock) and they were super helpful. One of my friends discovered prescription-lens snorkel goggles that he could rent, and he had a snorkeling epiphany.

My favorite sunset spot in Cruz Bay is a 5 / 10 min walk from the beach bars at Frank Bay (go towards the Gallows Point resort and keep going). You can sit on the wall, listen to the waves, and watch the sun go down. If you go earlier then pop in at the gallery of Elaine Estern right behind the beach.

Sunset at Frank Bay

The best grocery store on the island is Starfish Market, at the Marketplace. It’s not the nicest walk to get to if you don’t have a car, but worth the walk is Papaya Cafe. It’s a fun second-hand bookstore, but the real draw is the iced Vietnamese coffee - tasty!

A good guide book is local resident Gerald Singer's St John: Off the beaten track. (you can also find it on Amazon). I used to have a different favorite book, but it hasn't been updated in a few years - make sure you get something that's been updated in at least the last two or three years.

How to get there / where to stay / how to get around

As I mentioned earlier we’ve always flown to St Thomas, and got the passenger ferry to St John. If you are chartering a boat for a week that’s an option too. If you’re on a cruise that stops at St Thomas you can do day trips to St John.

St John doesn’t really have many hotels. It has one “big” resort - The Westin - but we’ve never visited it, let alone stayed, so I can’t really comment. There are a few other smaller resorts, but I think those are mostly timeshare places that people rent out. I’m not sure though since I’ve never been to them!

Putting my feet up at Garden by the Sea

What we’ve done on our previous 4 visits is stayed at Garden by the Sea - a wonderful “real” bed-and-breakfast that’s a 5 - 10 min walk from the center of Cruz Bay. It’s small (only 3 rooms), but is perfect for us. If you go then say hi to Eileen and John for me! This year though - because we had a group - we rented an apartment / villa, which seems to be what most people who visit St John do. We found the places on Airbnb / VRBO, but then I booked directly with the owners. That’s a bit of a risk but St John is small enough that I was willing to take it for the discount (10 - 20%).

View from our villa - "Amerigo" - that's St Thomas in the distance

We’ve always stayed close enough to the center of Cruz Bay that our typical way of getting around is walking into “town”, and then if we want to get out of town then we get a “taxi”. I put quotations around taxi because they’re a little different! St John taxis, like other places in the caribbean, are somewhere between a normal taxi and a bus. Like a taxi they’re not on a schedule - you can hail them or call for them - but like a bus they seat more people than a taxi, and you’ll usually be riding with strangers.

St John taxis have fixed rates according to where you are going, and are charged per person. Taxis will happily take you to any of the north shore beaches, or places close to Cruz Bay, but getting out to Coral Bay or further might be more problematic for you.

Most people who visit St John will rent a car. Sometimes we do too, but not always (we haven’t at all for our last two trips), and not for the whole time we’re there - partly because we drive very rarely anyway, and St John roads are “interesting” - twisty and with sudden changes of incline. Most rental cars on the island are Jeep Wranglers - these are especially useful for parking on sides of roads which may have a sudden drop-off. There aren’t any major rental chains on St John - instead there are lots of small companies. Cars also tend to get booked up well in advance, and if you don’t have your own car insurance get ready to figure out how to make that work! For your first trip I recommend you get a car so you can explore, at least for some of the time you’re there.

You can also rent a car on St Thomas - which does have major chains - and then get the car ferry over to St John. Plenty of people do this but I’ve heard enough bad stories that I wouldn’t recommend it.

My happy place

I’m sure we’ll go to different Caribbean islands again, and visit places in Central America, but I love St John. Because it’s officially “in the United States” it’s very easy for us from a practical point of view, but more than that it has all the wonderful things I’ve described here. I look forward to seeing how it changes, and doesn’t, over the coming years.

Farewell St John! See you next time!

My thanks to Nick Carr who wrote a similar post to this 11 years ago which got me interested in St John.

2018 Theatre in review

2019-01-01T00:00:00Z

2018 was quite a year for me for theatre. Starting slowly, it really ramped up. An amazing variety of shows, even though most of what I saw were plays. I feel very lucky to live in New York and to be able to see such great works of creativity.

By the numbers I saw 43 productions — 14 were NYC Broadway, 27 NYC Off Broadway, and 2 out of New York. I saw 33 plays, 5 musicals, and 5 "other" — comedy productions, immersive theatre (Then She Fell), and Bruce Springsteen's scripted concert / monologue.

I now see far more theatre than movies, and so I get to the point of having "opinions" about who and what are standout. And so my totally personal view of "bests" for the year is as follows (this is 2018 as I saw them, nothing about seasons or when things opened / closed)

Best new play, and my #1 show of the year: The Jungle

Best new play runner-up: The Ferryman

Best revival of a play: Angels in America

Best revival of a play runner-up: Travesties

Best new musical: Twelfth Night (The Public) (I know, it sounds weird, but this was a total reimagining, with new music, and was amazing)

Best revival of a musical: My Fair Lady

Best "other": Bruce Springsteen on Broadway

Best actor: Brian Cranston (Network)

Best actress: Carey Mulligan (Girls and Boys)

Best actor runner-up: Billy Crudup (Harry Clarke)

Best actress runner-up: Glenda Jackson (Three Tall Women)

Best production / staging / tech: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child