Our top five beachside bars for relaxing with a cool drink and a good book

Ask any visitor and they’ll tell you: the best way to soak up the Cruz Bay’s unique vibe is with a fruity cocktail in one of the town’s many beach bars. But with so many to choose from, how do you pick where to go? Well, to help you decide, here’s our top five Cruz Bay beach bars…

• The Beach Bar
  The clue’s in the name, really… there’s nowhere better on the island for a post-snorkeling lunch, an afternoon snack or a cold beer as the sun sets. The bar menu is cheap and tasty and the frozen cocktails are incredible – particularly the mango colada!
• Woody’s Seafood Saloon.
  Sure, this place has a proper seafood restaurant as well, but it’s most famous as an informal beach hangout, offering fantastic snack food (shark bites, anyone?), cheap happy hour drinks and unrivaled after-dark fun every night of the week.
• Joe’s Rum Hut
  What’s in a name? Well, pretty much everything, it turns out. This place is exactly what you’d expect from a rum hut – a beachside, tin-roofed shack serving up wild Caribbean concoctions (mango mojitos!) all day, every day – so you can’t be disappointed.
• High Tide Bar
  Another superb beach bar disguised as a proper restaurant. But while you can always get great grilled seafood dishes (try the conch!), it’s also just a great seaside hangout with a good selection of beers and cocktails and unbeatable views of the ocean.
• The Tap Room.
  Okay, so it’s not exactly beachside – you can’t dip a toe in the sea here – but this is by far the best place for beer near the Cruz Bay coast. That’s because it’s the town’s only microbrewery, serving up cold beers on tap along with some great bar food.

This is just the beginning, of course: there are many other beach bars in Cruz Bay, and many more in Coral Bay on the other side of St. John. But we’ll let you discover those for yourself…