We'd been so busy this past winter that, by the time March rolled around, we hadn't yet planned any escape from our brutal New England winter. As we were already exhausted, the last thing we wanted was one of our usual day-here, day-there, check-everything-out trips. Then I recalled we had a standing im=nvitation from John Shoup, a long-time "friend of Hideaways," to use his rental villa in St. Croix. It had been 18 years since I'd been there, but I remembered it as a rather sedate island. The combination seemed irresistible—a nice villa on a quiet island with few "must-dos" or "must-sees."

Fall/Winter 2003