Options for Blackbeards Castle & Beach?

[Dennislee2]

Hello,

 

Carnival offers a tour "Colonial St. Thomas & Recommended Shopping", but for $49 I'm not sure it's worth it. Ideally, we would like to go to the Sapphire Beach or Coki for 2-3 hours, a couple of stops for photo ops and then end up at Blackbeards castle so we can take our time walking down the 99 steps and do some shopping at the bottom.

 

No independant tours that we found actually end up at Blackbeards and let you finish at your leisure in downtown.

 

Any suggestions from anyone? Are we better finding a cab when we get there and do individually? There are 9 of us in the group.

 

Thanks for any advice. It's the last port I don't have something planned, so getting close to having a plan and being ready for our January trip!