Of the three siblings that make up the U.S. Virgin Islands, St. Croix is the middle child—often overlooked and a little wild. Its nightlife and shopping may be outdone by St. Thomas and its natural spaces trumped by St. John’s national park. But St. Croix doesn’t have Thomas’s cruise-ship crowds or John’s access issues, either. One of the island’s largest towns, Christiansted, has crowd-free beaches and some of the Caribbean’s best diving to go along with its18th- and 19th-century Danish architecture. The island’s cruise-ship port, Frederiksted, is also its most historic spot, where slaves from St. Croix’s sugar plantations were educated and eventually granted freedom in 1848. That act soon spread throughout the Caribbean and led the way for the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, proving that sibling rivalries can turn into brotherly love.