Three days in Anguilla is not a rushed preview of a bigger trip: it is two full beach days at Shoal Bay East and Rendezvous Bay, then a third day that trades a fourth stretch of sand for a five-minute boat hop to Sandy Island. Prices run on the East Caribbean dollar, pegged at a flat EC$2.70 to US$1, and the tidy math is not a bargain signal. This is a British Overseas Territory, not a St Martin suburb, and it prices itself accordingly.

Two days on Anguilla is not a preview, it is the whole trip: Shoal Bay East, Meads Bay, and Rendezvous Bay, one proper beach-bar meal, and nothing else forced onto the schedule. Fly into Sint Maarten’s Princess Juliana Airport (SXM), then take the public ferry from Marigot to Blowing Point, roughly 20 to 25 minutes across open water. Anguilla is British, quiet by design, and firmly not part of St Martin, whatever the shared airport ride out of SXM might suggest.

Four days in Anguilla is enough to stop checking things off a list. Two beach days at Shoal Bay East and Rendezvous Bay, a boat hop out to Sandy Island, then a fourth day built around Scilly Cay, the Island Harbour lobster shack you summon by waving from the pier. Prices run on the East Caribbean dollar, pegged at a flat EC$2.70 to US$1 since 1976, so the math stays simple even when the total does not.

Five days in Anguilla is where the itinerary logic quietly flips. By day five you have already covered the two beaches that earn the hype, taken the boat out to a cay, and looped the island by car, so the honest move is to stop hunting for a fifth attraction and slow down instead. This route runs the same spine as the four-day trip through Scilly Cay’s wave-down lobster lunch, then hands day five back to whichever beach won you over.

Six days in Anguilla is two days past the point where the island still has new sights to hand out, and this itinerary says so upfront instead of padding the schedule to look busy. The first four days cover the headline beaches, the first offshore cay, and the island loop ending at Scilly Cay’s wave-down lobster lunch; day five trades Anguilla for a Sint Maarten day trip, and day six gives you nothing new on purpose.

Seven days in Anguilla is where the itinerary honestly runs out of new material well before day seven arrives. By day four you have covered both headline beaches, spent a morning on a cay, and looped the whole island by car in under an hour, so a full week does not buy a longer list of sights, it buys a second cay day, a St Martin ferry crossing for something entirely different, and enough slack to sit still on a beach you already like instead of chasing a sixth attraction that does not exist.