As I sat on the deck I could see the difference in Sint Marteen/ Saint Martin even as we approached. The island appeared more developed than some of the others with large colorful homes on the mountainside, built in such a way to take advantage of the views. We docked in Phillipsburg, which is the capital city of Sint Marteen, the Dutch side of the island. We had breakfast in deck to enjoy the view and sweet little elves left me small birthday gifts on the table. Giving birthday gifts on a trip is really impressive because it takes more planning than usual and the gifts must be small in size. We were able to get off the ship even before the scheduled time, which is a bit unusual. We wandered through the complex of brightly colored shops at the port until we found Hertz. I had rented us a car today to explore the island. Luckily, this island’s traffic laws dictate driving on the right side of the road (literally the right, not making a judgement on correctness). We picked up our little white Corolla, which thankfully came with a free GPS, and we headed to the town of Cul de Sac on the French side. It may at first seem like a GPS is not needed on such a small island, but the roads can be confusing. We arrived at the site of our first planned adventure of the day (kayaking to Pinel Island) but found the windy conditions not suited to kayaking. Plan B was to ride the small ferry to the nearby island, but it was broken down and despite several people working diligently to repair it, there was no way to know when it would run. So Plan C, which we devised in the moment, was to go to the next village of Grand Case and visit Grand Case Beach. So we hopped back in the car and we were off to Grand Case. Nothing seemed to be more than about 5 miles apart on this tiny island, and the 5 miles was only because of the winding roads. Grand Case turned out to be a small Caribbean village with a decidedly French flair. We found a parking place (not an easy task in this small village) and headed to the beach. We were not disappointed since this was the Caribbean side of the island. The view out to Pinel Island (on the Atlantic side) did not have this pristine beach or fabulous water. We lounged in the beach for a while, taking advantage of the warm, calm water with the smooth bottom. We reluctantly left the beach since we had more places to explore. On the way out of town we saw a small French Boulangerie and Pattiserie and stopped for a snack. We bought a baguette and several pastries, including one of the best pain au chocolat I’ve ever had. Euros are the currency of the island but US dollars are widely accepted as well.
The main road took us to Marigot next (the capital of the French side of the island). Again only about 5 miles away. This busy little town with a population of about 36,000 was like a little French town with a Caribbean flair, instead of the other way around. We drove around for a little while looking for a parking place. When we finally saw a car pulling out of a space near the marina we quickly snagged it. We walked along the waterfront so we could fully appreciate the spectacular harbor view. There were literally hundreds of boats scattered throughout the harbor. Most were medium to large sailboats, all were large enough to accommodate its inhabitants overnight, which seemed to be their purpose here in the harbor. Along the sea front there was a small open air market with traditional local Caribbean crafts. We also visited a high-end mall with glass and Palm trees giving it a modern, sophisticated feeling. Most of the stores were designer boutiques where the clerks greeted us with “bonjour “. We found a small gift shop where we bought adorable t-shirts (and the requisite souvenir magnet). After exploring a little bit of the town, we settled on a French Bistro overlooking the marina for lunch. The food was spectacular, and I mean seriously fabulous! The French bread was crusty outside and tender inside with a flavor that made you want to cry. We ordered pasta and the special of back steak and French fries and I’d go so far as to say the food was some of the best I’ve ever had any where. We were beyond delighted at the deliciousness of the food at this little bistro and it only served to elevate my opinion of St. Martin. A surprise to me was how many people here speak French. That may seem like an absurd thing to say on a French owned island, but Spanish and English are the dominant languages in the Caribbean, and the Dutch side of the island did not seem very different from most Caribbean islands. Our waitress explained the special with much effort and an extremely heavy French accent, and it seems for the French tourist this is the destination of choice when looking for a Caribbean vacation. Most of the signs were in French, as was our menu, but English versions were usually printed underneath. We returned to our car after lunch and headed toward Maho Beach, which was- of course- about 5 miles away and back on the Dutch side. Traffic began to get heavy as we neared the airport and the narrow roads were congested with traffic and often at a standstill. Once again on the Dutch side of the island, we made our way around the large, modern Princess Juliana International Airport to the famous beach. It was packed and we doubted if we would find parking, but we finally found a space only about a hundred yards away. Even as we approached the beach, a large airplane roared overhead. Christian had been looking forward to visiting this beach the entire trip and he quickly grabbed his gopro. Maho beach is situated just a few yards from the end of the airport runway. Large planes regularly land at this busy airport and as they prepare to land some of them feel almost like you could reach up and touch them they are so low overhead. We were not disappointed with at least 15 planes, both small and large, landed in the hour and a half we were there. In between planes we either walked the beach or enjoyed the spectacular water. The experience of the planes so close to us as they landed is not something that can be captured adequately on film or video. While we had seen quite a few you tube videos of it, nothing prepared us for how it felt as the powerful planes roared over us. Just before we left, there was also a plane taking off. When this happened, people would line up behind the fence of the airport and as the nearby jet would kick in its thrusters the people were all blown with hot air and hats and loose items were lost by those directly in its path. I only observed this phenomenon, I had no desire to participate. Because of the tales we had heard of traffic jams on the bridge that we would need to cross to return to Phillipsburg, we decided to get an earlier start than we had planned. Driving back around the airport and over the bridge proved to be a little challenging, but we were soon back in the hills of Phillipsburg. The next order of business would be to find a gas station to refill the car, gas on these islands runs about double what gas costs at home, but you really can’t drive that many miles in one day on an island with only 37 square miles of land. We finally found the car rental return lot and we hopped aboard a shuttle to return to the port. The shops were crawling with passengers doing some shopping before returning to the boat. We found a small European chocolate shop and couldn’t resist. While the shop was air-conditioned, as soon as we walked out with our purchases we could almost see them melting before our eyes. We picked up our pace to return to the ship in hopes of protecting our chocolate investment. We had to pause for a moment and watch the group of young boys energetically playing the steel drums. They were very talented and fun to watch, but alas, we had chocolate to protect.
Once onboard we showered and changed but then decided to take a short nap before dinner. Christian left us to nap while he went to enjoy his last Guy’s burger of the trip. We finally made it to dinner and spotted elliptical lady (actually our second spotting of the day). After dinner our waitstaff serenaded me with a lively rendition of “happy buRSday” and brought me a really delicious cake with raspberry filling topped with icing whipped into fluffy swirls.
Even after a nap we were too tired to be in the mood for any of the activities onboard that night. We stopped by the photo gallery and spent some time trying to find the pictures we had taken during the week. We rarely buy any of the pictures, but the photographers can be pretty insistent that we pose for pictures, so we usually do since we find it entertaining to look through the photo gallery. We are not only looking for our pictures, seeing all the other pictures is like people watching without ever being in danger of being caught staring. Of course, we may not be the ones with that idea. We walked up to one rack to find a lady we had never met holding our stack of pictures and looking through them. While we look at other people’s pictures, we don’t actually pick them up to peruse the whole stack. She quickly put them back, and we decided that the picture of us must be so fabulous that even other people consider buying them. (Yeah, right) we returned to our room to the much dreaded job of packing. The upside to this stage of packing was that since we were not flying home immediately, we did not have to consider whether we were staying within the airlines 50 pound per bag guideline. So after we had squeezed the majority of our belongings into the suitcases, we turned in. We laid in the dark and talked about how much fun we’d had at each place. This will sure,y make the “top 10 trips ever” list for all of us. We’ve never actually been on a vacation where we did not have to pull out our rain jackets even once! The wean towns perfect everyday. We have actually gotten pretty good at ignoring rain and having fun anyway, but it’s nice to have a trip where that skill was not needed. This would be a birthday I remember for a long time to come.
