SXM Part 8 (Conclusion)

It’s not often that I hate, but I sure hate check-out days! We really packed a lot into this brief weeks reprieve from the arctic air back home. We both woke up feeling better, not great, but better! With coffee brewing we quietly slid open the hurricane shutters for the final time. It proved to be another beautiful sunrise at Nettle Bay Beach Club.









Pretty much the same morning routine as usual, except for the packing part, uggh! Why does repacking my suitcase never go as simply as when I first packed it? I had plenty of room left in my duffle on the way down, I buy just 1 shirt and now it doesn’t want to close without me sitting and kneeling on it. In between assaulting my duffle and cleaning up the villa we would take short walks out to the water’s edge, realizing we lucked out with our last minute villa at NBBC.







Check out wasn’t until 1100 hours, so we decided to stop where we were at with the cleaning and headed into Marigot for another great breakfast at Sarafina’s, we love this bakery! It’s funny, I drive extremely slow on the last day of vacation, as if that will really delay the inevitable. It was perhaps 0830 hours on this Saturday and finding a parking space in Marigot was a breeze. Finally, after a week of constant checking we see the fish markets shutters are open, let's window shop there first! We really wanted to cook our own fresh fish at the villa but the timing was just never right, too bad because the seafood looked fantastic this morning.












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Breakfast at Sarafina's was very good again, this time I tried a couple of their small sandwiches that were just what the doctor ordered!

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We were fat and happy and back at the villa with plenty of time to finish packing up. Owner Marie showed up promptly at 1100 hours and the check out process was eazy peazy! FYI, as I mentioned before, we've had great experience in the past renting through VRBO, but this was our first foreign country using them. The entire process of renting this villa was unlike any before i.e. check-in and out with owner in the villa, but it worked out great and our deposit was quickly returned to us via PayPal, merci beaucoup Marie!! Once we bid NBBC farewell we drove towards the airport. Our flight was at 1500 and our car needed to be turned in at 1300 hours, great we had time for some more exploring. We saw a sign for Mullet Bay and made a quick turn into the parking lot. I know we shouldn't leave anything valuable in the car, but WHAT THE HECK!! We took a short stroll along the lovely beach covered in cloud covered. The beach is nice, but man what a lot of chairs and umbrellas!!

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After our barefoot stroll we still had a little time so we stopped at Maho to look around. My guess is we lucked out and found a primo parking space nice and close! This looked like a fun place to spend a couple hours at sunset, unfortunately we missed that opportunity. Quite the drunkfest going on here, I mean that in a good way, people were really enjoying themselves. We watched a few flights coming and going and when we saw our American flight give everyone a buzz cut we figured it was time to go, boo!

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So....how was our first visit to St Martin? Fantastic! If you've read my many reports thank you! you know exactly what we accomplished in one short week. Not really sure what our preconceived notions were, but the island was different from our normal stomping grounds in the USVI/BVI. I really can't make a fair comparison between them, they are uniquely different. The people of St Martin were fantastic, not one truly bad experience. The food was outstanding as we heard it would be. The long beaches and abundant beach bars were incredible. There is so much to see and do here that we must return with our daughter, who we missed dearly on this trip! A big Thank You to all of you on TTOL who helped with planning our most recent marvelous adventure!!

To be continued....somewhere!<img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Cheers.gif" alt="" />