Smooth uncrowded US Air from Nashville through Charlotte to SXM on Feb 23. Flew on USAir Miles for 30,000 round trip per person!!!! Quick through customs and getting luggage; Unity waiting for us and quickly got a nice Corolla. Stopped at Le Gourmet Marche for just a few staples (basic food group of Vodka, tonic & lime + Caribs + Canadian Club and cheese, bread, orange juice and cran juice!!). Nearly no traffic on Airport Rd., up & over the hill and though town over to Orient Village.

We found yellow/green Topazi apartments which are next to red brick Palm Court hotel, but we were too early to meet Marion to get into the apartment. So we rode around past stores & restaurants in Orient Village and past beach bars, as we have never stayed there. Topazi is such a cute apartment with nicely equipped little kitchen, very comfortable bed, Dish network and good internet. (We will stay there again!!)

This was our 8th trip to SXM (usually come May & Nov.) and I had booked this trip suddenly at end of January. It was difficult to find a place to stay for the whole 10 nights that coincided with days that US Air required only 30,000 miles, so we had 2 nights at Topazi and 8 nights at Les Balcons. We liked Topazi as well as we like Les Balcons!! Another benefit was that Marion knew Carine and together they (in French) set up the time for us to move directly from Topazi to Les Balcons!!! On moving day, we went to beach until 1:30 PM, went to Topazi, loaded up car and went to Les Balcons, dropped our things off and were back to our chairs by 3:30!!!

I guess many of you would say we are pretty boring. Our trips to SXM are basically beach time & sleep time – rarely do we go out to dinner because we eat lunch at Orient Beach, either at Perch, Papagayo or Andy&Cheryl’s. (I know, all those great restaurants and we don’t go. We used to do that when we stayed in timeshares over around Simpson Bay. But not now.) Most evenings we drank & snacked on our balcony enjoying the view, read, played cards or rummikube, watched Olympics and went to bed early! We did go to Dingy Dock one night with Les Balcons neighbors and enjoyed that a lot! Met several great couples at Les Balcons!!! Also enjoyed watching activity at Oyster Pond Marina all week.

Had problems getting chairs & umbrella at first at ClubO but learned we had to get there early! Met some wonderful couples at Orient Beach and hope to see some of them again.

When we headed to airport, it was early afternoon of 1st day of Regatta and we were fortunate to see a huge number of sailboats between Orient & Oyster Pond – quite an awesome sight!!

Flight to Charlotte nice on very uncrowded plane! But US customs was a mess – 6 international flights within 40 min and only 5 of 16 customs desks open!!! Long wait!!! Must be a US Govt cost-saving measure!! Also long long line at the 1 open security point to get back to gates for connecting flight to Nashville, which was waiting for us!!

Despite the return-trip minor glitches, we have some GREAT MEMORIES, and everyone back here in TENN is green-eyed jealous of our TANS, especially our daughters & granddaughters!!!!