Greetings! We’ve been enjoying all of the great trip reports on Travel Talk and now we’re finally doing one after many years. I dug up our last one from 2001 on Caribtravelnews.com. I just read this one, what a trip down memory lane. If you have the inclination, you can take a look at:
ST. MARTIN BY JIM AND LARAINE
February 3 through 11, 2001
http://www.caribtravelnews.com/c0401_03.htm#stmjimOk, back to the present. Being semi-retired, for the past three years we’ve been able to spend 3 to 4 weeks per year in St Maarten. We don’t have our Pelican timeshare weeks anymore, gave them away when the AMF and supplemental fee were bouncing off $1500 per week. Now we just go through VRBO, HomeAway or AirBnB.
The island has been pretty quiet for the last two weeks. Two more left to go. It's actually quite nice with very little traffic and good service most everywhere.
The weather has been cooperating nicely except that pesky tropical disturbance last Wednesday, 99L. Sahara dust is keeping things hazy and calm this week. (You would think the Sahara would have run out of dust by now) Just spoke with the condo manger and she said they're watching a very large tropical wave developing. Probably be here a week from now if it keeps cranking.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/gtwo.php?basin=atlc&fdays=5 We tried a new Italian restaurant called Sale & Pepe near the garden market on Welfare Road. It was outstanding. We shared veal parm and a bottle of wine for $48 including tip. Had enough left over for lunch (Veal not Wine). Some of our old favorites are Taco Macho (Tacos :)), St Maarten Yacht club (happy hour & breakfast eggs benedict), Toppers (Beef Brisket & Lamb), Lal's Indian, Greenhouse (Prime Rib) and Bavaria for the Friday night grill. The new Pizza Galley dock bar is beautiful (Pizza of course with home made berry pie.) The new dingy dock bar (Old Shrimpys) has $3 make your own drinks for happy hour and a nice atmosphere (Wings were SoSo). Chesterfield at sundown to watch the lights go on on Front Street while having a beverage is always nice.
Favorites on the French side include Calmos Cafe, Layla's Beach Bar and the Perch (Willie left to get married last week, Perch is open from 11am to 3pm everyday but closed Mondays, happy hour 2 to 3pm).
Some of the beaches have experienced a lot of erosion. Maho is non-existent much of the time prompting plane watchers to stand in the road. Orient is pretty narrow at the Club O end with no beach in front of the restaurant. The trip down the rocky road into Orient always brings up the memory of the [censored] end of a 72 Camaro that used to stick up out of the salt pond. No sure why they got rid of that. No sense of historical preservation I guess.
On the more mundane side, the best place to buy no lead gas is at the station between Marigot and Grande Case. (.87e/liter) much cheaper than on the Dutch side.
Laraine bought an eternity ring from Jeff at DK Gems in Philipsburg. He’s friends with Laraine on FB and it was very nice dealing with him. Did some shopping around and he was the best that we could find.
Yesterday we ran into the group participating in the Presidente Poker Run at Walter Platz square in Philipsburg.
http://sxmpokerrun.com/index.htmlEach boat kicks in an entry fee and they blast around the island on offshore style race boats picking up a playing card at each stop (Port de Plaisance, Dreams, Buccaneer, Friars Bay, Phillipsburg) . The best hand wins $10,000 at the end of the day. Those folks party hard (hopefully not so much the captains)
We’ll try to put together another report at the end of the trip (with pics) instead of waiting another 15 years….. Cheers.
