TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Wednesday Report

Pretty calm day. We were able to use the beach for the first time here at Horny Toad. Lots of rock ledges are exposed so finding a good place to enter and exit is necessary. Not bad once you are in but they have lost about 6' of beach here. Walking towards Royal Palm, you can only get about 1/2 way as the water is up to the seawalls. Spent some time in the water and then just relaxed here, both inside and on the beach and sand area here.

Social hour at 5:30 and off to dinner at The Palapa Grill for a meet and greet. The food was good, service decent but it is very hard to handle 30+ people who all order at once. We were lucky and got there early and sat at a table for 6. All of our entree choices were good with one having to be sent back due to being the wrong steak and temperature. Dessert and/or after dinner drinks and then a little socializing and conversation.

Palapa Grill is nicely decorated and seemed to have a lot of help that did the best they could with a large group. For those of you who remember the old Rancho building and location, this is where Palapa is located. My only real complaint was extremely short pours on wine and drinks. I ordered a house Cabernet and honestly thought the pour was just a tasting pour of 3oz or less versus the standard 5oz. I noticed this with many others drinking wine as well, very short pours. Disranno on the rocks was the same very short pour in a very small glass. Not a deal breaker but something to be aware of.

I did get to meet several TTOL members, including Islangem (Elizabeth) and Jazzgal (Linda) and others who I do not recall their names. This meet and greet was organized by one of the SXM facebook groups (Simply) and included many TTOL members as many belong to multiple groups.

Up at 5:45 today to watch the sun rise and now I am going to see if I can get the resident cat to sit with me on the seawall.

Thanks for the report. I hope the waves continue to calm down.

Short wine pours are never good. Get a bottle for two and pour your own.

I was the only one drinking Cabernet at the table so a bottle would not have made sense. I had a bigger pour at Mark's Place today for lunch at 1/2 the price and neither were high end wines.

you could always buy the bottle and bring the rest home.

And if I did not have plenty of beer and scotch to drink before we leave, I would have done just that. My wife also has some beverages that I will likely have to work on as she never drinks what she thinks she will. No big deal, just surprisingly very short pours.

I guess that means if we get to Palapa Grill next time, we will know to get a bottle of wine! Tough assignment.

I would suggest that. We both agreed, we would go back as the food and service was decent.

I was debating between going there and Jax last time and decided for Jax, which I was not that impressed with.