Trip Report #6 June 18, 2023

It’s Sunday morning June 18th. We’re already over a week into our vacation and having the best trip to St. Martin we’ve ever enjoyed. I’m not sure why, because we’ve had over 12 vacations on the island which were fabulous, which is why we kept coming back. I think it may have something to do with coming out of the isolation we all went through during Covid and the recovery we see from hurricane Irma. Possibly the added factor that now we are in our mid 70s and realize that any opportunity to take a vacation together needs to be deeply enjoyed for who knows what lies ahead. So each day we awoke with anticipation for what lie ahead with a resolve to live in the moment.

We ate our breakfast out on our balcony, enjoying the bright colors in the Caribbean atmosphere. We had one of my wife’s pancakes from Mango left over from the morning before and a glass of iced pour-over coffee. The pancake dish is so much food she couldn’t finish so we shared the remaining pancake and it was adequate and satisfying. Especially when you know you’re going back to Le String today and there will be a delicious lunch waiting for us to order.

We headed down for the beach around 10:15am and decided to walk through the parking lot further up to check out the menu at one of the beach side restaurants, I believe it’s called Wai Plage. On the way a group of 4 wild donkeys were also walking along the parking lot. We kept our distance.

We’re quite the creatures of habit and as I’ve said, you can’t beat the quality of food, in our minds, and the value of the umbrella and lounge chairs thrown in. We choose the front row as it was early in the day and hardly anyone had arrived yet. John, the attendant on the beach, said it is what happens on Sundays at times. This time I brought my gouache paint to try an en plein air painting again. We ordered a large bottle of water and after a little while two caribs with ice. My wife read while I painted, and again it was a bit of a challenge reclined on the lounge, balancing the paint tray and the multiple media heavy gauge paper I was using, and a small plastic cup of water for thinning the paint and cleaning the brushes. I began by painting the landscape to our left. I’m just learning how to use gouache so it was touch and go for awhile. I saw out of the corner of my eye a trio of people walking down the beach just to our right. I grabbed my phone and as they passed by took a candid photo of them. I thought it would be cool to place them in the painting, so after I had a good bit of the landscape complete I brought up the photo on my phone screen and added them to the painting. I’ll need to do retouching sometime soon to correct some of the physiology I see needs tweaking.

Our daughter had sent me some Apple Pay cash for father’s day and said, “But some drinks”. So we headed up to Le String for frozen Margaritas and shared calamari. She requested we get a drink with one of those little umbrellas in it. I can’t say I’ve ever had a drink on St. Martin with a little umbrella in it. So I took my margarita and lined it up with one of the umbrellas on the beach and sent it to her. The calamari was excellent and the drinks were perfect.

We went back to our lounge chairs where my wife read and I worked on the painting a bit more. Lunch was calling us around 2pm. We ordered a glass of rose, with ice on the side. I had a mahi mahi sandwich and my wife had sea bass. A cute cat walked around freely. The waitresses would at times shoo her away when she jumped up on a chair or was getting in the way of the constant flow of waitresses bringing food and drinks to the tables and out to the beach. It had grown quite busy again at Le String and we loved watching the activity around us. Lunch was, again, fantastic, but we wanted to hang out there awhile and ordered another rose for my wife and I had a Pinot noir. Sitting inside Le String is a fun experience. We were given the complimentary after meal aperitif before we headed back down to the beach. We had so many during our trip but I think they served a mango flavored aperitif at Le String.

We went back to our spot on the beach and ordered more water and ice and just sat out watching people and talking about how much fun we’re having on our trip. The sun shifts constantly, as you know, and we try to stay as much in the shade as possible. We asked John for a second umbrella which he kindly set up. I gave him a tip, which he very much appreciated. He really took care of us while we were there. I think we ordered another rose each, and then headed back around 4 pm, the longest we’ve stayed out on the beach so far, and we remarked that this had been our best beach day yet.

We had pizza for dinner from Bona Mama and had to wait 45 minutes for it to be prepared as it was a busy night for them. The pizzas we had from Bona Mama were excellent. We had a glass of red wine with it out on our balcony, which is such a pleasant place to enjoy a meal anytime of the day. In the morning, we would have to arrange the table a bit back from the balcony railing as the sun crept in a bit at that time of day. That was not necessary at any other time of day. We finished dinner and went inside and watched another episode of City on Fire on my iPad Pro and then ended the day with a glass of rum on the rocks back out on the balcony.

Quite a wonderful day indeed.

Great report and pictures! Congrats on the 55 years!

Enjoy reading your posts and seeing your pics. Great idea to photograph the walkers and incorporate them into your work. Thanks for all the info about le string. All the years we’ve stayed on orient that place seems to have escaped us. Will definitely add to our November trip.

Another wonderful report and pictures.

How did you find your unit for rent?

Great report! I love how you expressed the sentiment about being in your mid70s and savoring every trip together. We're at that stage of life too, so share your feelings about enjoying the times together traveling.

Congratulations on the double nickel!! Loved your trip report and the photos. The painting came out nice!! Must have been tricky to do on the beach!! Very cool!

Thanks everyone! In terms of finding the studio….We knew we wanted to stay in the Orient Village area so I did a VRBO search and it came up. We liked the location and the photos gave us a good idea of what we were getting. The main draw was the price. Very reasonable.