We spent week one in our new (to us) penthouse room at LaVista and week two in a studio at Oyster Bay Beach Resort. These were timeshares I bought sight unseen over the internet. Both were great.

Overall it was a fantastic 2 week trip, but let’s get all of the bad news out of the way first.
Bad News
Saturday baggage pickup at SXM, a big mess as usual.

On Monday we had our new (2 uses) beach Umbrella and spare tire stolen from the trunk between 6 and 10 pm. I spent some time during the next day and a half trying to locate a spare and rim, since I didn’t feel comfortable driving the St. Martin roads without one. I found one for $25 – slightly off size tire, but close enough to get us back in case of an emergency. Thanks to BobVTPilot’s extra umbrella, we still had shade.

Our second night at Oyster Bay we were overwhelmed with loud music and yelling next door at 12:45 am. I went out the door and asked a guy to turn it down and he said he would do what he felt like. He was super intoxicated and stumbling around. His friend asked him to turn it down and he did. Next night at about 10 pm the same thing. I went to the office and asked for them to stop it or give me a new room right then. They took the easy route (which was OK with me) and gave us a new room. They said this guy was drunk every night. No further problems in our new room. We enjoyed a great view of the marina. The quick action by the staff was appreciated!

My back went out Wednesday of the second week, but I tried to not let it slow us down too much. (Volleyball induced?)

The road to Club O is about as bad as it can get and still be usable.

The trip home was a disaster. We spent Sat night sleeping in the PHL terminal. It was so bad I actually thought about renting a car and driving to Chicago. Similar to another post, bad vouchers, mis-statements, lost luggage, etc. If I hadn’t remembered that previous post by another US Airways flyer, we might have gotten stuck in NJ. We got home about 10:30 am Sunday, so the trip home took about 24 hours with no sleep for 30 hours. The luggage arrived late Sunday. Even the US Airways luggage guy in Chicago said the other people giving us bad info were just trying to pacify us. Be really careful with the current situation here.

Good News and Activities
This section might be shorter, but there we really had a great time. I’ll just point out a few highlights

We met so many great people I could go on for pages, so I won’t. We had over 40 people at the Nov 3 TTOL party at the BBB. We had prizes from Carol and Eric at TTOL, Deepti and Jeff at DK, Jim at Cheapcaribbean.com and three from Neil at the Buccaneer Beach Bar. Thank You! Email me if you want to know the winners. Adele organized it last year; I did it this year; maybe we can get Paul and Vickie for 2005!

As explained in earlier posts, the Club O Halloween party was awesome. Our first, but not our last. I even met a male posing as a female, who actually was a female.(was that Chris or Butch?) Thanks to Stan and Connie for having us over, and to Bob and Mitzi for putting in a good word for us.

We spent as much time as possible on the beach each day. What a life!

The TikoTiko was out of service when we arrived, but to our delight it sailed into Orient on Friday Nov 5th. We got on the second trip Wed Nov 10. Since we had never taken it before, it was one of the highlights of the entire trip. I know it’s expensive, but it was worth every cent. I think we shrunk the beach on Tintimarre for the Cruise people, since they stayed as far away from us as possible.

Restaurant News – Info you may not have heard
We usually had breakfast in our room. How can you beat looking out over Simpson Bay or the Marina in Oyster Pond? Lunches on the beach from a deli or we went to Baywatch.

Connie and Andy told us about the Early-Bird special at L’Alabama from 6 pm to 7:30 pm. About 33 Euros for a complete dinner with a glass of wine. Really a nice dinner.

Despite previous mixed reports, the Jade restaurant at OBBR was fine. You can order off the lunch menu at night for lighter meals too. The Barefoot Terrace just down the road serves a nice full breakfast for $6 or less including juice and coffee.

Near Oyster Bay is a new Restaurant (opened Dec 2003) called Le Fregate. I think it used to be a bakery. It’s open for 3 meals a day. The dinner was great and reasonably priced (entrees about 14 Euros). Can’t wait to get back. Try it!

Pete took us Dingy Dock for Happy Hour. You can’t beat those $2 make your own drinks. Lots of locals here too. The food was OK.

Zee Best in Simpson Bay now serves dinner in the form of appetizers running about $8 each. At night it’s called Le Piccolo. We split 2 and added a dessert. A nice light meal after a big lunch at Baywatch (always a favorite)

Taking advantage of the Situation
“Ann, my back is hurting and it’s hard to move out of this Lounge chair – can you reach in the cooler and get me another Carib?”

Summary
We missed some of our “can’t miss” places, but we’ll be back in February for a few days. And we will definitely be back in November to see our wonderful friends and hopefully meet some new ones.