Well, we are back. I apologize for the tardiness of this report but it has been a mad house since our return.

We flew out of Chicago,a $400 roundtrip fair seemed better than $650 from St. Louis. Stayed at the Embassy Suites Rosemont the nightbefore. Lack of shuttle van to airport helped us miss our flight but American was very nice andgotuson the flight from Chicago to San Juan. We were 2 1/2 hours later arriving but we still made it to the Island on Sunday.

What a week. We did not visit as many beaches as we wanted. This was our third time to the Island and we stayed at the Pelican Resort. Nice room on the top floor with a balcony facing the ocean and Simpson Bay.

I went snorkeling 5 days out of the seven. If it had not been for deep sea fishing and shopping it would have been 6. We took the Lambada day cruise to Anguilla which was a great trip. We went horseback riding at night on the Champagne ride. We were the only couple and it was a full moon. We had a romantic bon fire by the ocean and toasted with glasses of champagne. My wife, Linda, truly enjoyed the experience. But not as much as the shopping experience on Friday. We had earlier visited a jeweler in Marigot on Tuesday and she had found a yellow diamond setting she truly enjoyed.I told her to wait until after we visited DK Gems on Friday. Well, as usual, Deepti had a better setting and stone and larger diammond for a comprable price. Needless to say that setting is on Linda's left hand as I write this. Thank you Deepti for all your help and assistance. It truly made our trip a very memorable one. Unfortunately, now she is talking about when she can come back and get her earrings.

We ent deep sea fishing with Roy on the Trulden and caught a black fin Tuna and a Barracuda. Truly an enjoyable half day even though the sease were a little rough. We ate our special last night dinner at Temptations, thank you Deepti for the suggestion and card. I had the Mahi Mahi and Linda had the French (Dutch) onion soup. We had the crabappetizer. We were stuffed so wedid not have dessert.

We missed going to Grand Case this trip. We could not get use to the traffic. We do not know if it was because of the beginning of high season or if this was the norm. We have visited in September and June and this was the firstDecember trip we had taken.

We visited Cupecoy and were upset to see what was being done to the beach with the new resort. We love going to Oyster Bay but did not make it over there due to the construction we knew was going on as well.

On Friday after shopping we went to the Greenhouse and had the lobster special. Boy was this great. This was the sweetest lobster we have had on the Island and we definitely will make sure we get back there again.

Well, that is just a synopsis. Oh yeah, after swimming and snorkeling at Simpson Bay we would stop in at Buccanneer Beach Bar and have two BBC's each every day. It became a ritual. We also visited Marigot a couple of days to have expresso and french pastry to start our mornings. We love everything about the Isalnd. People continue to ask us why we don't try other Carribbean Islands and our answer is that we have everything we want in St. Maarten and we are continuing to discover new things. It is the most stress free relaxing place either one of us has been to and we will continue to visit until there is something that happens that changes our feelings. We don't see anything like that occurring anytime in the future.