Our first stay on the island outside of two cruise stops in 97 & 98. This is mine and Brad’s first vacation in over 15 yrs. of just the two of us now that we became empty nesters.

AIRLINE: We left Mpls. At around 8:20am non stop with Sun Country. We were met by Alpha car rental and after 5 minute paper work we were on our way to Pburg to our villa. Car was on empty costing $40US to fill. Our flight home left at 4:20pm which took us into St. Thomas for customs, about an hour later we were off to San Juan to refuel, and then home. Bringing us in at 11:15pm to 20 inches of snow on the ground. One good thing is we got to spend the last 45 minutes of our daughters 19th b-day with her.

Villa: Pburg, up on top of the highest hill over looking the cruise ships. Point Blanche is what the housing development was called. Our villa was named Le Jardin for $1150. For the week. King size master bedroom, large kitchen/living & dining area. Large patio area with our own hot tub. Community pool close by. Security guarded area, extremely nice and wonderful neighbors.
We made a big breakfast every morning, and grilled out every night except two nights. Brad grilled burgers, steaks and wonderful large chicken breast. One night he cooked spare ribs for an hour when he asked me to take a look at them. They looked like ribs only each one looked as thou they had tails, yes tails. Needless to say, thank god we bought a digiornal pizza. I’d like to know what animal those came from cause it clearly did not look like what we are used to. It was a gorgeous sight to watch the ships come in each morning and leave again at night. The sunsets were out of this world…..just gorgeous!

Shopping: Our first day we decided to get our shopping done and out of the way. After visiting 10 different jewelry stores, I settled at Royal Jewelers dealing with Harry and bought a 1.28ctw circle of life diamond necklace. Harry was great to deal with, and I even got a bigger discount paying in cash. Brad was in the need of some much new Ray Ban sunglasses, so off we went looking for these. Got t-shirts, wraps, 3 bottles of Guava berry and 3 other bottles of booze to take home. No problems with customs here.

Beaches: After shopping we were off to Coco’s, Bikini and another day at Pedro’s. I have to admit I wasn’t to impressed with Orient beach. Very crowded come noon time, water was full of sea weeds and rough (not that rough bothers me). Couldn’t parasail one day as they said it was to windy, and never did get a chance to do this, bummer. We also visited Mullet Bay, very nice, quiet, relaxing, water was a bit on the cold side and port pots. Dawn Beach was loud with construction going on, didn’t stay long here, as well as Cupecoy Beach - stayed a short time here, but liked it very much. Our favorite, which we visited three times, was Maho Beach (sunset beach area). The service on the beach was great, $1.00 hini’s two days (can’t go wrong here) and watching the planes come in where a blast. Brad doesn’t swim at all (nearly drowned as a child), so I found myself a bit lonely at times with no one to swim with, snorkel or even jet ski with, now I know why I brought the kids all the time. We visited Grand Palm Beach resort across from Lady C, twice, beach was nice as well as the pool area. Ate a salad w/chicken one day for lunch $8.00 enough to fill us both up. Found out they also offer lobsters at $16.00 a pound with the smallest being 2 lbs. Great deal. We stopped in at Great Bay resort and parked on the beach. Nice, quiet laid back beach.
We did drive around the whole island twice during the week. A great ride, however traffic major stinks, one thing they need to work on. Much worse than St. Thomas.

Casino’s: We visited Dolphin, Hollywood, Atlantis, Tropical, Jump Up (very loose slots here), broke even with the slots all week. Our favorite was Diamond (across the street from Jump Up). We parked in the same spot every night, right out front, by the third night they knew us by names. Our first night in here everyone playing roulette came out BIG winners. There was 6 of us playing, went through 5 different rollers/dealers and with each of us starting with $20. each we walked out of there with over a grand between the two of us. We quickly got out of there and back to our villa. We probably ended up giving half of it back of the week, but it sure was a blast. One night I even played with quarters, this was fun. Cleared a few hundred, and begged Brad to go jewelry shopping again, but he said no way, take it to Reno with you next month for my bowling tournament. Which is what I am doing.

Groceries: We did all of our shopping at Le Grand Marche in Pburg next to Mark’s Bar and Sangs. Prices were a bit high, even compared to St. Thomas, was high. But felt comfortable with what we bought (outside of the spare ribs of course).

Every night on our way back to the villa we stopped in at Chesterfields (Dock Marteen area) for a night cap and guava berry colada…….a must have. Half way through the week we ate supper here and had the lobster special. 1 ½ lobster meal for $29.95 each and started with French onion soup (very good, all of it). Our last night we also ate here for the steak and shrimp special. Waitress told us it was $17.95 each, and the bill came it stated $25.99 each. I questioned it to Victor (manager), he corrected it and gave us the next two rounds of drinks on the house. We also ate lunch on day at the greenhouse, burgers were really good. I didn’t like the fact that I had to walk about 20yards to a restroom, then find out I needed a quarter. Someone let me in on her quarter as I had no change on me.

THANK YOU to everyone who gave us great info. Things to do, as well as what to look out for. A SPECIAL thanks to Sheila who put together the TTOL party on the floating lady C. Great time here, you rock girl, and Sheila, I’d like a picture of the group shot if possible.

My only sudjestion next time would be to bring 50 and 100’s in travelers checks. Each day we cashed in $300 at the local banks, cost was about $2.00US to do this. When cashing in the 20’s, or any checks, you have to write your full name, address, phone, b-day and DL# on the back of each one, doing 15 20’s like this was a real pain. Took me about 30 minutes of bank time to do this, vs. less than 10 minutes doing 50’s or 100’s. We delt all in cash or TC all over the island, no need at all for the charge card except for the car, which we still paid in cash.

Next year we are off to Cancun for my 40th b-day. Then a cruise for our daughters honeymoon, and then possible back to SXM, with other couples I would hope. After spending the last three years in St. Thomas, it was a bit hard not to compare things to SXM. I’d also like to add that we both enjoyed the Dutch side so much better to the French side, and felt very safe the whole week, no problems here.
<img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/toast.gif" alt="" /> <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Banana.gif" alt="" /> <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/dine.gif" alt="" />cheers to you all !!
Renee and Brad.... <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/toast.gif" alt="" />