17 days - one of the nicest trips we've had in a while.
Not that we've ever had a bad trip - but we particularly enjoyed
this one mainly due to the choices of what we did, and when
we did them...

We experienced the strike at Club O - but we made the best
of it. Spent "No Umbrella Saturday" at one of the shaded
picnic tables at the perch. Almost dragged two chairs up
there, but thought that would be a little tacky. I did speak
with some of the staff about what was going on, but I'll
leave the politics of this to the rest of you. It was interesting
to hear what they had to say, I listened, but it ended there.
I wasn't going to let that cloud my time off...

Traffic - rush hour is rush hour no matter where you are.
Solution? Travel around the island during non-rush hour(s).

Places we enjoyed good meals of varying types and prices:
(And in no particular order):
La California, Le Cottage, Pedro's, Talk of the Town,
Buccaneer Beach Bar, Spinnaker @ SXM Yacht Club, Antoine's,
Hilma's Windsor Castle, The Wharf, Lee's, Pasanggrahan,
Holland House, Eden Rock on St. Barts, Danny's plate of food
at Cupecoy, and of course cheese & crackers back at the room.

The ride on Edge over to St. Barts was quite pleasant
this year as the seas were reasonable. I don't think
the swells were more than 2-3 feet... Rented a little
$#!tBox susuki and snailed all around the island.
Roads on St. Barts make the roads on SXM seem like they
are awesome... Grand Saline Beach is definitely worth
a visit. You might even get a little exercise walking
from the parking lot to the beach... Had to have cocktails
at Le Select upon returning the SB, a fine place waiting
for the VC to pick us up for the ride back to SXM.

Flights (AA) were uneventful except for the last leg of
the trip home - ended up arriving back at SFO 4 hours
late due to 3 separate mechanical problems on the plane -
each found right after the previous one fixed. Got
an email from AA last week, apologizing for this, and
they awarded us each with 7000 miles for our troubles.
Doing the math at an average cost of a ticket for us,
and how many miles needed for a freebie, I guess this
is worth somewhere between 4 & $500.

Beaches we hit: Orient @ Club O, Mullet Bay, Cupecoy,
Grand Case and Maho.

Car from AAA worked just fine - your basic rice burner with AC.

Walking around Philipsburg was cool - wife gets to shop
a bit (OK, alot) and I get to walk around with beer.

Only gained 3 pounds in 17 days of indulgence - lost
them in 2 days - no problem, Mon!

Now, we get to work for a year to earn enough cookies
to do it again...