This was our first visit to St. Martin. In previous years we<br>have vacationed in Aruba, so this trip would help us decide<br>which island we like better....Aruba or St. Martin. After visiting last week, I think we have made up our mind's. We stayed at Cap Caraibes, on Orient beach. The room was nice.<br>It had a small kitchen, couch, chair, king size bed and a small bathroom. It was comfortable and pleasant. The young girl at the front desk, I think here name was Ciddy, was a cute girl, very friendly and hospitable. When you look in the travel brochures, it makes it look like you have a great view of the ocean, however, the palm trees blocked 90%<br>of the view. If you truely want an ocean view, stay on the 3rd floor.<br>Orient beach was as nice as everyone on this board had described, The beach and the water were beautiful. The only draw back was if you decided to try to get something to eat<br>on the beach, you had to get it by 4:00pm, because most of the beach bar/ restaurants closed. Considering this was our first trip to St. Martin, there could have been other places nearby, that we weren't aware of that may have been opened after 4:00pm. <br>The drivers in St. Martin are as bad as everyone has said.<br>I thought the drivers here were bad, compared to St. Martin<br>the drivers here are like A+ driver Ed students. Motorcycles<br>and Mopeds would pass you on the road, on the dotted line in the middle of the road, during the day and night. Some motorcycles didn't even have headlights, but they would <br>still drive through the town at night....not too smart.<br><br>We rented a car and drove all over the island. We visited Phillipsburg a couple days. Shopping wasn't bad, but boy are there alot of jewelry stores. We saw a cruise ship in the bay one day, got some pictures of it. I don't want to sound pessimistic at all, but I'm going to be truthful about my comparison between Aruba and St. Martin.<br>Orient beach is nice, however, you had to drive 20 miles, one way, to get to the casino's on the Dutch side. I think that is too much. If we were to go back to St. Martin again, we would probably stay on the Dutch side. In Aruba, <br>you can drive about 10 minutes and get to any casino, or other major entertainment....1st comparison. We tried several different places to snorkel, Pinel island being one of them, and the snorkeling in St. Martin isn't even close to the snorkeling in Aruba....2nd comparison. After driving<br>all around the island, I do not see any advantages of staying on the French side. Don't get me wrong, the French side is nice, however, as I said earlier, you have to drive a long way to get to places. The hills, or should I say mountains, in St. Martin are real nice and scenic. Aruba doesn't have these, at least not as many and not as high....<br>3rd comparison. We visited the Butterfly farm. I would highly recommend people to check it out, it was very interesting.<br>We visited the golf course while we were there, boy were we surprised. It was very shabby to say the least. In Aruba, they have a Robert Trent Jones professional golf course call<br>the Terra Del Sol. The senior PGA plays there....4th comparison.<br>It was pretty amusing to see one of the Burger Kings in St. Martin. It's a Burger King in a bus. It wasn't on our list of restaurants to visit. We did go to Turtle Pier, very good<br>food there, and you can sit near the water if you wanted.<br>We stayed 9 days in St. Martin, and we enjoyed ourselves, and just relaxed.....as every vacation should be.<br>To sum things up, St. Martin is a nice island, and if someone asked me if I would recommend people to it I would probably say yes. If I had to choose between which island....Aruba or St. Martin, I would call my favorite, it would have to be ARUBA. In Aruba, the beaches are as nice, the snorkeling is much better, you don't have to travel far to get to the excitement, the roads are in better shape, there are more highrise hotels, so you have a better ocean view, larger and more casino's, you can walk from highrise to highrise hotel and check out the entertainment and shopping, and as in St. Martin, there are many restaurants.<br>Maybe someday my wife and I will visit St. Martin again, only time will tell. We both still will monitor this bulletin board often. I also want to thank everyone on this <br>board for their thoughts and opinions which helped us decide on going to St. Martin. It was a nice, relaxing vacation for us. Take care.<br><br><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Administrator on 7/23/01 01:05 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
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