Red Pianna

Went there Thur. night at 10:30. 3 customers no music.

The bar was removed from Lee's yesterday. Thought I saw H. Bosch supervising the removal.

Mort indicated it was pretty dead in the Simpson Bay area.

Also heard the cruise lines are matching booze prices of the island. So cruisers are entering jewelry stores taking pics of loss leaders to show the booze store on ship. Also heard many jewelry stores have a no photo sign now.

Cruise lines are not helping the island much.

Interesting. Not sure why the ships would do that though as I do not think they allow alcohol to be brought on board now. You either buy it on the ship at their prices or you buy their drinks.

The no photo thing could also be to keep another store from matching the price on a similar jewelry item.

Is Heineken still free?

The ones I drank were.

Cruise ships have really never helped the island. The only ones who benefited from the cruise ships are the government.

Wrong. We have taken many cruise stops to St Maarten over the years and have spent plenty on expensive jewelry and booze to bring home from the shops in Phillipsburg.

In reality, Simpson Bay is typically hopping.

The cruise ships are now matching prices on booze the jewelry stores are selling as loss leaders. The cruisers take a pic of the booze and the price and show on board. So cruisers now spend no money ob booze in port. Also some jewelry stores have a sign up " No pictures" for this.

All the major cruise lines permit you to bring alcohol purchases on board in a port of call such as St Martin - but the ships require that you hand it in for storage on board until last night of cruise when it is returned to you.

(There are some rare exceptions when ship lets you take it back to cabin - usually because ship does not want to have to store and then return all of it. This happened when we were on Empress visiting Havana - the amount of rum bought was huge and Captain - at least on our cruise - let people just take it to their cabin.)

Thanks. It has been a while since I have been on a cruise but I knew there were some restrictions. We used to haul beer on by the case.

Most of the cruise lines started that when the TSA started restrictions with the airlines. Just a way for the cruise lines to have a reason to implement that same policy to sell more bar drinks.