Woke up early, so decided to write up our first few days...

Travel down – We had to come in on Saturday afternoon due to United cancelling completely our Sunday flight. Tried to make it with just carry-ons, but visiting another island to visit family in addition to 2 weeks on SXM, just couldn’t do it. Needless to say, I was dreading it. It was our lucky day I guess, but we stepped off the plane at 4:40 and met Kenny outside the airport for the car by 5:30. Line was long for immigration, but moved quickly. Luggage was waiting when we got there.

Lesley was waiting for us the second we exited the door and provided us a lovely little white SUV, which we are very much enjoying. For the first part of this trip, we decided to stay in a little studio/villa? in a small “compound” for lack of better word in Terrabasses. We have everything we need, including a lovely private hot tub, with pool and gym/weight room shared with other stand-alone units. We enjoy renting chairs from Dany at Cupecoy, which was one reason for choosing this spot. It has been great!

So far, we have rented chairs at Cupecoy 2 days; Once at “Baby Beach” and yesterday, at the first set of steps, we noticed sand for the first time while we’ve been here at that spot and grabbed a couple of chairs. It was just a gorgeous day.

Monday, since it was a 0 cruise ship day, we decided to go to Orient. This is our 4th trip since January 2020 and during pandemic, we decided to go to the end of the beach and help out the locals. This trip, we decided Le String Beach… what a mistake. It’s a long story, and although I’ve heard of intentionally bad service to non-locals (here it was non French speaking) it was the first time I’ve experienced it to this degree. I’m happy to wait my turn, even for a long time, but when the beach attendant tells you that you’re not a regular and he won’t take your order, it’s too much. It was obvious that was what was happening to us and a few other English speaking groups around us, but I couldn’t decide if it was good or bad that he even confirmed it. We were getting up to leave and he finally said… I’ll take your order and get it to you in 45 minutes, so we stayed because I was starving. Suffice it to say, it will be our last trip there… they were out of all the good stuff anyway… no spring rolls, no lamb chops, no tuna tartare, no salmon etc… ended up with chicken wings and a burger, which were average. Anyway, Orange Beach looked nice, we may try it next time or just head to the corrupt, rich guy’s places where we went during our cruise ship days. Le String neither needed nor wanted our business.

One note: we came home from Orient on Monday via Orleans, behind Phillipsburg, through Cole Bay and across the causeway. We were going the opposite way of the traffic, but noticed it was backed up bumper to bumper almost the entire way. We never saw an accident, but noticed the traffic didn’t get any better going the other way until after we passed the airport! We had a few spots of normal type back-ups, but nothing too bad. There is quite a bit of road paving going on day and night, but that didn’t seem to be much of the issue on Monday.

So far, the restaurants we’ve tried: Sublime (1st trip… shared Lamb Sliders, Caesar salad, and short (?long!!) rib and a couple of drinks. It was very good…. I was surprised that they seemed so surprised that we didn’t wish to add additional tip on top of the 15%.) Chesterfield’s (our usual 1st night spot, but ate 2nd night since we got in later than usual)…it was good; got Duck and Seafood platter, fried. Chicken lunch at Dany’s – was good as always. Last night, Ocean 82 in Grand Case (btw road work at Grand Case didn’t impact traffic at all; at least when we arrived about 7:30… there was a very slight delay for paving on the way back to Terrabasses (we went through Sandy Ground as it seems very quiet at the moment), but not bad). I have read such great things about Ocean 82 and we were not disappointed. Had the cocktail special – kiwi-apple vodka martini, shared a half bottle of Bandol red wine which was so good, baked oysters w/smoked duck breast, lobster bisque (omg… perfectly the way I like it!! Maybe my favorite ever), smoked duck breast, beef tenderloin w/morel mushroom sauce, and molten chocolate lava cake (they were out of the souffle!). They were quite busy – we were sandwiched between 2 large parties, so we ended up being attended to by the assistants… who kept apologizing for the wait, missing utensils and such, but they were all delightful and we had an ocean front table - it was a fabulous evening.

The weather has been clear so far… a little windy, but not too bad. We have very much enjoyed a much-needed relaxing trip to SXM…. More later. Pictures: Dinner at Ocean 82, Dinner at Sublime, Sunrise from our window in Terrabasses, Cupecoy beach pics.