TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin A recent stay at the Royal Islander

The place is largely together, with new paint, furniture, paintings and palm trees. The bar in the lobby is not yet functional, which does not disappoint me.

Of course the oven is labeled in degrees C, but the stove top requires some instruction from the maid, as there are no instructions provided. Briefly, you are faced with a flat black surface with several locations outlined. Touch the one on the lower right to get started. You have succeeded when four other locations light up. Touch the one corresponding to the “burner” you wish to use. Then touch near the burner to indicate the heat level. Success is when the thing lights up. Relax, it takes a tender touch. We never did figure out the microwave.

Yes we did see mosquitoes, but they were deterred by sunscreen. Temperatures were in the eighties.

Maho seems like a ghost town. Sonesta is still being worked on by a lot of guys who are at it from 7AM to 9PM. On one trip down to the ice cream store, we were the only ones on the street!

We stopped by The Hole in the Wall, next door to a hole in the roof. I was not impressed, although the place was packed to the curb when music was available.

We tried a pizza at Fat Tony’s, and only gave it a “C.” The owner was pushing brisket, and gave us a sample, which was good.

The free show at the Casino is entertaining. They sponsored some dancers and stilt walkers one evening in the street.

Other meals were at Skipjacks, Mary’s Boon, Three Amigos, and Mark’s Place and the birthday dinner at Moulin Fou. The birthday girl got a free ice cream dessert with fireworks!

Car rental was by Kenny’s, with spectacular service coming and going. We never made it to Marigot or Phillipsburg due to the traffic, even with the causeway.

Wow, that sounds like a really odd set up on the stove! Sounds like Maho has a ways to go yet.

That's the way our stove was in the Villa we rented last May but ours was in F'. Took awhile to get used to but now we know for this coming May.

actually we found the stove to be easy. One button is the power on and the others were up/down per each burner.

But I did need a Rosetta Stone to figure out the dishwasher. LOL