St. Maarten Musings 1
Planes, Bands, Diamonds, Deepti and TTOL

Inspired by SunsetSammy, one of the best posters (in my humble opinion) ever to grace the pages of TTOL, I had hoped to create several posts during our recent visit to St. Maarten but my laptop and photobucket were having a spat and wouldn’t talk to one another. Back home now, my trip report would be too long so here are several ‘Musings” about our favorite island and some pictures to make us all want to book another visit to St. Maarten next week.

Day 1
Air Canada let us down and was three hours delayed taking off so that meant six hours stuck in the lousy airport trying to figure out how to spend a 10 dollar food voucher. Thanks a lot Air Canada. We didn’t get to St. Maarten until dinner time so we grabbed our car from Safari and raced over to the Driftwood Bar to order our first Carib and wave good bye to our departing plane. It did the ‘reverse takeoff’ over Maho so it was pretty exciting and very noisy at the little boat bar. After stocking up on some essentials at the Maho Market we checked into Caravanserai, threw our groceries in the fridge, kicked our suitcases into a corner and decided to hit the town. Like many TTOL posters we love our first night on the island to be celebrated with Ramone and the Sweet Chocolate Band at Cheri’s in Maho and the boys didn’t disappoint us. Ramone was waving madly from his chair at the front then pounding his heart with his hand. Awww…he remembered us! The boys were rocking in their bad outfits and fake “enhancements” and we loved every minute of it. (They do need to “enhance” their show with a few new numbers however!) After making a small deposit at the Casino we decided to call it a day. By this time we had been up for 20 hours – don’t ya just love the first day of holidays?

Day 2
Who needs to sleep in? After slathering Sunscreen 60 all over our winter white bodies we headed to Maho Beach to take in a day of plane and people spotting.

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Lining up two front row chairs and an umbrella we settled in for a terrific day. We LOVE airplanes and even though the beach is crowded as heck these days we didn’t care.

We were treated to an amazing sunset.

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Sunset Beach Bar was rockin’ with the Percy Rankin band (they are great!) and we kicked back and enjoyed the show. There were lots of people dancing and having fun. We did too.

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Day 3
We revved up our rent-a-wreck and decided it was too gently used for our liking so we headed over to Safari and traded it in for one that wasn’t so – wrecked. New wheels under us we drove into Philipsburg to visit the gang at DK Gems and guess who we found? New bride Deepti! She was visiting from China and looked fabulous as always. (Deepti really knows how to wear diamonds – doesn’t she? <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Wink.gif" alt="" />

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We wandered around Philipsburg for awhile and for the first time – EVER –I didn’t have a desire to buy anything. What was wrong with me????? I checked out all my favorite stores and – nothing. Sure, if we had a spare $35,000 I would have gladly picked out a new ring (ha-ha) but that wasn’t happening this trip.

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So, after walking around the boardwalk we headed over to The Greenhouse in Simpson Bay to meet Minniesnowta and the rest of the gang at the TTOL party. Mike and Deb – thanks for hosting and arranging. Pajo – it was great to meet you! We had to travel all the way to St. Maarten to meet a fellow Canuck! Lisa and John – you were terrific and Bill and Elaine –what can I say? You two are the BEST! Thank you so much for taking the time to come and say Hi. It means so much to all of us because we read your posts from the island throughout the year and it’s so nice to see you in person.

More “Musings” to come….

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