Got up at 7a.m., flung open the curtains, then closed them again. I saw gray skies, an angry sea and palm trees howling in the wind...back to bed.

An hour later, the view out of our balcony window was looking a little better. The weather is always changing here in St. Maarten so for those of you with a Christmas holiday booked - do not loose heart. We are having a fantastic time. The sun makes frequent appearances and it's nice and hot.

We took in the Monday morning orientation meeting. All the coffee, juice and croissants you could handle. Good Lord why do I go to these things? The only good thing was meeting TTOL PrairieGirl. She had a fabulous tan and was wonderful to talk to. I love meeting people from TTOL!

This was a different trip for us - one that we are calling a 'Work-oliday'. Ipads, and laptops were dragged along with us from Canada to St. Maarten but that is okay! The weather is much better here than in snowy, cold Canada right now. Our phone from the lovely Sharon Harris completed our St. Maarten office.

After three hours of work we packed the cooler, put on the sunscreen and hit the beach. We arrived to a wonderful surprise. All the clouds had been blown away, the wind had gone down and we enjoyed 4 hours of sunshine and bliss `St. Maarten style`.

Lunch was a tender filet of mahi-mahi grilled in garlic butter and served on a bed of salad with a light vinaigrette from Driftwood. A chilled glass of French wine completed our lunch on the beach. Can you believe the wonderful food that comes from vans, buses and little cinder block huts on this island? Love it.

As the sun started to set we returned to our room and our 'work-oliday'. The cool thing about this session was that I was able to work on our balcony and enjoy the action at the Dream Bar. Marty was playing what he calls "Drunken Bingo" (what a character - we just love him) and was giving away some pretty amazing prizes like trips on the island and jewelry from Diamonds International. Very nice!

After doing our work-chores we got dressed up, fired up our trusty dented rental car and went in search of some thin crust pizza. We didn't feel like driving to the French side so we pointed the Toyota towards Porto Cupecoy. A few years ago we had wandered into Maximus and thought it was so cool with its 'wine cellar' motif and great looking menu. Unfortunately it no longer exists. The New York Brasserie is now occupying it's spot. With no pizza on the menu we wandered around, decided we didn't want seafood from the other restaurants so we went back to Maho and sat down at Sopranos. A good Italian meal was enjoyed and consumed - the service was terrific as always.

Back at Caravanserai, I checked out the internet room to see if Mothra, the giant butterfly/moth that was the size of a salad plate was hanging out. (see Fast blast - Day 2)Strangely enough he hadn't moved. hmmmm. Had he bit the big one? Cashed in his chips? Gone to the big cocoon in the sky?

Time to call it a night...