We startted our Journey from Vancouver to St. Martin/St.Maarten on October 20. Overnighted at Pearson, stayed at the ALT Hotel and we cannot more highly recommend this hotel to anyone who has to stay over. Left Toronto at 9:15AM and arrived on the Friendly Island at around 14:00. We were smart and booked seats so that we could watch the plane go over the beach!

Grabbed luggage easily enough and headed outside to find Mr. Wilfred Brooks. We were greeted by the warmest man, who loaded our bags and off to Yoda Guy apartments at the old Hotel Mt. Vernon just above Orient Beach( http://netdwellers.com/mz/apartments/home.html ) on the way we stopped at Simply Fresh to grab provisons.

Once we arrived, we were warmly greeted by Gloria who showed us to our studio and gave a complete lowdown. We knew the sun sets at 18:00, but we were surprised by how dark it actually gets. Gloria mentioned that Orient Beach is BLACK and not to walk it at night.

As it was now near to 16:30, we quickly changed and headed towards Orient Village which is a short 15 - 20 minute walk at most. On the way, we had our first dip in the warm bath water.

In Orient Village I found Good Morning, and this was my first stop each morning. After getting back, we unpacked and went in search of dinner and we found Le Taitu, which came highly recommended. They open at 18:30 and we were there at 18:15, however the owner graciously seated us and showed us the nightly specials. When he found out it was our honeymoon, he brought us each a complimentary Ti Punch. This was my introduction to agricole and I dont want to drink any other rhum.

After supper, we headed back up the hill where we polished off 2 bottles of wine before bed. Day 2, 06:30 rolled around and lo and behold I was awake, whilst my new husband slept till at least 08:30 each morning. Opened our patio door and was greeted by Cali, who was one of the 3 cats who adopted us while we were there.

Made my way to Good Morning to grab some pastries and a coffee and ran into the daily nude beach walkers. Hubby awoke and we ate and made our way down to the beach at about 09:00 to see where to plank ourselves for the day. We walked all the way to Papagayo's and decided on Le String. For $20 we got 2 chairs and an umbrella + a free drink of our choice each.

Met Max, if you go tell him the boys say hi! By 11:00, I was nicely toasted. We had lunch and met a lady from New Jersey, who when she found out it was our honeymoon ordered more drinks for us and when Max heard this he brough out shots of Ti Sour. Needless to say, by the time we headed home at 16:00 neither of us can recall the walk back.

I now needed a nap and was woken up at 19:30 by my husband and the first thing I said was, Wow, you went and got breakfast for us today. After a quick shower, we went into Grand Case for dinner and went to Talk of the Town, which was damn tasty and the cats appreciated the leftovers. After supper, we walked restaurant row and found a bar as we waited for our taxi to come and collect us.

Back home and an episode of Dexter later, the day was done.