Where do I begin? After spending one glorious month (16 April to 16 May) on SXM I just don't know where to start!<br>Our Flight from Orlando was delayed in Miami for 45 minutes for two people from a connecting flight. Other than that it was a routine flight. After going through Immigration and picking up our luggage we found Claude from Summer Set waiting for us with our Toyota Corolla. We packed the car up and head off to the Villas on Great Bay which are (gulp!) on Front Street in Phillipsburg. I'm sure most of you are shaking your head about this but I have to tell you that we had a wonderful time there. The villa we rented was lovely as is the whole complex. Iron gates are locked at sundown and security guards patrol all night so we did not feel at all threatened by staying there. In fact we are planning on staying there again next year. Since we arrived on Easter Monday stores on both sides of the island were closed. We did ride around a little a ate dinner at the BDLG in the Marina Royale in Marigot. Big, big disappointment. This used to be a favorite place of ours but since they remodeled and enlarged both service and quality of the food have declined. Now what did we do for the next 29 days? We watched the sand grow!.<br>Now this will definitely NOT be in chronological (is that spelled right?) order. I was going to write everything down but....<br>I honestly think we hit just about every grocery store on the island! Paul just loves to roam around them. I'm only talking about the big ones...you know Food Center, Food Fair, Rams, Match and US Import/Export. We stocked up on all kinds of goodies and of course left half the stuff there when we came home. The maid loves us!<br>Well now to get down to brass tacks.<br>Mullet Beach is still our favorite ONLY because there is shade there and also toilet facilities. At the beginning of our stay it was quite clean but then with the few storms, wind and rain it did get quite messy. Baie Rouge is still glorious and as for Orient Beach, never liked the place, too commercial and whenever we have gone over there the beach has been covered with sea weed so we tend not to go there anymore. We did sit around the pool looking over Great Bay Beach and watched the cruise ships come in. We really enjoyed the butterfly farm. It is truly very, very interesting.<br>As for restaurants...there are just sooo many and sooo little time! We did go to some of our favorites and tried quite a few new places. I do have a kind of list of where we did go to eat so here goes!<br>As mentioned above, BDLG <br>Mark's Place...we have always had great meals there<br>Main de la Pate went there 3 or 4 times and loved it with the exception of the last time it was just so, so. I'll still give it a <br>Shiv Sagar - had two lunches there. I do love the Chicken Curry and Paul had the buffet, the 'all you can eat buffet' he just loves those things!<br>Calmos Cafe, we met up with Casey and Dave, and Bruce and Edie there and had a great time and some good ribs. This was a first time there for us. [img]/images/icons/thumbsup.gif[/img]<br>Turtle Pier - we have been going there for lunch for years and I have always raved about the hamburgs. Not this time. [img]/images/icons/thumbsdown.gif[/img]<br>Der Ledderkek (spelling?) the 'plane' on the salt pond road. A first for us and had a great meal. Will definitely go back there.[img]/images/icons/thumbsup.gif[/img]<br>We are up to Saturday now and we had planned on going to see Warren and Leon at Tutta Pasta but we forgot that they were closed on Saturday so we dropped into Banana's but Paul did not care for the menu so we went over to Lee's and I had a good snapper[img]/images/icons/thumbsup.gif[/img] but Paul's wahoo was overcooked and inedible[img]/images/icons/thumbsdown.gif[/img]<br>Sunday we went to the brunch at the Terrace on PDP. Not bad but really not worth the $25 or so. Now I will give it 1/2<br>[img]/images/icons/thumbsup.gif[/img]<br>Had a couple of breakfasts at Don Carlos and the first was good [img]/images/icons/thumbsup.gif[/img] second time lousy[img]/images/icons/thumbsdown.gif[/img]<br>Dinner at LeCottage was a very, very big disappointment. The food was mediocre and service to match.[img]/images/icons/thumbsdown.gif[/img]<br>Mai in Marigot was a great find. Very, very good Vietnamese food. Will definitely go back![img]/images/icons/thumbsup.gif[/img]<br>Another big disappointment was LeTastevin where we have been going for years. It was definitely not up to par this time around. [img]/images/icons/thumbsdown.gif[/img]<br>Lunch at Bobby's Seafood Gallery great [img]/images/icons/thumbsup.gif[/img]<br>L'Hibiscus another good meal [img]/images/icons/thumbsup.gif[/img]<br>Poulet d'Orleans was very good. The children are a delight and so interesting![img]/images/icons/thumbsup.gif[/img]<br>I think the best find we had was Le Tropicana, Marina Royale. We ate there 3 times. One lunch with our jeweler friend and his wife and two dinners. It was really wonderful and Chris and Gilles are great. [img]/images/icons/thumbsup.gif[/img][img]/images/icons/thumbsup.gif[/img]<br>And naturally we had a couple of meals at Da Livio's![img]/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]<br>Great as usual. We took our friend and his wife there for dinner during our last week and then they came back to our villa for after dinner drinks. A great time with good food and friends.[img]/images/icons/thumbsup.gif[/img]<br>And then there's Tutta Pasta. It was great seeing Warren and Leon again and we did have a wonderful meal there. Brought half of it home and had a great lunch the next day. Very enjoyable.[img]/images/icons/thumbsup.gif[/img]<br>And I can't forget L'Auburge Gourmand...another great meal and good service!<br>And last but far from least there is....drumroll............<br>Mario's! What can I say? Wonderful meals and services. We had two dinners there and that was not enough![img]/images/icons/thumbsup.gif[/img][img]/images/icons/thumbsup.gif[/img]<br>Gee it sounds as if we did nothing but eat while in SXM. But remember we WERE there for a month and I did do some cooking and Paul BBQ'd. We are not night people so were very rarely out in the evening after dinner. We did stop at the Dolphin Casino and I could not stand the smell of smoke, it is very bad there so we left. <br>The Carnival parade went right by our villa so we had ideal seats to watch it! It was really great. Some beautiful costumes. I don't know how those people do it...I mean the long walk from St. John's down to Carnival Village. That's a loooooooooooooong haul! And then the next day was the Second Day Parade. Oh those bands...gee my heart was just pounding from the vibration of the drums. It was fun though.<br>Thoughts...<br>The island was quite brown nothing like the green it was when we were there last October. The rainfall had been like Florida's...zilch!<br>Dutch side was a lot cleaner then the French Side.<br>Crime...we didn't hear or read of any while we were there.<br>Phillipsburg was very crowded when the Cruise Ships were in the first week. I think there were 4 or 5 in on one day. After the first of the month they really cut down. Too bad, the merchants really need the business.<br>All in all we had a wonderful time...didn't do half the stuff we planned on doing, but then we never do, even after 15 years of going to SXM we STILL don't do what we had planned. Sand gravity takes its toll![img]/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img][img]/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]<br>I would rather not go into the trip home! [img]/images/icons/sick.gif[/img][img]/images/icons/sick.gif[/img] It was so bad. We did go to the airport and check-in in the morning for our 2:30 or so flight home. Got to the airport around 1:30 and about 2 or so they announced that the flight to San Juan was cancelled! Oh boy what a stampede to get re-scheduled. I do have to give AA a couple of [img]/images/icons/thumbsup.gif[/img][img]/images/icons/thumbsup.gif[/img] with the vouchers. We got vouchers for the Maho (awful room and and would never stay there again.)[img]/images/icons/thumbsdown.gif[/img] cab back a forth (had a hard time finding a cabbie that would take the voucher) and then vouchers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Since we had already eaten lunch we didn't bother with that one. The voucher we got from AA was for $70 for dinner for two and the Maho would only honor $50 and to top it off the restaurant for that voucher was closed as it was buffet night at one of the other restaurants and the buffet [img]/images/icons/thumbsdown.gif[/img][img]/images/icons/thumbsdown.gif[/img] was $31 each! We should have just said to heck with the voucher and gone out to eat. Oh well...The trip from SXM to SJU was ok but then I think the baggage handlers went on strike after we arrived as it took about 40 minutes for the luggage to get out. Now our connecting flight was at 0925 and here it is 0905 and the luggage is finally coming out. We got our bags and hurried through customs and went out the door at 0914 and we were met by an AA rep who asked us what flight we were getting and we told them and then they said we were too late that we missed out flight. It's 0915 then and we still had 10 minutes, but no go. So we had to go over to Customer Service and after 1/2 hour there they finally got things straightened out and put us on a flight that was leaving in 3 hours. We were not happy campers. And then to top it off while we were walking toward the gates at 0953 we happened to look at the monitor and found that our 0925 flight was doing a final boarding! Oh boy AA certainly got a big fat 'D' for that one.[img]/images/icons/thumbsdown.gif[/img][img]/images/icons/thumbsdown.gif[/img]. It was really a bad trip home but I supposed I shouldn't complain after all the traveling we've done this has really been the only bad experience we have had. <br>Well...Carol did tell me to write a long trip report and I guess this IS a bit winded![img]/images/icons/grin.gif[/img][img]/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]<br>Can't wait until our next trip.<br><br>Annie<br><br><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Administrator on 6/5/01 02:11 PM.</EM></FONT></P>