Trip report: 3/12/08 to 3/26/08:

My friend Deb and I left JFK via AA on 3/12—no flight troubles at all this year, thank you AA!
Arrived in SXM on time and were met at the airport by one of Mohamed’s reps from Panaromic Car Rental as well as a rep from Jennifer’s Vacation Villas which we rented through Sandy Molloy. We were taken to Panaromic’s office a short ride from the airport, completed paperwork (with a minor snafu with overcharges from office guys—an email to Mohamed once we returned home and he immediately credited my card for the overcharge—thank you for your immediate response Mohamed!!) We were then off to follow the rep from Jennifer’s to our condo—Caribbean Sun at Palm Beach Condos which was located just down the road from Horny Toad Guesthouse and Mary’s Boon. Place was great, right on the beach in Simpson Bay: full kitchen, living room, half bath with washer and dryer, bedroom with full bath and nice balcony on first floor. Second floor was a loft bedroom with full bathroom and another balcony. Condo was fully air-conditioned with fans upstairs and down and safe in each bedroom. Condo was very clean and quite new and just lovely—thank you Sandy Molly for your help again this year! We dropped our bags and headed out to supermarket (Super Marche?) in Simpson Bay to pick up some basics—booze, beer, mixers and snax, stopped in to pick up our phone from Sharon, Queen of SXM (thank you Sharon for another year of quick and easy use of phone—and nice to get to see you this year if only for a minute or two!) Brought our “gear” back to the condo and headed over to Buccaneer Beach Bar where we were to meet our friends that we met last year, Barbara & Eddie. Apparently we missed them by just minutes, but stayed and had burgers for dinner and some cocktails to get our vaca started, then headed back to the condo for an early night as we had been up since 3am…
First morning we hung out at the condo pool area since we had to go to the airport by 12 to pick up Deb’s daughter Kelly and her friend Tasha who were arriving today. Went to SSBB for cocktails to watch for their plane to come in and bumped into Andrea and Kevin (NYC) as he was heading home today. Nice to see you again Andrea and nice to meet the famous/infamous Kevin. Picked the girls up, got some more groceries (read: liquor) for the new arrivals and back to condo for cocktails, then off to Lady C floating bar to meet Sheila. Never did see Sheila that night, but ran into MaryBeth and Don (great to see you both again!!) with whom we chatted for a bit. Had pizza at the Pizza Galley then over to SSBB where we listened to Max and Gianfranco (spelling?) for a while—those guys were FABULOUS!! Great rock and roll, great band, great fun…back home.

As I didn’t write down any notes this year, the rest of the trip is pretty much a blur! So am going to try to give a synopsis of our visit: (and I tried to insert some photos, but just can't figure it out!!)
FOOD:
Dinners:
Pizza Galley—awesome pizza!
Buccaneer Beach Bar—great burgers, swordfish sandwich, tuna burger a little overdone
Skip Jacks— Appetizers for all: bruschetta, crab and artichoke dip, calamari and fried shrimp & a bottle champagne for Deb and I
Second trip to Skip Jack’s and another night of apps with Deb and Michelle and another bottle of champagne
Boathouse: Everything plate
Grilled lobster-little over done with the grilling
Coconut shrimp
Good service, enjoyable meal.
Pineapple Pete’s:
Lobster thermidor—fabulous!!
Crabcakes
Mahi Mahi –Great!
Finally got my crème brulee fix—delicious!
Great service, great food.
Peg Leg Pub: 2X for dinner, never ate here before—went once with Deb, me, Kelly, Tasha, Barbara, Eddie and another friend from home, Michelle
Filet mignon
Surf & turf
Other steaks
Great service here from Sean, delicious meals. The bartender was a lot of fun too—we hung out for quite some time one night after dinner having fun there.

Shrimpy’s: Went here one night with Deb and Michelle for cocktails before heading out to dinner: four people behind the bar, one table of maybe eight people and another four people at the bar. We waited ten minutes for a drink—no one behind the bar would even LOOK at us! Finally asked if we could get a drink from one of the four people working the bar—one lady said someone would be right with us…waited another 10 minutes of no one even acknowledging our presence and walked out.

Cheri’s: Had to take the newbies, Kelly and Tasha, here of course. We had appetizers here: calamari and wings with lots of champagne kisses. Stayed for most of the show, then headed across the street to Sopranos who had lost power about 10 minutes before. Power didn’t come back on the short time we waited so we never did see the show.

St. Paddy’s Party @ Baywatch: TONS of people there—met Sugarae for the first time—very nice lady. Had dinner here, shared among the four of us: Lasagna, mussels ala Andy, prime rib and lingine w/ white clam sauce. Met some fun people here, though don’t think anyone we met was a TTOLer, enjoyed the antics of the body painters and paintees, lots of cocktails, fun evening. When we spoke with Adrian and Ross a few days later, they said 107 dinners were served!

Lunches:
Buccaneer Beach Bar: Burgers
Swordfish sandwich—all good!
Bartender Curtis, was rude and ignored us…on later visits we met with Wanda, who was a fun and attentive bartender.
Baywatch: Mussels a la Andy
Margarita buffalo shrimp
New Jersey Dip
Grouper caeser salad
Never had a bad meal here—can’t beat it!
Kokomarina: 2X for lunch Seared tuna
Exotic lobster salad
Tuna kabobs
Tomato & mozzarella salad

Fabulous food, great service, very nice place
Brice Paradise, Orient Beach: where we parked our butts every day on the beach. Brice is a sweetheart; Natalie runs the beach and is great! They both took very good care of us throughout our stay. We arrived every morning to our chairs and cocktails waiting for us!
Burgers
Caeser salad with chicken
Profiteroles/ice cream
LOTS of what we and everyone who joined us from the beach called “shaka-shakas” during our stay: Brice made a concoction of rum, baileys, kahlua and something else: put into a shaker, where everyone got to “shaka-shaka” and shots for everyone!! Met some wonderfully fun people at the beach here every day—too much fun—is that possible? Great laughs with our friends Barbara and Eddie and so many more that we met on this trip.
Talk of the Town lolo: Crab back
Christophene
Ribs/chicken combo side potato & cole slaw
Crab salad
Grilled Shrimp
Shrimp Creole
Stuffed eggplant
Great lunches here, super cheap food with large quantities
Breakfasts:
Café Atlantico bakery: Lots of croissants!
Bikini Beach: awesome omelets
Baywatch: Omelet specials—delicious!
Zee Best: Fabulous crepes!

Other miscellaneous notes:
Of course don’t remember the days, but were at Brice Paradise one morning and Natalie told us that a warning was put up for choppy waters and swells coming in. As gorgeous as the morning was, sure enough by that afternoon, the waves starting rolling in and the winds picked up. The next day Deb and I dropped off Kelly and Tasha at the Zip Lines at Loterie Farm—which they thoroughly enjoyed! Deb and I were going to go to Friar’s Beach today to do something different, but it was underwater—no beach to be had. We went from there to Grand Case, figuring Orient would be too rough still, and no beach at GCBC either—waves crashing on the beach, over the rocks—truly unbelievable. We had a drink at GCBC and headed down to the village. Talk of the Town was open but others across from it were just swamped with sand and water. Waves were crashing over the pier, running across the street itself and over to restaurants on the other side—it was pretty wild. Ran over to Orient and the beach was virtually shut down—think the only beach bar we saw open that day was Bikini. The swells were huge, the beach was underwater. Again, have some great shots of crashing waves in Grand Case and mess at Orient, but just don't get the photo thingie!

SSBB—one evening to see Percy Rankin for a bit—those guys are good!

Pedros: Cocktails and fun dancing with the band here one afternoon.

Parasailing: Tasha and I went up one afternoon, then the guys asked if anyone else wanted to go that we knew, they would give a trip for buy one/one free, so Tasha went back up with Kelly.

Pelican Sunset Cruise: Our friend Michelle got us in on the $10 sunset cruise—cruise thru the bay at sunset, open bar—met more of Michelle’s friends from Pelican and had a nice evening…off to Buccaneer Beach Bar for burgers afterwards.

Red Piano Bar: Went here a couple of evenings. Jay from NY on piano and Shell singing—beautiful voice! We met up with the famous Charlie whom we had met last year, danced with him, lots of cocktails and fun. Second visit here we bumped into Sheila and her sister Susan—nice to see you for a minute Sheila! Hope you had a nice birthday!

Cocktails @ St. Maarten Yacht Club with Michelle and Deb one afternoon for happy hour—fun to watch the yachts coming and going. Another night Michelle took us into the Yacht Club bar/club in the rear—you show you license and ID and they let you go into the marina, see the yachts close up and we went to the bar there for an evening of fun. We met an attorney there from our hometown of Southampton whom Michelle knew.

Kelly and Tasha left on Saturday—dropped off their bags @ 9am check in with AA, went for breakfast at Zee Best, couple of pre-flight cocktails and dropped the girls off for their flight and went to Buccaneer Beach Bar for cocktails and free chairs and umbrellas at their beach—was an iffy day, so we didn’t want to travel too far for a beach…sun ended up coming out and we hung out there for the afternoon with Wanda bartending.

We departed on Wednesday, early check-in with AA @ 8:45, back to condos to try to finish off our booze—didn’t accomplish, but hey! we tried! Then dropped off the phone to Sharon, key to condo to Jennifer’s Vacation Villas (lady who we spoke to is originally from very near to us here on Long Island), returned the car to Panoramic for a ride to airport. Purchased liquor and booze @ airport, some jewelry trinkets, sat at the bar and waited for our flight.

All in all, it was another great, relaxing, fun-filled, lots of laughs girl’s trip. We had no safety issues, never felt unsafe at any time—can’t wait to return next year! Thanks to Sandy Molloy, Mohamed at Panoramic, Sharon Harris, for your great services, all sponsors on this board, as well as all posters here for all of your help! Wishing safe, happy travels to all!