Another year and another great trip and as always, I’ll preface this report by apologizing for being so long winded but
if you don’t feel like reading the entire report, the high-lighted areas pretty much spell out the details.
AA667 and 660 – great trip down. We
traveled with daughter Kim (who was meeting hubby already on island for the Mullet Bay Open) and
grandson Riley.
Daughter Karen and family as well as granddaughter Lyndsey and a friend would all arrive on Thursday, the 9th.
As always, I chose the wrong (ie. slowest) line at immigration but we still managed to be in our rental car in record time.
Lesley Bruce, Kenny’s Car Rentals, was waiting for us in the terminal and had our cell phone from Sharon, Queen of St. Maarten - and we were on our way.
These are two incredible island companies and I would highly recommend them to anyone looking for good car and/or cell phone rental services. At the end of the trip Lesley met us at the airport and we were able to return our cell phone along with our payment for it and our car to him right there. It really couldn’t get much easier than that! He also provided the cars for the rest of the family and all at our personal convenience and at reasonable prices.
Lesley, if you should read this, you really are The Best in my book and I thank you again for your consistently good service.
Off to The Towers to begin our vacation – greetings and warm welcomes from the staff is always a treat. We were in a 7th floor one bedroom unit for our full vacation which is always nice and we were able to exchange another unit on the
same floor for Karen and family, who arrived later in the week.
Kim and Ken and family were tucked away in their penthouse. I can’t say enough about our enjoyment of our timeshare - I know many aren’t as pleased as us but in our case it has really worked well. And the breeze in our unit was so delightful we didn’t have to shut our balcony doors or windows and use the airco for the entire trip. Could it get any better?
We did breakfast each day on our balcony, high up and overlooking the golf course and the water. A
SXM first for my DH – he actually saw a St. Maarten sunrise – not once but twice! Couple this with
coffee and fresh pastries each morning from the pastry truck (along with a fresh baguette for the beach) and life is good!! Many days those baguettes became toast for breakfast, or sandwiches for lunch with the addition of some fresh cheeses and cold cuts or late afternoon snacks with drinks before heading out to dinner.
Day one, after
lunch at Pineapple Pete’s, we did all the mundane things – unpacked, grocery shopped at LGM in Cole Bay and settled into our unit. Saturday night we were so tired we didn’t even go out to dinner as far as I can recall.
Over the course of the trip we did the annual
“lobsters-at-Lee’s night†– the garlic sauce was a little heavier this year than in the past – still
good but potent and $25. per pound. Other dinners included
Antoine’s – perhaps some of the
best grilled grouper with a caper and lemon sauce I’ve ever tasted and
DH says his filet mignon was absolutely incredible – along with their
incredible dessert soufflés;
Uncle Harry’s for very good pan fried grouper and my grandson says, the best steak he ever had on St. Maarten!; a rather chaotic dinner at
The Greenhouse (chaotic because there were so many of us and they had opened only two nights before) but the food was very good and
Conan and his staff were delightful;
all eleven of us returned to Antoine’s for Easter Sunday dinner;
Moulin Fou and The Hideaway rounded out our dinners along with a couple of light nights we either
brought home pizzas or KFC or were too stuffed from the days’ activities to even contemplate dinner.
The
piece de resistance of our dining this year was our evening at Captain Oliver’s. First of all, we didn’t have to drive which made getting there very nice, and
we were joining Barbara (too bad the Gardener was ill....) and meeting Philippe in person for the first time. It’s been probably 20-25 years since we were last there and it truly was
a very special evening – the setting, the food, the company, and not to forget - the performance of “Shine†who was so very enjoyable – perhaps come November we’ll make it back there for the lobster buffet, assuming we can find it on our own. Taxi anyone?
Other experiences included
a gathering hosted by WildBill, Lippynloose and Wetnwild at BBB – a very nice evening but sadly, we didn’t get to stay long or meet all the people we’d hoped to; and not to forget a
sunset at Sunset Bar and Grill with family and friends and some new acquaintances, as well. The sunset was awesome and the band good but OMG – were they ever loud. Not sure if it was the volume level or the wine but sadly, I didn’t last too long at that one.
The rest of our trip was spent:
beaching on Mullet Bay Beach with lunches from our room or
Rosie’s incredible ribs; a day at
Friar’s Bay with lunch at Friar’s Bay Beach Café – it’s always a great meal there and still free chairs with lunch; one trip to
Grand Case to take the younger grandchildren on the Ocean Explorer and then lunch at one of the lolos afterwards – more very good ribs and an easy lunch on the wallet, too; and lastly,
we sunned at the pool at The Towers – I couldn’t believe how many days we were actually content to just spend our day there - very unlike us but oh, so very easy to do. One trip into
Philipsberg to see the good people at Caribbean Gems and one to
Marigot for no particular reason and that about fills in our two weeks.
Other things along the way:
Remember those open windows I mentioned in our hotel room?
The smoke from the dump fires made it all the way across the island and into our room one morning and was really nasty - I hate to think what the people of the island have to deal with since this is such a regular occurrence for them.
No big problems with traffic – we seemed to time things well (or just got very lucky) and for those that can do so,
we found once again that Saturday is a great day both to go to P’berg and to shop there, and if you arrive around 9ish, the parking is wide open with time enough for breakfast and by the time you’re done with that the shops will all be open.
And lastly, since this is always on people’s minds of late,
we had no problems of any crime related nature and we wandered the island constantly from end to end, both day and night, all eleven of us – sometimes separately and sometimes en masse, sometimes by car and sometimes on foot. We left nothing in our car anywhere and we kept it locked everywhere except when we parked it at Mullet Bay beach, at the recommendation of the rental company.
And yes,
the Easter holidays, particularly Easter Monday –
are totally crazy and need to be seen at least once to be believed! The islanders flood the beaches and parking becomes of nightmarish proportions in the beach locales. They
pitch tents and camp on Mullet Beach and have an incredibly wonderful time enjoying their barbeques and their parties, as well they should. The only thing about this phenomenon that particularly bothers me, since Mullet is and has always been my favorite island beach, is that
they seem to have little concern in removing their trash at the end of their holiday.
One guest at our timeshare collected 15 bags of trash from Mullet on Tuesday morning after the big holiday - St. Maarteners; you should be ashamed of yourselves for this particular lack of environmental concern for your own island.
We left for home Thursday the 16th after a four hour delay in departure from PJIA due to mechanical issues that needed to be resolved on what was otherwise a very uneventful flight home, and I can truly say,
this was one of our personal best trips to the island.
--------------------
Respectfully,
pat
The following are a few additions I came up with after the fact, for what they're worth....
Some things I forgot along the way - Two of our granddaughters had never been to the island before and I have to tell you, they both fell in love with it. The two year old was a little skeptical at first about the ocean waters but it didn't take her long to figure it all out and the ten year old is totally hooked and I think we may have created a monster here. She really enjoyed the Ocean Explorer as did our nine year old Grandson, so for those who might consider it down the road, the kids were entranced by the underwater sights.
We did a little buried treasure thing with the two and a half year old and we were so excited. I guess she'd watched a lot of Dora the Explorer and wanted to dig for treasure so we planted two seperate 'treasures' in the sand. We were so excited to see her reaction. Well, we were the only ones who were all that excited. She dug up her treasure chests and proceded to bury them again but at the end of the day she did redig them and take them with her.
We had no trouble using AE TC's all over the island and had no trouble breaking the hundred dollar checks at the grocery stores, the casinos and restaurants and jewelry stores we shopped in but in the casinos and groceries they did ask for personal ID - either a drivers license or passport.
We managed to make three trips into P'berg and two out around Grand Case, Orient and Captain Oliver's along with our general travels and when we filled the car up after almost two full weeks, the gas came to $35.
We made our customary contribution to Casino Royale and I think we actually left a few dollars to the good but not enough to get too excited about.
We weren't able to pick up any news about the status of Mullet Bay and personally, I'd be very surprised to see anything of any significance happen there in the next few years given the current down turn in the economy in general and specifically the drop in general tourism all over the island.
The time span we were on the island, Easter and Passover, is usually one of the busiest times of year at our timeshare and yet, the occupancy rate never even hit 50% while we were there. The island is truly hurting in this respect. At no time did we ever have to wait to be seated in any restaurant, and even more surprising, we were able to easily find parking wherever we went including the restaurants in Simpson Bay.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/2009 07:12PM by pat.
