Current mood:	hungry
Entry tags:	vacation

St. Maarten
Paul and I spent last week vacationing in St. Maarten. It was fabulous. For anyone that isn't familiar, St. Maarten is split between too countries, Sint Maarten, which is the Dutch half and Saint Martin, which is the French half. We staying in Philipsburg, which is the capital of the Dutch half and also where the cruise port on the island is.

We decided to drive down and fly out of Dulles because there was a direct flight from there into the Princess Juliana airport in Philipsburg as opposed to flying out of BWI and being routed through Philly to get there. We took advantage of a park and fly deal at a Hampton Inn near the airport since our flight out on Saturday was so early and it's about an hour and half drive to the airport. We drove down on Friday night, stayed at the hotel, and then were able to leave our car parked there while we were gone. As it was we still had to catch the shuttle to the airport at 6:30 am, so that was not fun.

The flight was fine as far as flights go I guess. It was about 4 hours long and filled with babies. I have never seen so many babies on one plane before in addition to other children. Apparently St. Maarten is the place to vacation if you have kids. There was also a couple obviously on their honeymoon as well as the bride was wearing her veil and the groom had on one of those goofy t-shirts that looked like a tuxedo. Apparently Paul and I did not get the memo that this was what you are supposed to wear on the plane if you are honeymooning, so we were not dressed appropriately. I did not appreciate the fact that United did not provide us with any food whatsoever, not even a little bag of peanuts, unless you paid for their snack boxes. When we flew to Curacao last year on Delta we got a full meal plus two snack/drink services. That was much better.

We stayed at the Villas on Great Bay. It was great. We had a 2 bedroom villa, although we only needed the one bedroom. We tried to no avail to get other friends to join us in that second bedroom, but no one took us up on the offer. Definitely their loss. It was really nice to have a kitchen too so that we didn't have to eat out all the time. We ate breakfast and lunch in almost every day and then went out to dinner most nights. We cooked dinner in twice. Plus all the restaurants were pricy, so we would have gone broke trying to eat out all the time. Although we had a "gardenview" villa it was still closer from our front door to the beach than anywhere I have ever stayed. The manager lives on site, so he's always available for any questions or concerns you may have. There was also a nice little pool, where most people staying in the other villas seemed to spend their time. We were the only ones who ever sat out in the chairs on the beach for some reason.

Our part of the beach was nice and secluded. It's along the same stretch of beach where the cruise ships come in, but very few cruise ship people ever bothered to walk down to where we were. I enjoyed that a lot more than the day we went to Orient Beach, which is on the French side and is supposed to be the most popular beach on the island. It's probably where you want to go if you really want to do some watersports. There were some jetski places near us, but that was about it. Orient Beach had everything including parasailing and kite-surfing. The whole beach is covered in chairs and umbrellas being rented by little bars. Basically you paid around $14 for 2 chairs, an umbrella, 2 free drinks, and access to the bathroom at the bar you were renting your chairs from. I assume that some of the chairs at the other end of the beach that weren't actively advertising their rentals were for the people staying in the resorts there, but I don't know for sure. I just think it would annoying to have to pay to have a chair every day if you were staying there and that wasn't the case.

Where we were staying was about a 10 minute walk from the downtown Philipsburg area. There's tons of shops and restaurants catering to the cruise ship people, so the area pretty much shuts down after around 6 when the cruise ships tend to leave port. We did walk over almost every day to go to the shops or grab dinner though. We ate dinner in Philipsburg twice.

The first time was at a restaurant called Green House, which was mostly bar food. It was good for what it was though. The second time was at a place called the Pasanggrahan Royal Guest House. My meal that night was quite excellent. I had grilled wahoo and scalloped potatoes that were to die for. Paul also enjoyed his pasta primavera. We also ate lunch in town on our last day as we had run out of the food we had bought at the grocery at the beginning of the week. We ate at some bar/restaurant that is only open for lunch called Oualachi. We split a magherita pizza and the goat cheese salad. The pizza was just ok, but the salad was amazing. If you're ever in St. Maarten go eat there just for that. Lots of nice fresh greens topped with 4 huge puff patries filled with goat cheese. It was not what I was expecting based on the menu description, but it was way better.

We also ate on the French side of the island 3 times in an area called Grand Case. Everyone says the food there is to die for. It's a big long street filled pretty much with nothing but restaurants. The first night we ate at a place called La California. It was ok. I had mahi mahi with a mango sauce. I don't remember what Paul ate that night. For dessert we split a crepe filled with apples and caramel with vanilla ice cream on top. The dessert was really good. The restaurant was right on the beach and had a gorgeous view. I just was not in love with the service. We were there over 2 hours and it just seemed like it was impossible to get the waitress's attention. She was working super hard, she just had way too many tables to deal with. It was nice that they take your picture during the meal and give you a copy with your bill. You also get to sample a shot of their flavored rum with the check. I didn't really enjoy mine though, so I didn't drink it.

The second night we ate in Grand Case we ate at an Italian restaurant called Spiga. They were speedy and we were out in about an hour. Paul started with some soup that sounded really good on the menu, but that I didn't like so much when I tried it. I just had a salad to start. For dinner I had a shrimp risotto, which had a good flavor, but some parts of the risotto were a little undercooked. Paul had a gorgonzola gnocchi, which was good. Paul had tiramisu for dessert, which was pretty good.

The final night we were in St. Maarten we ate a French restaurant in Grand Case named Spicy. It was by far the best meal we had on the island. Like La California this meal lasted approximately 2 hours, but it must have been paced much better or something because I was shocked that we had been there that long. It didn't seem like it. They started us with an amuse bouche of a cream of cauliflower soup with leeks served in one of those tall shot glasses. It was the oddest amuse bouche I've ever been given, but it was super tasty. It was really windy on Friday night and chillier than it had been other nights, so I was cold when we got into the restaurant. So I ordered a bowl of nice, hot French onion soup to start with. Paul ordered cream of asparagus soup I believe. They were both good. For dinner I had a chicken with mushroom sauce that was served with haricots verts and scalloped potatoes. Again the scalloped potatoes were to die for. They really know how to make scalloped potatoes on that island. The mushroom sauce on the chicken was also excellent. Paul had a vegetable risotto. We forwent dessert because I was really full plus most of their dessert menu was homemade ice cream, which I was too cold to eat.

Most days we just stayed on the beach and relaxed and walked into town to get a bit of exercise. We did go into Marigot, the French capital on Wednesday because there is a market there every Wednesday and Saturday selling fresh fish, vegetables, etc. plus lots of booths with trinkets, souvenir crap, and local handicrafts. We also tried to go to some former coffee/rum plantation the day we went to Orient Beach, but despite the hours listed on their website they were closed when we got there.

If you go to St. Maarten I would definitely recommend renting a car as there are lots of places to go on the island and it was nice to be able to get around at our leisure. Be forewarned that the traffic is rather sucky. The whole island is nothing but 2 laned roads with most of the main roads kind of connecting in a loop around the outside of the island. None of these main roads appear to have names as far as I could tell. They certainly weren't labeled on the map and I never saw any street signs for them, although most of the side-streets have names. It made it kind of confusing to navigate at times, but the good thing is that even if you get lost on one of the main roads you'll eventually wind up where you need to be because as I said it's pretty much a loop. It will just take you longer. The other problem is that people just randomly stop their car in the middle of the road to let people in and out of their cars and to talk to people walking along the road or people in other cars. It's kind of insane. So traffic just backs up and no one really seems to care. If people did that here there would be mad honking. There people just wait. So don't think you're going to get anywhere in a hurry.

The trip really was great though. It seemed like almost everyone vacationing there had been there before and had kept coming back. I can see why. Not that I've been too all the Caribbean islands or anything, but out of the 5 or 6 that I've been to, this was by far the best. I wouldn't mind returning again someday myself.