St. Maarten - "The Friendly Island"

[Kristen&Bailey]

So many things to cover so I'll post little pieces at a time as I pull together pictures and add some commentaries

[Kristen&Bailey]

First off, the vacation was a Christmas present from my parents. They have 2 RCI timeshares and last year they started giving Craig and I a week to exchange and go somewhere as our Christmas present. Last year was Cabo (Mexico). This year was St. Maarten.

Craig's parents also gave us enough miles to upgrade our plane tickets to business class. I have never flown anything but coach my entire life. The plane ride was so freaking cool. I was like a little kid the entire time.


Craig on the plane


Me thoroughly enjoying my business class seat


Each seat had its own personal tv to watch movies or play games on


Controls for the seat...


So I could do this... (lay completely down)

[Kristen&Bailey]

The resort had a lot of resident cats on the property. The resort claims to have a "cat-care" program where they will spay/neuter them and then release them back on property to assist in pest control. They also ask people not to feed the cats and say that they have various "cat cafe" stations around the resort for them.

Well I don't listen to rules very well and I fed them (and gave them nice fresh water) and made a lot of friends I also noticed all the cats having the tip of their ear cut. I wonder if that was something the resort did when they spayed and neutered them so they could keep track of which ones they had already done.


This is the first friend I made that day.







This black kitty ended up being my favorite. He was extremely vocal and would talk to me the entire time that I would sit outside with him







Just call me the crazy St. Maarten cat lady as I collect them on my deck





These two (the previous black one and a white and black one) hung out the most. I woke up every morning to them sleeping on our furniture waiting for me.

[Kristen&Bailey]

Out to dinner one night

Craig



Me



Craig eating some snails



He ate all of them by himself... no way I was putting those things in my mouth. He is a much more adventurous eater than I am.



This was the same night that I met the one stray dog in the marina. He was the sweetest dog. I wish I could have taken him home with me.

Hanging out with him before giving him my leftovers






To end the evening we came home to a huge hermit crab in front of our door

[Kristen&Bailey]

Tuesday was our attempted Scuba attempt.

I'll just copy my retell of the experience from the Misc Idle Chat thread

We got certified last summer. This vacation would have been our first "real" dives, not counting our certification dives.

We ended up not diving, as when we got to the dive site a couple miles off shore, the waves and current were pretty rough and I got extremely sea sick on the boat. When I got in the water, with the mixture of already being sick and having thrown up over the side of the boat about 5 times, then being in the rough water where the conditions weren't quite as I was expecting, I ended up panicing and chose not to dive. I just wasn't in the right physical and mental state to go underwater, and didn't feel comfortable going through with the dive. Craig chose to stay with me, so unfortunately he didn't get to dive either.

Worse part, they couldn't take me back to shore, nor did they have anyone working onshore who could come with another boat to get us. So I had to stay on the boat for another 3 hours while sea sick and throw up about 20 more times.

Some pictures prior to me getting sick though...





The boat



On the boat (all of these pictures were taken in the pretty bay still, not in the rough waters where we were taken to dive)





I love my dive buddy, even if we are scuba failures.

[Kristen&Bailey]

Some pictures from around the resort. The resort itself was situated on its own little private peninsula with Great Bay on one side and Little Bay on the other. At the tip of the peninsula was Fort Amsterdam (more pictures of that later).

Our view from our unit was of Great Bay, which is where the main downtown of Philipsburg (The capital on the Dutch side) is located. It is also where all the cruise ships come into.








This was our building in which we stayed. We were the bottom left unit.





These are some pictures of Little Bay where the resorts beach was. It wasn't a big deal not having our unit on this side, as it took us only a minute to walk to the beach from where we were.

[Kristen&Bailey]

We walked up to Fort Amsterdam one afternoon after spending some time on the beach.

There was more up there than I expected, as I just thought it was the wall with canons. There were a couple buildings (or what used to be building) and other random things. It also gave a nice view.

A "cistern" I think





















Some views of the ocean, bays, and resort from the Fort

[Kristen&Bailey]

One of the resort's beach bars is named after the resident resort parrot, Gizmo. I have some video of Gizmo from the first day which I will post when I get all the video on my computer and editted.

Gizmo liked to take showers, and the only day I was at the bar with my good camera was a day that he wanted to spend most of it in the beach shower. So all these pictures are of a very wet parrot.

[Kristen&Bailey]

Our room was quite nice, aside from it reeking of bleach after it had just been cleaned (which resulted in my trying to open a window and jammed my finger and ripped my nail almost off).

The bedroom was nice and big. The kitchen was a full kitchen with all brand new appliances. We had 2 full bathrooms. The living room and dining area were nice sizes as well. They definitely needed to hire a new interior decorator though as there were some very empty blank walls (paintings on little walls but then huge walls with nothing on them) and weirdly arranged things which left awkward open spaces. But the furniture was nice as was the color schemes.

While I thought I took pictures of everywhere, apparently I only took pictures of the bedroom.

[Kristen&Bailey]

In St. Maarten they have 2 real America's Cup sailboats, including the original Stars and Stripes that Dennis Connor had. They have an activity called the "12 meter challenge" where they have 2 groups of people who race the two sailboats and everyone is a part of the crew and has a job on the sailboat. Craig and I were primary grinders. I tried to do some work but really spent most of my time trying not to get seasick. I loaded up on dramamine prior though (took 2 full doses) and was successful in not throwing up during the sailboat race. Yay!

Here is our whole group



Craig


Me


Us


p.s. Our boat lost but it was still fun

[Kristen&Bailey]

After the sailboating, we decided just to drive around the island.

Craig had purchased a new telephoto lens for my camera so we stopped at a random beach (or rather side of the road on top of a hill overlooking a beach) to test it out.








We continued our drive up to Grand Case, which is a town on the French side of the Island known for its restaurants. We ended up eating one of the "lolos" which were basically little road side grills. Really good and cheap barbecued food. We walked away stuffed only paying like 17 bucks for the both of us.

A couple pictures of the beach at Grand Case



Out by the rocks is where we went on a snorkeling trip. No pictures of that yet (on a disposable water camera) but video later

[Kristen&Bailey]

Friday was our last adventure. There is a place called Loterie Farm which is in the middle of the island and is basically rainforest. We did ziplining which was lots of fun.

I have no pictures from the actual ziplining as it was raining so I didn't bring my camera. We did bring our video camera though and got lots of video from it. I'll have video when I edit it all. The raining, though it made things a bit more slippery a difficult going over bridges and obstacles, was very refreshing and made the experience a little more interesting.

Here are a couple pictures prior to ziplining though (and in between rain showers).

[Kristen&Bailey]

Some other activities that I have no pictures of yet, but will have video (and descriptions) over the next few days as I edit.

Rhino Safari - Drive your own inflatable motorboat 7 miles up the coast of the Island, stop and snorkel, drive back

Horseback riding

More ziplining stuff




Overall it was a great trip. Lots of fun. I feel like we did a lot of activities but we had a whole lot of downtime too, just relaxing around the resort or me napping. I love naps. Lots of yummy food too.

[Oliver & Henry's Mum]

Kristen, I really, really enjoyed your photos and descriptions!

The sea is SO blue, it's breathtakingly beautiful. The island looks lovely. I like the idea of the resort caring for the cats, as well as "Gizmo's Bar". Craig's escargot looked delish! I also noticed other places that looked like floating bars which look like fun. It's a shame you suffer from seasickness. I used to terribly as a child, but I'm generally alright now. It's a horrible feeling.

Your accommodations also looked lovely. How wonderful to have your own patio overlooking the bay?! The cruise ship looks like a floating hotel.

I also liked your seats on the plane! Very nice! How long is the flight from Boston to St. Maarten? I know Barbados is six hours from Toronto which is long enough.

Lastly, but most certainly not least, how was Bailey when he saw you? (I don't mind if you talk about that in a different thread as this is about the vacation.) I can't wait to see your videos.

Welcome Home! Thanks for sharing...that was wonderful! You and Craig make a beautiful couple.

[JaymeK]

Everything is so beautiful! Even from just seeing the bedroom it looks like you had a very nice place to stay. It's too bad you get sea sick..have you ever tried ginger? I heard that helps. They have ginger pills I think.

Did you get lots of sun? You look a little pale in the first pictures! haha. I'm exactly the same. I'm always trying to get out there to tan (safely of course..with lots of sunscreen!). One of my friends is half portugese and has the most gorgeous dark skin. She talks about how pale she is when she hasn't been out in the sun, while she's 10 shades darker than me! haha.

I'm glad you had a good time. That parrot is hilarious..sitting in the shower. haha. I look forward to seeing the videos!