Vacation Log: St. Maarten
Friday: We drove to Milwaukee, spent the night. Watched Point Break. It wasn’t as good as I remembered.
Saturday: We drove to Chicago and got to the airport about 2.5 hours early. The plane we were to take to San Juan was late getting in so we left late and missed our connection in San Juan and American Airlines put us into the Courtyard by Marriott. It was a pretty nice hotel with a club, restaurant, casino, and ice cream bar. There was a full on salsa band playing in the club. But we just got some ice cream, went to bed, and got up early to catch our flight to St. Maarten.
Sunday: We got to St. Maarten at about 11 am and rented our car — a nice little Corolla that made it to the top of most hills if you put it in low gear — and found our resort on Mullet Bay. The room was very nice although the resort didn’t have much going on compared to the other resorts. But it did have the only golf course on the island and it was located pretty well away from everything else. We ate lunch outdoors at Cheri’s Cafe and then went back to make up some sleep. After a good nap, we took a walk on the beach and then circumnavigated the island in our car to get our bearings. Because of the road and city situation, it was a bit difficult to find certain places at first but one gets used to it. And the churches were pretty busy on Sunday night. We ate supper at Lee’s. They serve the fish they caught the same day on their fishing trips.
Interesting: The island is divided between The Netherlands and France. The Dutch side is very American in nature. All the road signs are in English and I only met one man from the Netherlands. And the Dutchiest thing about the Dutch side is the ubiquity of Heineken, which is also fairly cheap there. On the other hand, you have the French side which seems quite French. The road signs are all in French and I met quite a few different people from France.
Monday: There was a big storm at about 3 am, with winds at 50-70 mph by my estimate. And then the boys called in the morning and it was snowing in WI and 200. Good time for a vacation. So we spent the morning and ate lunch at the beach, did some snorkeling and got a bit of sunburn, and went shopping in the afternoon. We ate supper at Bamboo Bernie’s, right on the ocean. We tried to watch the NCAA championship game but fell asleep early instead.