St. Martin trip report, May 7-15 (long!)
May 18th, 2010, 06:28 PM
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St. Martin trip report, May 7-15 (long!)
Bonjour! And merci beaucoup to everyone who has helped me along the way in planning this trip. We booked it about a year ago! (I’ll explain the French in a bit.)
I’m going to post this in sections over the next couple days to break it up. It’s long
Some quick background about our travel style if you haven’t read my past trip reports. I’m a bit (okay a little more than a bit) obsessed with Caribbean travel. We pretty much always rent a villa, usually with friends, and like to get out and explore the island and mingle with the locals. Our most recent trip was to Long Island, Bahamas last year. I thought and thought on where to go after Long Island. Although we loved Long Island (my husband actually wants to go back and purchase land there), I wanted something more built up for the next trip. My husband just wanted something with a direct flight. The strange thing about our decision on St. Martin is that although it wasn’t necessarily our favorite island we’ve been to (my top 3 favorites so far are St. John, St. Lucia and Virgin Gorda), we really missed the amazing food and French culture, and I felt like we hadn’t explored it as much as I would have liked. Not to mention you get more “bang for the buck” on villa rentals in St. Martin than on most other islands we looked into. I also wanted to see Anguilla. We spent most of our time at the villa we rented on Baie Rouge 6 years ago, with only visiting Orient and Phillipsburg for day trips. So we decided to go back.
Funny story on how this trip came to be. Kristen1206 on this forum and I started emailing aside from fodors, as we had been in touch on the forum for a few years, have daughters the same age, and have the same travel styles. Turns out we also live nearby, and so we decided to do a trip together! Kristen and I had so much fun planning this trip. It was great having someone as detailed and interested in research as me, so we had a great year of planning! It paid off because we really got out each day and explored the island. And everyone had so much fun! It was Kristen and her husband and kids (14, 11 and 5), our friends Jay and Liz (they went to St. Martin w/us 6 years ago and then to Long Island last year), and my husband and I (Brooke is now almost 5 and Austin almost 2). After a few issues trying to find a villa that would allow small kids, and a few rental companies, we finally found the villa Happy Bay through the rental company Caribbean Days. The villa is located above the beach Happy Bay, and about a 5-10 minute drive to Grand Case.
http://www.gobeach.com/happybay.htm
http://www.villahappybay.com/
Upon watching airfare to book our flights, we realized that for us to fly direct from PHL to SXM it would be much cheaper to fly out Friday instead of Saturday, so we opted to do that and stay at Grand Case Beach Club for the first night and then check into Happy Bay on Saturday. Kristen and her family flew in on Saturday as they weren’t coming from PHL.
Okay, now I’ll start the trip report! Enjoy!
Day 1: PHL-SXM, Grand Case Beach Club
Getting there was relatively smooth. We didn’t have to be at the airport until 7:30 which was a huge help with 2 little ones so we didn’t have to interfere with their sleep schedule too much. We met Jay and Liz at the airport, grabbed breakfast, and off we went! I had high hopes for Austin to sleep and watch a movie on the way down, but he did neither. He was a bit of a handful but at least he didn’t scream. He just thought the floors were really cool. The plane was pretty much empty which allowed us room to spread out. The whole back section was completely empty!
Upon our 1:30 arrival we were greeted with really, really good Jumbie rum shots, my favorite being the pineapple (we brought 2 bottles of that home with us!). We then met our Unity car rep who already had a car seat installed for us for Austin (a really nice, new Britax car seat rented from Island Nannies). We brought a butt booster seat for Brooke with us. A short 5 minute drive and we were at Unity car rental where the Island Nannies rep was waiting for us (they’re across the street from each other which was very convenient) with the pack’n’play rental (the pack’n’play had extra padding which was really nice, and they threw in a huge soft cooler for free too-I was very happy with Island Nannies). We squared up and headed to GCBC through the road that cuts through the center of the island, which we hadn’t been on before. We had nice views of the mountains on the way. About 30 minutes later we were checking in to GCBC, recommended to me by a friend and by people on this forum. We settled in and spent some time walking around checking out the property. I’m not one for hotels, but if I had to stay in one, this one is my style. It’s pretty small, well maintained, very cute with beautiful landscaping. Very charming. We rented the 2 bedroom 2 floor unit for $300 for the night. Split 2 ways it’s not bad! We were all pretty hungry (okay I was starving) by 4 so we headed to the Sunset Café at the hotel. Unfortunately it was closed until 6 (we were between the lunch and dinner crowd) so we walked down the street to the restaurants. I must say, I LOVE Grand Case. It’s my new favorite Caribbean town. Think Duval street in the Keys, but with more of a french islandy botique feel. The first restaurant we came to was Le Shore, so we went there and bellied up to the bar. The bartender didn’t speak a word of English so it was interesting trying to order a mixed drink. I noted then that I needed to learn French, and quickly! We all actually really enjoyed trying to pick up on the basics of the French language over the course of the week. What a beautiful sounding language! My daughter is enjoying speaking the basics of it now that we’re home-it’s very cute! Anyway, back to Le Shore. So they were technically closed as well (apparently everything is closed at that time) but they let us drink anyway as long as we promised to stay until 6 when they could open their cash registers so we could pay, so we hung out there until about 8 enjoying the drinks, dinner and cool loungy areas in the sand. We weren’t really planning on swimming, but Brooke and Austin made their way down to the beach (the restaurant is beach front) and I was officially on island time so I let them swim in their clothes. Plus it kept them happy and content for the next couple hours! Of course I ended up mostly in the water with them so we ended up eating our gourmet dinner there wet, but no one seemed to mind, maybe because we were the only customers there. The food there was AMAZING, but expensive. I actually took a picture of our dinners the presentation was so nice. Brooke enjoyed swimming at the pool there, and we watched them set up for the dinner crowd that started rolling in (all dressed up) as we were leaving around 8. It’s a good thing we left when we did as it seems like a pretty dressy/classy place for dinner (definitely not good for 2 wet sandy kids)! While we were on the beach we strolled next door to Calmos Café which looked really cool and we made a mental note to check it out the next day, plus were huge fans of the tv show “3 Sheets” and they had just done a show on St. Martin and were at Calmos in the show so that was a must do for us.
We headed back to the hotel, put the kids to bed, and Jay and Liz hung out at Sunset’s bar while Kurt and I hung out on the top deck with our complimentary bottle of wine. Jay and Liz met up with us and we had a great time chatting until the wee hours on our first night of our trip.
I’m going to post this in sections over the next couple days to break it up. It’s long
Some quick background about our travel style if you haven’t read my past trip reports. I’m a bit (okay a little more than a bit) obsessed with Caribbean travel. We pretty much always rent a villa, usually with friends, and like to get out and explore the island and mingle with the locals. Our most recent trip was to Long Island, Bahamas last year. I thought and thought on where to go after Long Island. Although we loved Long Island (my husband actually wants to go back and purchase land there), I wanted something more built up for the next trip. My husband just wanted something with a direct flight. The strange thing about our decision on St. Martin is that although it wasn’t necessarily our favorite island we’ve been to (my top 3 favorites so far are St. John, St. Lucia and Virgin Gorda), we really missed the amazing food and French culture, and I felt like we hadn’t explored it as much as I would have liked. Not to mention you get more “bang for the buck” on villa rentals in St. Martin than on most other islands we looked into. I also wanted to see Anguilla. We spent most of our time at the villa we rented on Baie Rouge 6 years ago, with only visiting Orient and Phillipsburg for day trips. So we decided to go back.
Funny story on how this trip came to be. Kristen1206 on this forum and I started emailing aside from fodors, as we had been in touch on the forum for a few years, have daughters the same age, and have the same travel styles. Turns out we also live nearby, and so we decided to do a trip together! Kristen and I had so much fun planning this trip. It was great having someone as detailed and interested in research as me, so we had a great year of planning! It paid off because we really got out each day and explored the island. And everyone had so much fun! It was Kristen and her husband and kids (14, 11 and 5), our friends Jay and Liz (they went to St. Martin w/us 6 years ago and then to Long Island last year), and my husband and I (Brooke is now almost 5 and Austin almost 2). After a few issues trying to find a villa that would allow small kids, and a few rental companies, we finally found the villa Happy Bay through the rental company Caribbean Days. The villa is located above the beach Happy Bay, and about a 5-10 minute drive to Grand Case.
http://www.gobeach.com/happybay.htm
http://www.villahappybay.com/
Upon watching airfare to book our flights, we realized that for us to fly direct from PHL to SXM it would be much cheaper to fly out Friday instead of Saturday, so we opted to do that and stay at Grand Case Beach Club for the first night and then check into Happy Bay on Saturday. Kristen and her family flew in on Saturday as they weren’t coming from PHL.
Okay, now I’ll start the trip report! Enjoy!
Day 1: PHL-SXM, Grand Case Beach Club
Getting there was relatively smooth. We didn’t have to be at the airport until 7:30 which was a huge help with 2 little ones so we didn’t have to interfere with their sleep schedule too much. We met Jay and Liz at the airport, grabbed breakfast, and off we went! I had high hopes for Austin to sleep and watch a movie on the way down, but he did neither. He was a bit of a handful but at least he didn’t scream. He just thought the floors were really cool. The plane was pretty much empty which allowed us room to spread out. The whole back section was completely empty!
Upon our 1:30 arrival we were greeted with really, really good Jumbie rum shots, my favorite being the pineapple (we brought 2 bottles of that home with us!). We then met our Unity car rep who already had a car seat installed for us for Austin (a really nice, new Britax car seat rented from Island Nannies). We brought a butt booster seat for Brooke with us. A short 5 minute drive and we were at Unity car rental where the Island Nannies rep was waiting for us (they’re across the street from each other which was very convenient) with the pack’n’play rental (the pack’n’play had extra padding which was really nice, and they threw in a huge soft cooler for free too-I was very happy with Island Nannies). We squared up and headed to GCBC through the road that cuts through the center of the island, which we hadn’t been on before. We had nice views of the mountains on the way. About 30 minutes later we were checking in to GCBC, recommended to me by a friend and by people on this forum. We settled in and spent some time walking around checking out the property. I’m not one for hotels, but if I had to stay in one, this one is my style. It’s pretty small, well maintained, very cute with beautiful landscaping. Very charming. We rented the 2 bedroom 2 floor unit for $300 for the night. Split 2 ways it’s not bad! We were all pretty hungry (okay I was starving) by 4 so we headed to the Sunset Café at the hotel. Unfortunately it was closed until 6 (we were between the lunch and dinner crowd) so we walked down the street to the restaurants. I must say, I LOVE Grand Case. It’s my new favorite Caribbean town. Think Duval street in the Keys, but with more of a french islandy botique feel. The first restaurant we came to was Le Shore, so we went there and bellied up to the bar. The bartender didn’t speak a word of English so it was interesting trying to order a mixed drink. I noted then that I needed to learn French, and quickly! We all actually really enjoyed trying to pick up on the basics of the French language over the course of the week. What a beautiful sounding language! My daughter is enjoying speaking the basics of it now that we’re home-it’s very cute! Anyway, back to Le Shore. So they were technically closed as well (apparently everything is closed at that time) but they let us drink anyway as long as we promised to stay until 6 when they could open their cash registers so we could pay, so we hung out there until about 8 enjoying the drinks, dinner and cool loungy areas in the sand. We weren’t really planning on swimming, but Brooke and Austin made their way down to the beach (the restaurant is beach front) and I was officially on island time so I let them swim in their clothes. Plus it kept them happy and content for the next couple hours! Of course I ended up mostly in the water with them so we ended up eating our gourmet dinner there wet, but no one seemed to mind, maybe because we were the only customers there. The food there was AMAZING, but expensive. I actually took a picture of our dinners the presentation was so nice. Brooke enjoyed swimming at the pool there, and we watched them set up for the dinner crowd that started rolling in (all dressed up) as we were leaving around 8. It’s a good thing we left when we did as it seems like a pretty dressy/classy place for dinner (definitely not good for 2 wet sandy kids)! While we were on the beach we strolled next door to Calmos Café which looked really cool and we made a mental note to check it out the next day, plus were huge fans of the tv show “3 Sheets” and they had just done a show on St. Martin and were at Calmos in the show so that was a must do for us.
We headed back to the hotel, put the kids to bed, and Jay and Liz hung out at Sunset’s bar while Kurt and I hung out on the top deck with our complimentary bottle of wine. Jay and Liz met up with us and we had a great time chatting until the wee hours on our first night of our trip.
May 19th, 2010, 04:42 AM
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Writing the trip report won out I see! 
Glad you mentioned about how this trip came to be! I meant to post about the French the kids (and us) learned along the way but forgot. Can't wait to read more!
Glad you mentioned about how this trip came to be! I meant to post about the French the kids (and us) learned along the way but forgot. Can't wait to read more!
May 19th, 2010, 04:26 PM
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Day 2, Saturday: Grand Case Beach Club, check-in to Happy Bay Villa
We awoke around 7am to a sick Austin (102 fever-good thing I brought my medicine cabinet down with me, and the kiddie motrin kicked in quickly! Fortunately by Sunday night he was all better) and a beautiful sunny day. Kurt took Austin down to the beach for a walk while we all got up and situated. We had a wonderful breakfast at Sunset (I got the eggs benedict, along with the complimentary continental breakfast of fresh baguettes, coffee, and orange juice). It was such a nice setting overlooking the beach, the food and service was great (for some reason I love being called madamoiselle-it just sounds so romantic!), and the kids loved looking at the GIANT lobsters in the tank next to our table. GCBC’s beach reminded me the most of St. John beaches from all the beaches I saw on St. Martin. Soft sand, calm clear water. Really pretty. We spent the morning swimming on the restaurant side beach which is wider and longer than the other side. I enjoyed trying to catch a peek of the Pitet Plague villas that I had looked into online which were also on that beach. They looked beautiful from what I could see.
www.islandhideaways.com/villa.php?villa_id=10533
Then we spent the rest of the morning until about 11:30 at the beach on the other side of the restaurant (the one you see when you see pictures of GCBC- www.grandcasebeachclub.com), which is much smaller, but has probably the best snorkeling I’ve seen yet in the Caribbean, other than Hawsknest in St. John. There wasn’t much in the way of coral, but the fish were so abundant. Very colorful, lots of schools of fish, a few large sea urchins, and one giant fish that kept swimming by me. I wasn’t sure if he was scouting out the fish for food or trying to give me the hint that this was his territory. He actually bumped into my shoulder at one point! And that was later while I was sitting right along the shore line-he swam all the way up, bumped into me and kept going. That was a first for me. Austin enjoyed playing on the beach with an adorable little French baby girl, and Brooke tried out snorkeling for the first time which she loved. We had a late checkout at noon, so we reluctantly headed back to our room to pack up and head over to Calmos Café for lunch. We met the neighbor next door (apparently you can purchase the units and then rent them out) who had a cute dog and cat. That would be a place I would definitely consider buying.
So we checked out with a breeze, and then parked in the public lot and went to Calmos Café to try the millipede rum shots we saw on 3 sheets, some rooftop rum, and some really great food. Calmos Café was my favorite restaurant of the trip. I loved the atmosphere-very laid back, colorful, picnic tables in the sand, and an all around great vibe. I even broke down and got Brooke and me Calmos Café t-shirts! It says “c’est la vie”, which means “that’s life” in French. LOVE IT! Liz and I headed next door to the great little boutique shop we had stopped in the day before to do some shopping. The owner was very nice. She said she had come over from Paris about 4 months ago and opened this shop and that everything was from Paris. The clothes and jewelry were cute, and very well priced. We got some clothes and jewelry there. Our food was waiting when we returned and we had great seafood and the guys did the shot of millipede rum. The way they make it is by putting a few GIANT millipedes in the bottom of the bottle and let them duke it out. In the process they spew venom. Then they add the rum which drowns them and you end up with millipede venom infused rum. Why on Earth anyone would want to drink that is beyond me, but if Zane from 3 Sheets can do it, so can my husband! So Kurt and Jay toasted to St. Martin and bottoms up! (ew) They didn’t gag like I thought they would have, but did say it was pretty nasty. The waiter actually said that since that show aired, they’ve gone through a few bottles of that, and that some people have even (gasp) EATEN the millipedes when they got to the bottom!!! I think I’ll stick to my painkillers, which I was very happy to find on St. Martin-not quite as good as St. John and JVD’s, but good nonetheless!
After all that hoopla, we were running out of time to meet out villa rep at 1 to take us to our villa. We arrived about 10 minutes late (island time?) and off we went. 5 minutes later, we pulled into our gated villa.
So we’ve stayed at about 5 villas now, this being our 6th, and let me say, this villa literally left me speechless. The pictures just didn’t do it justice at all. It was absolutely gorgeous! The views, the landscaping, the neighborhood, the pool, the decorating...everything... exceeded my expectations. I just went from room to room jaw dropped open with the beauty of this place! I felt like we were on the show “cribs”!
The guys ran out to the Supermarche while we settled in. We were hoping to have drinks waiting for Kristen and her family but they beat the guys to the villa by a few minutes. After hugs all around we spent the rest of the day at the villa, playing and relaxing by the pool with drink in hand, and enjoying our first beautiful sunset at the villa, which set over the ocean reflecting off our infinity pool with Anguilla in the distance. Life just doesn’t get much better than this!
We awoke around 7am to a sick Austin (102 fever-good thing I brought my medicine cabinet down with me, and the kiddie motrin kicked in quickly! Fortunately by Sunday night he was all better) and a beautiful sunny day. Kurt took Austin down to the beach for a walk while we all got up and situated. We had a wonderful breakfast at Sunset (I got the eggs benedict, along with the complimentary continental breakfast of fresh baguettes, coffee, and orange juice). It was such a nice setting overlooking the beach, the food and service was great (for some reason I love being called madamoiselle-it just sounds so romantic!), and the kids loved looking at the GIANT lobsters in the tank next to our table. GCBC’s beach reminded me the most of St. John beaches from all the beaches I saw on St. Martin. Soft sand, calm clear water. Really pretty. We spent the morning swimming on the restaurant side beach which is wider and longer than the other side. I enjoyed trying to catch a peek of the Pitet Plague villas that I had looked into online which were also on that beach. They looked beautiful from what I could see.
www.islandhideaways.com/villa.php?villa_id=10533
Then we spent the rest of the morning until about 11:30 at the beach on the other side of the restaurant (the one you see when you see pictures of GCBC- www.grandcasebeachclub.com), which is much smaller, but has probably the best snorkeling I’ve seen yet in the Caribbean, other than Hawsknest in St. John. There wasn’t much in the way of coral, but the fish were so abundant. Very colorful, lots of schools of fish, a few large sea urchins, and one giant fish that kept swimming by me. I wasn’t sure if he was scouting out the fish for food or trying to give me the hint that this was his territory. He actually bumped into my shoulder at one point! And that was later while I was sitting right along the shore line-he swam all the way up, bumped into me and kept going. That was a first for me. Austin enjoyed playing on the beach with an adorable little French baby girl, and Brooke tried out snorkeling for the first time which she loved. We had a late checkout at noon, so we reluctantly headed back to our room to pack up and head over to Calmos Café for lunch. We met the neighbor next door (apparently you can purchase the units and then rent them out) who had a cute dog and cat. That would be a place I would definitely consider buying.
So we checked out with a breeze, and then parked in the public lot and went to Calmos Café to try the millipede rum shots we saw on 3 sheets, some rooftop rum, and some really great food. Calmos Café was my favorite restaurant of the trip. I loved the atmosphere-very laid back, colorful, picnic tables in the sand, and an all around great vibe. I even broke down and got Brooke and me Calmos Café t-shirts! It says “c’est la vie”, which means “that’s life” in French. LOVE IT! Liz and I headed next door to the great little boutique shop we had stopped in the day before to do some shopping. The owner was very nice. She said she had come over from Paris about 4 months ago and opened this shop and that everything was from Paris. The clothes and jewelry were cute, and very well priced. We got some clothes and jewelry there. Our food was waiting when we returned and we had great seafood and the guys did the shot of millipede rum. The way they make it is by putting a few GIANT millipedes in the bottom of the bottle and let them duke it out. In the process they spew venom. Then they add the rum which drowns them and you end up with millipede venom infused rum. Why on Earth anyone would want to drink that is beyond me, but if Zane from 3 Sheets can do it, so can my husband! So Kurt and Jay toasted to St. Martin and bottoms up! (ew) They didn’t gag like I thought they would have, but did say it was pretty nasty. The waiter actually said that since that show aired, they’ve gone through a few bottles of that, and that some people have even (gasp) EATEN the millipedes when they got to the bottom!!! I think I’ll stick to my painkillers, which I was very happy to find on St. Martin-not quite as good as St. John and JVD’s, but good nonetheless!
After all that hoopla, we were running out of time to meet out villa rep at 1 to take us to our villa. We arrived about 10 minutes late (island time?) and off we went. 5 minutes later, we pulled into our gated villa.
So we’ve stayed at about 5 villas now, this being our 6th, and let me say, this villa literally left me speechless. The pictures just didn’t do it justice at all. It was absolutely gorgeous! The views, the landscaping, the neighborhood, the pool, the decorating...everything... exceeded my expectations. I just went from room to room jaw dropped open with the beauty of this place! I felt like we were on the show “cribs”!
The guys ran out to the Supermarche while we settled in. We were hoping to have drinks waiting for Kristen and her family but they beat the guys to the villa by a few minutes. After hugs all around we spent the rest of the day at the villa, playing and relaxing by the pool with drink in hand, and enjoying our first beautiful sunset at the villa, which set over the ocean reflecting off our infinity pool with Anguilla in the distance. Life just doesn’t get much better than this!
May 21st, 2010, 04:50 PM
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kellybeaches- I am really enjoying your report! Since I seem to have liked some of the same places as you, I watch for your "finds" so I am quickly bookmarking and noting all the tips- I look forward to the next installment!
May 23rd, 2010, 10:51 AM
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Ish, glad you're enjoying it! Here's the next installment, with photos.
Day 3, Sunday: Galion Beach, Orient Beach, Villa
Our usual island alarm clock (aka our son Austin) woke us up just before 6am, which proved to be his schedule for the remainder of the week. I guess the good news with that is we were able to see the beautiful sunrises over the mountains! Kurt took Austin duty and let me sleep in until 7:30. Once we were all up and fed, we headed off to check out Le Galion and Orient.
We had heard that La Galion is great for kids as there are no waves and it’s shallow very far out. It was about a 15 minute drive. It was beautiful but we only stayed for about an hour. Austin was still sick and had fallen asleep on the way so Kurt sat in the car with him the whole time while we swam as we didn’t want to wake him up. I guess Sunday is the day the locals go there because it was relatively crowded. There were also a lot of dogs being walked along the beach so unfortunately there was some dog poop along the beach. I think if we went on a less crowded day and Austin wasn’t sick we would have enjoyed it there more.
We headed over to Orient afterwards to check out Kon Tiki, recommended to us by Ramona (thanks!). We’ve been to Orient before, but we were at the opposite end. It’s a very long beach so it was nice to see this side of it. It was also nice to see it in good conditions as before there was a hurricane due course to hit so the waves were pretty big. This time around they were a perfect size and the kids really enjoyed jumping in them. We LOVED Kon Tiki. What a cool atmosphere! There were a bunch of tiki style huts with couches you could sit in to eat, or you could sit on the beach chairs and the wait staff would serve you there. We spent a couple hours in our “hut” enjoying wonderful sushi, burgers, grouper fingers, and drinks. Their mojitos were excellent, and they were very kind to bring us a bottle of orange infused rum after our meal. It was a very, very expensive lunch, but very, very good. I loved the open air bathrooms too with palm trees for the roof.
We headed back to the villa for an afternoon and evening swimming and enjoying the sunset. The girls lined up the chairs and put on a show for us (they sang “Soul Sister” by Train) and Brooke enjoyed going topless in the pool as she had seen a lot of girls doing on Orient. When in Rome...
Here are some pictures of the villa:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLan...localeid=en_US
And here are some pictures from days 1-3:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLan...localeid=en_US
Day 3, Sunday: Galion Beach, Orient Beach, Villa
Our usual island alarm clock (aka our son Austin) woke us up just before 6am, which proved to be his schedule for the remainder of the week. I guess the good news with that is we were able to see the beautiful sunrises over the mountains! Kurt took Austin duty and let me sleep in until 7:30. Once we were all up and fed, we headed off to check out Le Galion and Orient.
We had heard that La Galion is great for kids as there are no waves and it’s shallow very far out. It was about a 15 minute drive. It was beautiful but we only stayed for about an hour. Austin was still sick and had fallen asleep on the way so Kurt sat in the car with him the whole time while we swam as we didn’t want to wake him up. I guess Sunday is the day the locals go there because it was relatively crowded. There were also a lot of dogs being walked along the beach so unfortunately there was some dog poop along the beach. I think if we went on a less crowded day and Austin wasn’t sick we would have enjoyed it there more.
We headed over to Orient afterwards to check out Kon Tiki, recommended to us by Ramona (thanks!). We’ve been to Orient before, but we were at the opposite end. It’s a very long beach so it was nice to see this side of it. It was also nice to see it in good conditions as before there was a hurricane due course to hit so the waves were pretty big. This time around they were a perfect size and the kids really enjoyed jumping in them. We LOVED Kon Tiki. What a cool atmosphere! There were a bunch of tiki style huts with couches you could sit in to eat, or you could sit on the beach chairs and the wait staff would serve you there. We spent a couple hours in our “hut” enjoying wonderful sushi, burgers, grouper fingers, and drinks. Their mojitos were excellent, and they were very kind to bring us a bottle of orange infused rum after our meal. It was a very, very expensive lunch, but very, very good. I loved the open air bathrooms too with palm trees for the roof.
We headed back to the villa for an afternoon and evening swimming and enjoying the sunset. The girls lined up the chairs and put on a show for us (they sang “Soul Sister” by Train) and Brooke enjoyed going topless in the pool as she had seen a lot of girls doing on Orient. When in Rome...
Here are some pictures of the villa:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLan...localeid=en_US
And here are some pictures from days 1-3:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLan...localeid=en_US
May 24th, 2010, 09:42 AM
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I'm so enjoying your TR and looking forward to the rest! As I mentioned on Kristen's post, it's sure nice to read so many good things about SXM on this forum. I'm about to go check out your photos now.
Jun 3rd, 2010, 05:23 AM
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Thanks! I'm planning on finishing this trip report tonight, so stay tuned. I got bogged down in sorting out our thousands of pictures! Tastravel, so funny you did the same thing with the Three Sheets hot spots too! The only one we didn't make it to was Dingy Dock. How was that? Did you do the millipede shot at Calmos? I was surprised that the guys at Karibuki on Pinel didn't really know about the show doing a spot on them. We must have had the waiters who were off that day. What a great trip though!
Jun 3rd, 2010, 07:30 PM
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pigbe, have a great time! I'm sure you will. You could look into Captain Allan, the Safari Rhino tours (mentioned below), www.privateyachtcharter-sxm.com, or Stargazer. Your kids might like Loterie Farm too for the ziplining and/or hiking. enjoy!
Okay, here is the rest of my trip report. I've finally finished it!
Day 4, Monday: Day trip on power cat to Anguilla and Sandy Island
We had been really looking forward to today’s day trip on our privately chartered 52’ power catamaran to Anguilla. We had originally planned this on Tuesday, but the captain recommended we move it up to Sunday or Monday since the weather forecast was calling for the seas to get progressively worse each day we were there. We arranged for it to pick us up and return us to Happy Bay beach so that we could walk and not have to worry about driving after being out all day. They picked us up promptly at 9:30am (we had to take the dinghy out with 2 groups go get everyone onboard) and we headed off to Anguilla while watching a big storm go over St. Martin. I always love watching storms in the islands. The rain is so isolated and wonderful to watch (even better when it’s not on you!). About 30 minutes later we anchored up to Cap Jaluca’s beach and jumped into the bright turquoise water. Some of our group swam to shore and some of us took the dinghy to shore. I forgot to bring my sunglasses and had the weirdest sensation on this beach. It was so bright it was literally blinding and actually painful to open my eyes! The sand was bright white and the water was blazing turquoise. It was beautiful. I would compare it to Cape Santa Maria’s beach on Long Island, Bahamas, although I think CSM’s beach was still nicer (then again I was wearing sunglasses there so maybe I just was able to actually SEE it!) ha, ha... The girls had fun writing their names in the sand and we strolled along the beach for a bit. We then were brought back to the boat and we headed around Anguilla to the other side. Next stop, Sandy Island. This reminded me a lot of a larger version of Sandy Spit off of Jost Van Dyke and Tortola. It looked similar to it but just larger. It even had 1 tiny beach bar on it! It was really pretty and the thing I remember the most about it was all of the fan coral we found. We hung out there for a bit, and then back to the boat, and back to St. Martin. The seas were really rough on the way home and unfortunately Liz got really sea sick, so we cut the trip short and asked to be dropped off at Friar’s bay in hopes that that was a shorter walk. Friar’s looked cute. This was the only time we made it there unfortunately as I had really wanted to hang out at the beach bars there one day. Oh well, next trip! There were some cute donkeys on the beach that my kids got a kick out of. A short and enjoyable hike back and we were back at our villa which we hung out at for the rest of the day.
Day 5, Tuesday: Marigot, dinner at La California in Grand Case
We headed off to Marigot to check out the harbor for a few reasons. 1-Last time we were there we didn’t make it there, 2-we saw the clip on 3 Sheets about the gin and coconut drinks which we had to try, and 3-we wanted to eat at Sarafinas which was highly recommended on reviews we had read. Marigot was a cute harbor town with tents set up with vendors selling souvenirs, but I wasn’t blown away by it. Then again, we only spent about 2 hours there if that, and it looked like there were a lot more shops that we didn’t get to see. Also, we were there during the week which is much less crowded than on a Saturday (we stopped back there on our way to the airport on Saturday to pick up a painting we had seen and it was packed both with many more vendors and with many more tourists). I picked up some really cute souvenirs This is definitely a place to go and leave the husbands home! His comment was that every tent had the same stuff. My comment was that it was all cute, negotiable, and relatively inexpensive. We also found the coconut gin stand, and we all shared one. It wasn’t very good. Oh well. It looked tropical! We headed over to Sarifinas for lunch. The mousse, cakes and pastries all looked very over the top, but the food we ordered we all agreed wasn’t what we expected. We weren’t very impressed. Oh well again. We headed back the the villa and spent the afternoon relaxing and swimming.
We had reservations that evening that we had booked in advance (not that we needed to-it was pretty empty) for La California in Grand Case at 6pm. We had 2 sea side tables and it was very nice. I ordered the mango mahimahi in hopes that there would be actual mangos, mango salsa, or something that tasted somewhat like it but it was more of a cream sauce on it that didn’t have much taste. It was still good though, but my fish dinner at Le Shore was much better. The staff was very friendly though and the setting was beautiful. Everyone had a great time. We walked down the street and got the kids ice cream and then headed home. On the way out (around 8ish) there was a very long line of traffic to get into Grand Case. I’m thinking that 8 is the standard dinner time there, so it’s a good thing to note if you’re going. Be sure to get into town and parked by 7pm or else you’ll be waiting a long time in traffic. It worked out great for us though because we were leaving at 8!
Day 6, Wednesday: Pinel Island, Lolo
We headed out to catch the Pinel Island ferry, a short 5 minute ferry at $7 per person round trip, for the first ferry over at 10am. This was one of our best days of the trip. We set up shop under the restaurant Karibuni’s umbrellas and chairs and hung out there most of the day. There are 3 restaurants on Pinel. We chose Karibuni again because of Three sheets. (Hm, seeing a theme here? Maybe I should call this our Three Sheets St. Martin tour!) and I really wanted to try the Totu rum punch frozen drinks they featured, consisting of freshly blended kiwi, mango, pineapple, bananas, and rum (by the way, they are VERY good!). It was $15 for 2 beach chairs and umbrella. We enjoyed sitting with our drinks in the shallow water for the day. The kids found a starfish, and we saw a swimming iguana (a first for me-I didn’t know they could swim but this guy was doing just fine). There were a few souvenir shops there so we picked up a few things, and headed back around 3:30. Last ferry is at 4 and if you miss is, you’re spending the night there. We stopped by one of the lolos in Grand Case called Talk of the Town and grabbed a bit of everything and brought it back to the villa for dinner. It was one of our best and least expensive meals. Delicious grilled mahimahi, ribs, chicken, mac’n’cheese, veggies, rice, and plantains. It was very good and I highly recommend it! We enjoyed another gorgeous sunset on the deck and the close of another day.
Day 7, Thursday: L'ile Flottante, Radisson in Anse Marcel, Loterie Farm
We all were hankering for crepes, and Kristen remembered seeing this crepery the other day in Grand Case so we decided to check it out. Boy am I glad we did. BEST BREAKFAST EVER!!! It’s called L'ile Flottante, and it’s right in the center of the road as you enter Grand Case coming from the western side. I got banana chocolate coconut crepes that were to die for. These aren’t the kind of crepes they make in the states. These were fluffy, huge, chocolaty piles of deliciousness. Brooke got a suger crepe (breakfast of champions!) which was also amazing. This place is a must if you’re in St. Martin IMO. We also got the ham and egg croissant which was also wonderful. Even their lattes were great! Definitely a 10 out of 10 in my book on this place.
We then headed over the Anse Marcel to check out the new Radisson since we were nearby. There are some really nice lookout points on the way there. The hotel was nice and the grounds were beautiful, but we were reminded why we are villa vacation people. It’s just not our style.
We then headed over to Loterie Farms - www.loteriefarm.net- for the afternoon as Jay and Kristen’s 14 year-old Cerah wanted to zipline. I’m deathly afraid of heights so this was definitely NOT on my to do list, but I had heard good things about the Tree Lounge and Hidden Forest Café there and the hiking sounded like fun. Also Brooke wanted to do the kiddie zipline course. On the way there, right by the entrance we passed this crazy dirt road that was pretty much a vertical climb. It didn’t even look like a car would be able to get up it. We were to find out later that that is the road they take you up to get to the top of the mountain when you do the extreme ziplining course! We checked in and Jay and Cerah headed out with the last group of the day at 2:30 to do the extreme course. They said that Brooke was too short to do the kiddie course. Oh, well. Next time. Kristen and her daughter headed back to the Tree Lounge to hang out, and the rest of us started into the trail to do the 1 hour hike. Austin lasted about 20 minutes and then we had to turn back with him but the rest of them made it to the lookout point (even Brooke!). They said it was beautiful up there. We then all hung out at the Tree Lounge for some drinks for a bit and waited for Jay and Cerah’s group to return. It took them about 1.5 hours to do the 17 ziplines down the mountain. They both loved it and said it was one of the best things they’ve ever done. They did say it’s not for the faint of heart, and that you’re up VERY high above the canopy and go all the way down the mountain. There is no backing out either as they had 1 guide that takes you down. He told Jay if they didn’t want to do it once at the top, they would have to walk down the mountain. Back to the restaurant. I loved the atmosphere of the Tree Lounge. It was a very swanky, unique setting up in the trees with a very gourmet menu. This I would think would be the place to be later in the night when they have live music going.
Day 8, Friday: Phillipsburg, Boo Boo Jam, Happy Bay
We headed over to Phillipsburg on the Dutch side this morning to do some shopping. Silly me told Kurt to park in the first spot we saw way at the end of the strip, so we had to walk quite a bit before we came to the section with stores. Mental note-park more central next time! We cut across to the beach the first spot we could and then walked the new paved walk along the beach to the section with more stores. We were trying to find the beach bar we hung out at 6 years ago that had couches and chairs along the beach, but it looks like the board walk has been built around the beach bar we were at last time, or so we think. I didn’t get the name of it, but it’s the tiny bar by itself that now has the paved walkway around it next to the Blue Bitch Bar (yes, that’s the name!). There were some pretty colorful chairs on the beach so we took a quick picture in those for nostalgia purposes. We grabbed a quick breakfast at a stand there and then walked around and checked out the stores. There were lots of high end ones as well as souvenir stores. Front street is very cute with cobblestone pavers. It’s very clean as well. On the way back Kurt saw that L’Escargot had conch salad, and he stopped in to order some to go. Unfortunately this took about 30 minutes for them to make and we were all done by this point. We kept on walking the what seemed like FOREVER road back to our car (yes, my bad on that one!) with 2 cranky and tired kids while he waited for the conch salad to be done. FINALLY we saw him running to catch up with us. And after all that, the salad was nothing like Bahamas conch salad. It was all conch cut up into strips and sauted in some sort of not very good dressing. Very chewy too. Oh well. Live and learn. At least I took some really neat pictures of the place-it was a beautiful restaurant! I’m sure they have great escargot, just stay away from the conch. By the time we got back to the car, Austin was miserable. The plan was to then go to Sunset Beach Bar for lunch but after seeing the traffic there, and seeing that Austin was finally starting to wind down and fall asleep, we really didn’t want to pull him back out of the car so we opted to go to Boo Boo Jam for lobster and let him sleep in the car while Kristen and family went to Sunset.
So we turned around and after quite a few wrong turns, finally found Boo Boo Jam, one of the main reasons we decided to return to St. Martin. They had and still have the BEST lobster I’ve ever had. We all were worried that with trying it again so many years later it might not be as good. You know how when you remember something as truly amazing that sometimes when you go back it’s just not as good as you had remembered it? Well, it was just as amazing this time around too! The owner was actually out at the dock getting the fresh lobster when we arrived, so we waited about 10 minutes for his return with the lobsters, which he dumped into the tank and we chose which ones we wanted. It’s expensive, but so worth it. They charge $25 per pound. So we ended up spending $150 for 2 lobsters, but I said it before and I’ll say it again, it’s the best lobster ever and worth every penny. They slice them down the middle and grill them there, marinated in butter so that when you eat it you can dip it in the bottom of the shell to get the butter. So, so (did I say so?) good. Jay and I also both had a painkiller there, which was by far the strongest painkiller I’ve ever had. Needless to say I was feeling no pain by the time we left. We also had a wonderful time while waiting talking to the waitress, bartender, and owner. They were all very friendly and this is a definitely spot for us to return to if we visit St. Martin again. Liz stayed in the car with sleeping Austin and Brooke while we waited and then we headed back to the villa for a wonderful lobster lunch.
Liz and I decided to head down to Happy Bay in the late afternoon while everyone else stayed at the villa. We had a nice time walking the beach (we were the only ones there, besides a few people that left shortly after we arrived). It’s an interesting walk to the beach because it’s all cow pasture, so you pass lots of cows along the way. It was a beautiful time of day with the long shadows, and we took lots of pictures. We enjoyed our final beautiful sunset from the villa, and called it a day.
Day 9, Saturday: Sunset Beach Bar, home
We woke up in our last day of paradise, packed our things, Kristen and I got our picture with our matching Anguilla shirts which we had bought before we had even met through fodors, and we headed out for Sunset Beach Bar while she and her family hung out at the villa until it was time to go. We drove through Terres Basses to get to Sunset Beach Bar, passing the old Supermarche we went to 6 years ago, which is now much more built up, and the villa entrance to the where we stayed before. We noticed that near Maho Bay they’re building a few high rise condos with units for sale. We drove through the golf course that had been rampaged by a hurricane-it didn’t look much different from when we drove through it last. And then we were at Sunset. Wow, has it changed since we saw it last! When we were there 6 years ago, it was the small circular bar with a couple of picnic tables and a small gift shop. Now it has a stage for live music, a lounge area, a big bar in the back, and more tables. The circular bar is still there as well as the gift shop but I was disappointed that they don’t sell pint glasses anymore as I was hoping to bring some back. Anyway, we enjoyed a great lunch –their tuna burgers are huge! And the kids enjoyed watching the planes land. The airport was very busy and it took about an hour to get through security which didn’t leave us much room to board, but we made it on okay and had a smooth ride home. Austin even slept
Overall, I would love to go back again. I would stay at Happy Bay villa again, and maybe even GCBC for a couple nights just to be in walking distance of all the great restaurants (and definitely Calmos Café!). Boo Boo Jam would be a must do again along with L'ile Flottante too. I would still love to see the Oyster Bay area of the island. I think this is the only part we really haven’t explored yet. And Pinel again for a day. I’d also love to do the Rhino tour - www.sxmrhino.com, which ended up becoming the running joke as I wanted to do this the whole time and they would go by Happy Bay beach twice a day so I’d always see them. We even saw them while leaving to go to the airport! Next time I guess!
Here are some pictures from the above days of our trip. I hope you found this helpful, and please let me know if you have any questions. Until the next trip...
http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLan...localeid=en_US
Okay, here is the rest of my trip report. I've finally finished it!
Day 4, Monday: Day trip on power cat to Anguilla and Sandy Island
We had been really looking forward to today’s day trip on our privately chartered 52’ power catamaran to Anguilla. We had originally planned this on Tuesday, but the captain recommended we move it up to Sunday or Monday since the weather forecast was calling for the seas to get progressively worse each day we were there. We arranged for it to pick us up and return us to Happy Bay beach so that we could walk and not have to worry about driving after being out all day. They picked us up promptly at 9:30am (we had to take the dinghy out with 2 groups go get everyone onboard) and we headed off to Anguilla while watching a big storm go over St. Martin. I always love watching storms in the islands. The rain is so isolated and wonderful to watch (even better when it’s not on you!). About 30 minutes later we anchored up to Cap Jaluca’s beach and jumped into the bright turquoise water. Some of our group swam to shore and some of us took the dinghy to shore. I forgot to bring my sunglasses and had the weirdest sensation on this beach. It was so bright it was literally blinding and actually painful to open my eyes! The sand was bright white and the water was blazing turquoise. It was beautiful. I would compare it to Cape Santa Maria’s beach on Long Island, Bahamas, although I think CSM’s beach was still nicer (then again I was wearing sunglasses there so maybe I just was able to actually SEE it!) ha, ha... The girls had fun writing their names in the sand and we strolled along the beach for a bit. We then were brought back to the boat and we headed around Anguilla to the other side. Next stop, Sandy Island. This reminded me a lot of a larger version of Sandy Spit off of Jost Van Dyke and Tortola. It looked similar to it but just larger. It even had 1 tiny beach bar on it! It was really pretty and the thing I remember the most about it was all of the fan coral we found. We hung out there for a bit, and then back to the boat, and back to St. Martin. The seas were really rough on the way home and unfortunately Liz got really sea sick, so we cut the trip short and asked to be dropped off at Friar’s bay in hopes that that was a shorter walk. Friar’s looked cute. This was the only time we made it there unfortunately as I had really wanted to hang out at the beach bars there one day. Oh well, next trip! There were some cute donkeys on the beach that my kids got a kick out of. A short and enjoyable hike back and we were back at our villa which we hung out at for the rest of the day.
Day 5, Tuesday: Marigot, dinner at La California in Grand Case
We headed off to Marigot to check out the harbor for a few reasons. 1-Last time we were there we didn’t make it there, 2-we saw the clip on 3 Sheets about the gin and coconut drinks which we had to try, and 3-we wanted to eat at Sarafinas which was highly recommended on reviews we had read. Marigot was a cute harbor town with tents set up with vendors selling souvenirs, but I wasn’t blown away by it. Then again, we only spent about 2 hours there if that, and it looked like there were a lot more shops that we didn’t get to see. Also, we were there during the week which is much less crowded than on a Saturday (we stopped back there on our way to the airport on Saturday to pick up a painting we had seen and it was packed both with many more vendors and with many more tourists). I picked up some really cute souvenirs This is definitely a place to go and leave the husbands home! His comment was that every tent had the same stuff. My comment was that it was all cute, negotiable, and relatively inexpensive. We also found the coconut gin stand, and we all shared one. It wasn’t very good. Oh well. It looked tropical! We headed over to Sarifinas for lunch. The mousse, cakes and pastries all looked very over the top, but the food we ordered we all agreed wasn’t what we expected. We weren’t very impressed. Oh well again. We headed back the the villa and spent the afternoon relaxing and swimming.
We had reservations that evening that we had booked in advance (not that we needed to-it was pretty empty) for La California in Grand Case at 6pm. We had 2 sea side tables and it was very nice. I ordered the mango mahimahi in hopes that there would be actual mangos, mango salsa, or something that tasted somewhat like it but it was more of a cream sauce on it that didn’t have much taste. It was still good though, but my fish dinner at Le Shore was much better. The staff was very friendly though and the setting was beautiful. Everyone had a great time. We walked down the street and got the kids ice cream and then headed home. On the way out (around 8ish) there was a very long line of traffic to get into Grand Case. I’m thinking that 8 is the standard dinner time there, so it’s a good thing to note if you’re going. Be sure to get into town and parked by 7pm or else you’ll be waiting a long time in traffic. It worked out great for us though because we were leaving at 8!
Day 6, Wednesday: Pinel Island, Lolo
We headed out to catch the Pinel Island ferry, a short 5 minute ferry at $7 per person round trip, for the first ferry over at 10am. This was one of our best days of the trip. We set up shop under the restaurant Karibuni’s umbrellas and chairs and hung out there most of the day. There are 3 restaurants on Pinel. We chose Karibuni again because of Three sheets. (Hm, seeing a theme here? Maybe I should call this our Three Sheets St. Martin tour!) and I really wanted to try the Totu rum punch frozen drinks they featured, consisting of freshly blended kiwi, mango, pineapple, bananas, and rum (by the way, they are VERY good!). It was $15 for 2 beach chairs and umbrella. We enjoyed sitting with our drinks in the shallow water for the day. The kids found a starfish, and we saw a swimming iguana (a first for me-I didn’t know they could swim but this guy was doing just fine). There were a few souvenir shops there so we picked up a few things, and headed back around 3:30. Last ferry is at 4 and if you miss is, you’re spending the night there. We stopped by one of the lolos in Grand Case called Talk of the Town and grabbed a bit of everything and brought it back to the villa for dinner. It was one of our best and least expensive meals. Delicious grilled mahimahi, ribs, chicken, mac’n’cheese, veggies, rice, and plantains. It was very good and I highly recommend it! We enjoyed another gorgeous sunset on the deck and the close of another day.
Day 7, Thursday: L'ile Flottante, Radisson in Anse Marcel, Loterie Farm
We all were hankering for crepes, and Kristen remembered seeing this crepery the other day in Grand Case so we decided to check it out. Boy am I glad we did. BEST BREAKFAST EVER!!! It’s called L'ile Flottante, and it’s right in the center of the road as you enter Grand Case coming from the western side. I got banana chocolate coconut crepes that were to die for. These aren’t the kind of crepes they make in the states. These were fluffy, huge, chocolaty piles of deliciousness. Brooke got a suger crepe (breakfast of champions!) which was also amazing. This place is a must if you’re in St. Martin IMO. We also got the ham and egg croissant which was also wonderful. Even their lattes were great! Definitely a 10 out of 10 in my book on this place.
We then headed over the Anse Marcel to check out the new Radisson since we were nearby. There are some really nice lookout points on the way there. The hotel was nice and the grounds were beautiful, but we were reminded why we are villa vacation people. It’s just not our style.
We then headed over to Loterie Farms - www.loteriefarm.net- for the afternoon as Jay and Kristen’s 14 year-old Cerah wanted to zipline. I’m deathly afraid of heights so this was definitely NOT on my to do list, but I had heard good things about the Tree Lounge and Hidden Forest Café there and the hiking sounded like fun. Also Brooke wanted to do the kiddie zipline course. On the way there, right by the entrance we passed this crazy dirt road that was pretty much a vertical climb. It didn’t even look like a car would be able to get up it. We were to find out later that that is the road they take you up to get to the top of the mountain when you do the extreme ziplining course! We checked in and Jay and Cerah headed out with the last group of the day at 2:30 to do the extreme course. They said that Brooke was too short to do the kiddie course. Oh, well. Next time. Kristen and her daughter headed back to the Tree Lounge to hang out, and the rest of us started into the trail to do the 1 hour hike. Austin lasted about 20 minutes and then we had to turn back with him but the rest of them made it to the lookout point (even Brooke!). They said it was beautiful up there. We then all hung out at the Tree Lounge for some drinks for a bit and waited for Jay and Cerah’s group to return. It took them about 1.5 hours to do the 17 ziplines down the mountain. They both loved it and said it was one of the best things they’ve ever done. They did say it’s not for the faint of heart, and that you’re up VERY high above the canopy and go all the way down the mountain. There is no backing out either as they had 1 guide that takes you down. He told Jay if they didn’t want to do it once at the top, they would have to walk down the mountain. Back to the restaurant. I loved the atmosphere of the Tree Lounge. It was a very swanky, unique setting up in the trees with a very gourmet menu. This I would think would be the place to be later in the night when they have live music going.
Day 8, Friday: Phillipsburg, Boo Boo Jam, Happy Bay
We headed over to Phillipsburg on the Dutch side this morning to do some shopping. Silly me told Kurt to park in the first spot we saw way at the end of the strip, so we had to walk quite a bit before we came to the section with stores. Mental note-park more central next time! We cut across to the beach the first spot we could and then walked the new paved walk along the beach to the section with more stores. We were trying to find the beach bar we hung out at 6 years ago that had couches and chairs along the beach, but it looks like the board walk has been built around the beach bar we were at last time, or so we think. I didn’t get the name of it, but it’s the tiny bar by itself that now has the paved walkway around it next to the Blue Bitch Bar (yes, that’s the name!). There were some pretty colorful chairs on the beach so we took a quick picture in those for nostalgia purposes. We grabbed a quick breakfast at a stand there and then walked around and checked out the stores. There were lots of high end ones as well as souvenir stores. Front street is very cute with cobblestone pavers. It’s very clean as well. On the way back Kurt saw that L’Escargot had conch salad, and he stopped in to order some to go. Unfortunately this took about 30 minutes for them to make and we were all done by this point. We kept on walking the what seemed like FOREVER road back to our car (yes, my bad on that one!) with 2 cranky and tired kids while he waited for the conch salad to be done. FINALLY we saw him running to catch up with us. And after all that, the salad was nothing like Bahamas conch salad. It was all conch cut up into strips and sauted in some sort of not very good dressing. Very chewy too. Oh well. Live and learn. At least I took some really neat pictures of the place-it was a beautiful restaurant! I’m sure they have great escargot, just stay away from the conch. By the time we got back to the car, Austin was miserable. The plan was to then go to Sunset Beach Bar for lunch but after seeing the traffic there, and seeing that Austin was finally starting to wind down and fall asleep, we really didn’t want to pull him back out of the car so we opted to go to Boo Boo Jam for lobster and let him sleep in the car while Kristen and family went to Sunset.
So we turned around and after quite a few wrong turns, finally found Boo Boo Jam, one of the main reasons we decided to return to St. Martin. They had and still have the BEST lobster I’ve ever had. We all were worried that with trying it again so many years later it might not be as good. You know how when you remember something as truly amazing that sometimes when you go back it’s just not as good as you had remembered it? Well, it was just as amazing this time around too! The owner was actually out at the dock getting the fresh lobster when we arrived, so we waited about 10 minutes for his return with the lobsters, which he dumped into the tank and we chose which ones we wanted. It’s expensive, but so worth it. They charge $25 per pound. So we ended up spending $150 for 2 lobsters, but I said it before and I’ll say it again, it’s the best lobster ever and worth every penny. They slice them down the middle and grill them there, marinated in butter so that when you eat it you can dip it in the bottom of the shell to get the butter. So, so (did I say so?) good. Jay and I also both had a painkiller there, which was by far the strongest painkiller I’ve ever had. Needless to say I was feeling no pain by the time we left. We also had a wonderful time while waiting talking to the waitress, bartender, and owner. They were all very friendly and this is a definitely spot for us to return to if we visit St. Martin again. Liz stayed in the car with sleeping Austin and Brooke while we waited and then we headed back to the villa for a wonderful lobster lunch.
Liz and I decided to head down to Happy Bay in the late afternoon while everyone else stayed at the villa. We had a nice time walking the beach (we were the only ones there, besides a few people that left shortly after we arrived). It’s an interesting walk to the beach because it’s all cow pasture, so you pass lots of cows along the way. It was a beautiful time of day with the long shadows, and we took lots of pictures. We enjoyed our final beautiful sunset from the villa, and called it a day.
Day 9, Saturday: Sunset Beach Bar, home
We woke up in our last day of paradise, packed our things, Kristen and I got our picture with our matching Anguilla shirts which we had bought before we had even met through fodors, and we headed out for Sunset Beach Bar while she and her family hung out at the villa until it was time to go. We drove through Terres Basses to get to Sunset Beach Bar, passing the old Supermarche we went to 6 years ago, which is now much more built up, and the villa entrance to the where we stayed before. We noticed that near Maho Bay they’re building a few high rise condos with units for sale. We drove through the golf course that had been rampaged by a hurricane-it didn’t look much different from when we drove through it last. And then we were at Sunset. Wow, has it changed since we saw it last! When we were there 6 years ago, it was the small circular bar with a couple of picnic tables and a small gift shop. Now it has a stage for live music, a lounge area, a big bar in the back, and more tables. The circular bar is still there as well as the gift shop but I was disappointed that they don’t sell pint glasses anymore as I was hoping to bring some back. Anyway, we enjoyed a great lunch –their tuna burgers are huge! And the kids enjoyed watching the planes land. The airport was very busy and it took about an hour to get through security which didn’t leave us much room to board, but we made it on okay and had a smooth ride home. Austin even slept
Overall, I would love to go back again. I would stay at Happy Bay villa again, and maybe even GCBC for a couple nights just to be in walking distance of all the great restaurants (and definitely Calmos Café!). Boo Boo Jam would be a must do again along with L'ile Flottante too. I would still love to see the Oyster Bay area of the island. I think this is the only part we really haven’t explored yet. And Pinel again for a day. I’d also love to do the Rhino tour - www.sxmrhino.com, which ended up becoming the running joke as I wanted to do this the whole time and they would go by Happy Bay beach twice a day so I’d always see them. We even saw them while leaving to go to the airport! Next time I guess!
Here are some pictures from the above days of our trip. I hope you found this helpful, and please let me know if you have any questions. Until the next trip...
http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLan...localeid=en_US
Jan 2nd, 2011, 09:58 AM
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I loved reading about your trip to St Martin. I was there a couple of years ago where we stayed on Orient Beach but we had a car and saw as much of the island we could. We would love to go back and stay at Grand Case.
We are trying to plan our next trip. I see one of your favorite trips is St Lucia. We have only been there for a day (cruise) and thought it was beautiful. Is there alot to do in St Lucia?
We just did a trip to St Thomas and we went to St Johns for the day and the BVIs (rented a boat for day). Looking for another trip were there is plenty to do. Your suggestions?
We are trying to plan our next trip. I see one of your favorite trips is St Lucia. We have only been there for a day (cruise) and thought it was beautiful. Is there alot to do in St Lucia?
We just did a trip to St Thomas and we went to St Johns for the day and the BVIs (rented a boat for day). Looking for another trip were there is plenty to do. Your suggestions?
