January 25, 2009

St. Martin

pretty sunset after the quick rain a rainbow *before* the rain. we could actually see the rain coming towards us. bizarre! below: matching ray bans! Stepping off the tender, the first area is a bustling square, full of restaurants and shops. We were on the French side, where prices were quite high…and they are mostly in euros (which is almost doubled in U.S. dollars). Luckily, Marsha had been to this port before on another ship and encouraged us all to go to the Dutch side. What a happy surprise. It had the best of both worlds – a wide beach with mountains on either side, lined with restaurants and surrounding middle to high end shopping. We started the day at a restaurant Marsha had visited before. It was a down – home kind of feel and served a complete meal of a meat / vegetable of choice, rice, mac and cheese, potato salad. Nothing to extravagant but fresh and satisfying. I then roamed the surrounding area with Takis and was treated to my first pair of Ray Bans… also looked at the expensive watches and jewelry, to just dream a little ☺ We then went to the beach to hang out and met up with the rest of the gang for a little R & R. After a while we decided to head back to where the ship was, on the French side. We were in port til late (a rare occurance), 9 pm, so we decided to have a dinner with other crew we met up with, since a lot of people were leaving at the end of the cruise. I split a cheese and mushroom pizza and goat cheese on toasted bread…Good goat cheese is gooooood, and the company was fun and fabulous. It was however, in Euros because this was the French side, and was a bit over priced. I conclude, you get more bang for you $ on the dutch side.

No comments: