Saint Martin and Sint Maarten

Finally our post about Saint Martin/Sint Maarten! For the record, Dave and I both contributed to this post a bit, so "I" may be Dave in a few places, but mostly it should be me, Kendra. We really enjoyed our trip to the nearby island. We stayed on the French side, St. Martin, but we visited the Dutch side, St. Maarten, a few times too. We could easily have stayed a few more days and still have plenty to do and see, so we may need to go back sometime.

We flew on LIAT Airline for a whopping $44 roundtrip fare, but with all of the taxes, fees, etc, it was twice that and then on our way back we got stuck with a $30 departure tax. LIAT is “the Caribbean airline” – and, boy, it really is. I’d been warned by coworkers that it stands for Leave Island Any Time (or Luggage In Any Terminal). Both trips were about an hour late and since they are international flights, we had to be there about 2 hours early for the short 40 minute flight. Totally worth it though. [Dave's pamphlet with our boarding passes says "Ready, Set, Go"]


After arriving at the Dutch airport, we rented a car and drove to our hotel (on the right side of the road), Le Flamboyant, just a few miles away. We got a good deal on Hotels.com for the hotel stay and even though they don’t really have non-smoking rooms, the hotel was pretty nice and the room didn’t smell like smoke at all. We could have easily spent a day just enjoying the hotel. It’s on the lagoon instead of the ocean but they have tons of non-motorized boats that guests can use for free. We didn’t have enough time to use any of them though. Next time, the paddle boat for sure.


Thursday morning we headed towards Marigot, the town on the French side, where a coworker told me there was a good breakfast café called Zee Best Bakery. Unfortunately we couldn’t find it. We got a little turned around in town because the maps only show a few roads and they certainly don’t tell you which ones are one-way roads, and while there are signs, there are generally too many to be useful. [See picture on left.]


We decided to head to Phillipsburg, the town on the Dutch side, because we had to drop off a toy for a coworker’s grandniece. (My coworker didn’t want to have to wait to ship it because the boat only comes once a week apparently.) Long story short, we drove around for awhile trying to find the McDonalds where coworker’s sister works in the business office, and eventually just parked the car and walked around the town’s main street lined with shops. We found McDs quickly and then walked towards the boardwalk looking for breakfast. We ended up eating at the Barefoot Café [See Dave and his mango juice to the right.]. The food was fairly standard, except they had johnny cake sandwiches. For those of you who don’t know, johnny cakes are essentially donuts minus the hole and most of the sugar. Kendra had a johnny cake with egg, ham and cheese; basically a Egg Mc Muffin except johnny cake instead of muffin. It tasted and looked good…. Fortunately vacation calories don’t count.

While in Phillipsburg, we made a stop at the Guavaberry Emporium. [Pictured to the left.] Guavaberry liquor is the island's official drink. It is mighty tasty and we brought home some bottles. [I made a guavaberry colada on Friday. Yum!] After visiting Phillipsburg we stopped by a little grocery store near our hotel and got some delicious brie cheese and a french roll as well as some quiche


We tried to find Loterie Farm where we wanted to go for a hike through their nature reserve, but we made the wrong turn so we ended up at the top of Pic Paradis (Paradise Peak), one of the highest points on the island. The road was super narrow and lined with trees. It was quite difficult if not impossible to have two cars on the road in many spots, much like the road we live on. The view was pretty nice though.

We then drove to Orient Beach - THE beach to go to on St Martin. We weren't super impressed, but we usually go to the beach for swimming. Here, there were so many motorized water activities that I bet the water was kinda gross. It was kind of like Venice Beach in some respects, but crossed with a French nude beach, as OrientBeach.com makes clear....

On our way back to the hotel we drove through Grand Case and encountered Restaurant Row, where all the fabulous restaurants St Martin is famous for are located. TONS of yummy menus on these restaurants' front doors. We walked quite a ways looking at many of them before finally deciding to make our dinner reservations at Le Pressoir.

Later that night we ate a wonderful meal at Le Pressoir. Dave had the house special which was a two course seafood meal - first course was shellfish: shrimp, crab, scallops, lobster, etc; second course was fish filets: grouper, tuna, and some other stuff. I went with the goat cheese salad and the shrimp and scallops entree, which I loved, but I also wish I got to try the filet of snapper in vanilla sauce. The desserts were equally as wonderful. Dave had a white chocolate and passionfruit mousse that was so delicious I wish I'd ordered it in addition to my raspberry creme brulee. Oh yum.

Friday we found Loterie Farm and went on an hour hike through the rain forest and saw some amazing views, which we definitely earned given how steep parts of the trail were. [Pictured below]

After the hike, we went to Isle Pinel, a small uninhabited island somewhat near Orient Beach. We took a 5 minute boat ride out there and wandered around a bit before finally just jumping in the water to cool off. While noone lives on the island, it is a happening place during the day with a restaurant and bar right on the beach. We found an empty table covered with a grass roof like you'd expect on Gilligan's Island and Dave tried the Liche Colada while I got an Apple Colada. For lunch we had their famous lobster salad and cod fritters. It was a wonderful meal, and the first time I ever wore just a bathing suit at a restaurant. I even jumped back in the water while waiting for the food to appear.

For dinner we had planned to go back to Grand Case for another french-seafood meal but we couldn't resist trying an East Indian restaurant in Phillipsburg that our guide book gave good reviews. There are NO east indian restaurants on St Thomas and we'd missed tandoori chicken and naan. It was definitely worth the trip back to the Dutch side of the island. [Main Street in Phillipsburg pictured to left. The dusk view from the boardwalk just on the other side of a row of these shops is pictured below. In the distance is a cruise ship leaving.]

We didn't experience much of the night life on St Martin that is apparently quite happening, but we kind of figured bars and casinos are pretty much the same all over. We enjoyed ourselves very much and would definitely go back sometime. But before we make a return trip, there are a bunch of other islands to visit for the first time - St Kitts and Grenada are up there on my list.