Today took us to the smallest mass of land shared by two countries....we docked an hour late on the Dutch side of the island and were greeted by "partly cloudy" skies. If their partly cloudy skies means a bunch of warm sunshine, then bring it on. We opted to have breakfast in the Da Vinci dining room. It wasn't overly busy and we got seated right away. I enjoyed some pancakes, coffee, and fresh fruit. The fruit on board is really good, especially the fruit you can get delivered to your room. Due to our late arrival, we were the fourth ship in port, everyone was eager to disembark so the line to get off was long, but moved well once we had clearance to leave.
We had pre-planned to head over to Orient beach, which was about a 20 minutes taxi ride from the port. The locals have this down to a tee, cram a bunch of tourists into their van taxis and charge everyone aboard a nominal fee. It cost $6 per person and I got to sit up front squeezed in between the driver and a really hairy guy. The driver was fun to talk to and I learned that there are about 90,000 people living on the island, you can live on either side of the island and move to the other side if you like without hassle, tourism is the only industry on the island, and unless a hurricane comes through it doesn't really rain here. It's sunny year long and averages about 28C.
Orient beach is on the French side and is a very popular beach. Given it's on the French side it is a clothing optional beach. Thankfully we didn't encounter too much of this. The beach is 2 miles of fine absolutely fabulous white sand beach. The water is gorgeous with white sand as well. Picture any photos you've seen of the tropical Caribbean waters and this was what we got to play in. The water was a little choppy but not enough to deter us going for a dip. On the beach we rented two beach chairs and a beach umbrella for $15. We were only going to be there for a few hours so I was hoping we could negotiate the price down, but he wouldn't budge. Should have had Z try in French. The beach also had restroom facilities, a fresh water shower and change room.
After some vegging on the beach we decided to head to Marigot, the capital of French St. Martin. This town was another 20 minutes taxi ride from the beach and this time cost us $20 total as it was just the two of us. The town is a seaside town, but we quickly found out there isn't much to do there. We decided to have lunch at Rosemary's, on the suggestion of our taxi driver. It turned out to be a really good suggestion. I really enjoyed my jerk chicken and ribs dish while Z enjoyed his seafood creole combo. We walked through the little market they had set up before deciding we should head back to Philipsburg, which is the capital of Dutch St. Maarten - this is also the town where we docked. Another $20 taxi ride later and we were back. The great thing of all these taxi rides is that we really got to see a good portion of the island as we made a giant loop around it with our stops.
Due to our insane days leading up to our cruise Z didn't have time to get his hair cut before and so had been saying that if we saw a barber he'd want to get a cut. Taxi driver dropped is off in Philipsburg right in front of a local salon...it would do. Haircut turned out good, despite it taking what seemed like forever and my thinking she didn't know what she was doing. We walked around the town a little....it was already later in the day and some of the shops were getting ready to close. I'm glad we hit the town later because it would have been a zoo otherwise especially with 4 ships in port. We bought a couple souvenirs and then made our way back to the ship because we wanted to get ready for the 7:15pm show - magician and illusionist David Cats from Italy. We were scheduled to depart at 7pm so we figured this show wouldn't be as busy and besides we had dinner reservations for 8pm. The show was really good and he did some pretty cool card tricks that left me amazed. We also enjoyed a new favourite drink - Key West cooler...passion fruit, watermelon, cranberry and sprite. So refreshing!!!
We decided to make reservations at the Crown Grill. This is the ship's steakhouse and there is a cover charge of $25 per person. We brought a bottle of wine on board (you're allowed one bottle each) and decided tonight would be a good night to enjoy it. They do charge a $15 corkage fee if you don't buy the bottle on board. I ordered the goat cheese and tomatoes salad which also came with spinach to start and at the waiter's recommendation the filet mignon which I wanted cooked well done. Oh my goodness!!!! This steak was the best steak I've ever tasted at a restaurant. The waiter had them prepare it butterflied and it just melted in my mouth. I was still talking about it the next day. Z had the mixed green salad, Kansas grill steak and lobster tail. We had the chef's dessert sample for, well dessert. Our waiter was Sam from Thailand and he was very surprised when I thanked him in Thai. It was a fantastic meal and a great way to end a superb day in our tropical paradise!
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