The trip started as a surprise for Jan, but that quickly went bust when she kept seeing information that she should not have seen. For example, I thought of changing the password on my American Airlines account, but thought of that too late. Jan had already logged into my account looking for other reservations and saw the trip from SFO to SXM booked. There were about five other �oops� events, but we won�t go into them.
Once she knew of the trip, we decided to make this one in which we�d do different things. We�ve been to SXM about eight previous times, including on our honeymoon in 1979. We have many favorite restaurants and must-dos on every trip, but most of them were put aside for this vacation.
We left San Francisco on our usual night flight to JFK and then took the 8 am flight to St. Martin. Got our car from Michael at Unity, a few groceries, and off to the Sapphire where we Tom had traded a week. We were supposed to have a one-bedroom unit, but found we had been �upgraded� to a studio. They claimed the one bedroom did not have an ocean view and the studio did, so we should have been pleased with this swap! The last time we stayed at the Sapphire we had a one-bedroom that had a view of the ocean, so we thought we were getting the same type of unit. Guess the Sapphire has all different kinds of floor plans, but that was not explained. Oh well, we didn�t plan on spending much time in the unit anyway. We headed to Cupecoy for the afternoon and were surprised to see a fair amount of sand. We had only been there once before and there was more sand than we remembered from that trip.
Dinner the first night was at Shrimpys. We did not know this but they have FREE BEER and FREE HOT DOGS on Sundays from 11:30 to 12:30 (we think that is the time). If you are in the area, it seems like the best deal around!
Tom answered a post on TTOL from Rob & Sheri and decided to meet them on Orient Beach on Monday. With them were Bill and Karen from NC, Bill an Trish from PA and Bill and Sue from PA. It wasn�t too hard to remember the guys names! This was one of the highlights of our trip � meeting these folks and developing a friendship with them. We went to dinner a few times together, rode the flying fish, went to a kinda famous person's birthday party, and just had a great time. We hope to spend more time with them in SXM on future trips!
Sand Gravity hit and we were at Orient with the �crew� most of the time. Hit the Perch every day for happy hour. Jan and I took walks each morning, touching rocks at each end for � hmmm, why DO we do that? Anyway, you know the routine. There was a lot of sand at Orient. Last year we were walking in the water to get past Pedro�s, and this year the water was almost all the way out to the end of the rocks, about 45 feet away. The same by the big rocks by Esmeralda.
We took one day for our customary and usual stop at DK Gems to see Deepti and the guys. Deepti was the perfect lady, just chatting for Jan for about an hour, not even mentioning jewelry. I was getting tired of sitting and my diet coke was warm, so I was the one who asked, �So what do you have that Jan can�t live without?� As all of you know, Deepti then transformed Jan into a jewelry rack. Since this was a trip of new things, we did something new at DK Gems, and walked away without spending any $$.
Whew! But Jan does have her eye on a ring, so I have to hope it is sold before we go back again.
The road by Cupecoy with the sharp uphill turn just after you pass from the Dutch to the French Side is being bypassed. A brand new, more gentle and shorter grade was just being completed as we left. We think it is to make more room for the Cupecoy Marina condos, but that is just our guess.
Restaurants: Our best meal this trip was at Spiga. Everything was awesome! We also ate at La Vie en Rose and had a very good meal. One night was at Terra in Maho. We�d not heard of it before and also enjoyed our meal there. We definitely will go back to all three of these restaurants. One night the �gang� went to Peg Legs Pub. Shawn was his usual self and we all had a great time there and the tenderest filet we�ve had in a very long time. The last night Jan & I saved for Le Gaiiac. We had heard such good things about it from some other TTOLers, that we had to try it. Unfortunately this meal was the biggest disappointment of our trip. I had a scallop appetizer that was not fully cooked. I told the waiter I did not care for it and liked my scallops cooked more, but he did not offer to do that or replace it for me. I left most of it on my plate. Jan had Foie Gras which she loved. We only got one roll, even though the only other table with customers was offered seconds, our water glasses were not refilled until we asked, even after moving them to the edge of the table, we had to pour our own wine on three occasions, and my lobster dinner was too little lobster (meat from one claw and � of a tail of about a 1.25 lb lobster) for the price of 35+ euros. (I don�t remember the exact price.) Do we sound too picky? Maybe, but when the waiter bragged that Le Gaiiac is one of the top 100 restaurants in the world, and you are paying the price for it, you expect top 100 service and food. It simply did not match up with our expectations or its reputation.
All in all, it was a great trip and we had fun. We still have so many new things to do on the island that we cannot wait to go back. Hopefully we'll meet more of the TTOL family there next time.
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