day five-St. Maarten/St. Martin

  I was determined to do SOMETHING fun at St. Maarten, because this was our last chance. After this, it would be all boat. Don't get me wrong, the boat was huge and had tons of things to do, but let's face it. After four full days on that ship, we had already done everything there was to do multiple times. We were starting to get very stir crazy on that ship.

  We hadn't planned anything for St. Maarten, since we were doing excursions on both of the other islands, but you know by now that things hadn't been working out for us so far. Back when this vacation was still in dreaming mode, I pictured myself sitting on the beach sipping a fruity slushy drink. Thus far we were five days into our trip and hadn't even seen a beach. So my goal for the day was to get to a beach.

  We arranged a tour of the island that would eventually take us to the beach and feed us lunch. The tour guide was very nice, and knew a lot about the island. Half of the island is owned by the Dutch, and half is owned by the French. Everything from one side to the other is different, even the spelling of each side, and how it is pronounced. The Dutch side is spelled St. Maarten, and the French side is spelled St. Martin. Clearly I think the Dutch spelling is more fun. We learned that a lot of people that live on St. Maarten have two cell phones, one for each side of the island. To call from one side of the island to the other is an international call, so those who have to call from one side to the other frequently have a cell phone for each side. They even have their own governments. One side has a governor, the other, a mayor. 

They had round-abouts all over the place, and in the center there were always

multiple statues that conveyed some meaning.

The views, even from the bus, were incredible.

Here is a view of the ship from the bus. This shows how gigantic the ship was.

See that little baby ship in front? My ship totally dwarfs that ship.

More incredible views from the bus. (You can see the reflections on the glass...)

We actually stopped at a look out to get these shots. It was so beautiful everywhere

you looked. Just incredible.

 A coconut tree! I've never seen one before. Looks just like a palm tree :)

  We stopped for an hour downtown to shop. There was a pretty nice, fancy shopping mall right there, but the guide said that the prices were pretty steep, so we chose to spend our time at this little flea market. There was most anything you could think of, and at pretty great prices, too.

I was in love with all the colors.

  An iguana! I was hopeful that this picture would appease Aiden when I came home without an alligator. He was pretty confident that I would be able to find him an alligator, and bring it home for him. A baby one. He told me if I couldn't find one, he would be okay with a baby dolphin. But I'd better not let an alligator eat his dolphin. He also was really hoping we would see a volcano. I just didn't want him to be disappointed with what we didn't bring home for him.

Also, a sunken ship. The tour guide said that this ship sank one of the massive hurricanes in 2007.

  And then we got to the beach!! My favorite part of the day. We had a yummy barbecue lunch at a little place right off of the beach, and then we just hung out at the beach for about three hours. It was heaven! We took some pictures of the kids on the beach, and us on the beach. We swam in the ocean for a while. We relaxed on the nice beach chairs in the warm sun.

  After a little while of hanging out on the beach, (and local merchants constantly trying to get us to buy stuff from them...seriously, they came right up to our beach chairs and tried to talk us into buying everything from henna tattoos to music to dresses to jewelry.) we decided to take a walk down the beach. The beach was on the French side of the island, so clothing on this beach was optional. When we got there, most people were wearing, at the very least, bathing suits. The ones that we noticed were missing articles of clothing were in the ocean, so we couldn't see anything. And we tried to ignore them. But as we walked down the beach, we came upon this little rock barrier that we climbed like stairs, onto a new area of the beach. Right away, we spotted two gigantic white buttocks. Both of us said "oh my!" at the same time, and as we turned around, our eyes spotted no bathing suits on anyone...We then headed back to our safe beach and stayed there the rest of the time.

I wanted-no, needed-to have a fancy drink to sip on the beach. I asked Kenny go get me something fruity, slushy, and non-alcoholic. He did a great job. The one he back with was so yummy. In my head it was in a fancy cup too, but sometimes you have to pick your battles :)

I even let him try it :)

 

   After our time at the beach we headed back to the ship, and saw a few more sights along the way. Several more round-abouts too.

  Later that night there was a magic show that boggled my mind. The guy that performed was a contestant on America's Got Talent, and he totally blew my mind with the tricks he did. I'm pretty gullible anyway, but still.

  There were a few more shows/events that were going on later that night, but we went back to our stateroom to hang out till then, and I fell asleep and could not be woken back up. I hope someday Kenny will be able to forgive me for that... :)