Paul and Karen's Honeymoon

We spent seven full days in Sint Maarten/St. Martin. We left Baltimore at 7:30am Monday and returned Labor Day night.

The weather was warm, breezy and a little humid during most of our stay in Sint Maarten. It only rained twice and it only lasted an hour each time. We also met a nice couple from the Niagara Falls area and spent every other day with them (using each other's rental cars). They stayed at the same hotel and had the all-inclusive meal plan so they bought us drinks whenever we were together. Some of the positives were the friendly people, some nice scenery, warm ocean water, the dual culture, pretty beaches and some wonderful restaurant-dining along the shore.

After a day of recovery, we spent Tuesday on the beach on the Dutch side. We were amazed that we could see the ocean floor in 15 feet of water. We rented a car on Wednesday and drove around the island, stopping to walk through the streets of Marigot, the French side's largest town. Driving was interesting as traffic laws aren't enforced, the few stoplights in Sint Maarten were turned off most of the time and one shared the road with hitchhikers, cyclists, stray animals and pedestrians (even at night). No one wears reflective clothing and it seems as though "popping wheelies" is a "cool thing" even when squeezing between two cars on a two lane road in the dark. It's a free-for-all but somehow it works. We saw no accidents. Our rental car was a lemon as it often slipped out of Drive and had no interior lights.

Thursday was spent at the beach on the French side of the island. On Friday we went on a snorkeling trip to the neighboring island of Anguilla. On Saturday, Karen went on a SCUBA diving trip off of the Sint Maarten coast. We did some shopping later in the day. Sunday we drove to the Pic Paradis, the island's highest point, and then descended to a beautiful beach called Anse Marcel. We swam while all around us pelicans dived into the water for food. Everybody scurried out of the water after a shark was spotted in the water.

The French side was much nicer than the Dutch side and we spent more time there. Some of the lowlights were that the hotel was not in the best part of Philipsburg so we were a little concerned walking to a restaurant after dark. We also learned to hate the word "timeshare" because every other time we parked the car someone was trying to get us to buy into one. It was also a little sad to see such small and bony animals. The final lowlight was that prices for most things on the island were high.

We drove home during a bad series of thunderstorms and saw two transformers get hit by lightning, one in front of us and the other was struck as we were passing it.Overall we had a nice time.

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