Saint Martin

[LaurenP]

Considering a vacation in February. Anyone have comments or recommendation about St Martin. Weather, places to stay.

[SandyM]

Hi Lauren,

I don't have feedback on where you should stay, but more where you shouldn't.

Do not - I repeat - do not - stay at, or anywhere near, the Great Bay Resort. It's right next to a sewage treatment center (how fitting that the brochure doesn't mention that :rolleyes: ). They were under construction when we were there (even though we were assured by our travel agent that they'd be finished when we arrived, in mid-February 2005).

I'd list all of the things that went wrong, but it would take too long. There were 19 of us there, and we made the best of it and had a great time, but it had nothing to do with the accomodations.

[Chefzhat]

St. Maarten official website (http://www.st-maarten.com)

We've been there twice, but not in February. If I recall, we had a lot of fun! (its been a few years ;) ) We stayed at the Royal Sonesta once (quite nice) and I can't remember the other place, but it was smaller.

I hope you have fun! I love beach vacations!

Debie

[Food Fussy]

My husband and I stayed there a while back. I remember that we had a very relaxing time, where our biggest decision was where to go for dinner. We were staying on Orient Beach, which is clothing-optional. In our section, most of the people wore suits, although you'd see the occasional person walk by with no top. There was another section further down, clearly posted, that was all nude people. We ate almost every night in the "city" of Grand Case (This is all on the French side of St. Martin, btw). It's lined with French restaurants on both sides, and you can walk up and down perusing the menus to see what looks good. It doesn't matter which one you pick--I don't think we ate in the same place twice while we were there and every meal was wonderful. We also found a place called Le Marocain--it's a Morrocan restaurant in another city, although it's been so long I can't remember where (you might be able to find it in a search). It was like going on another vacation--you wander down a hallway in an ordinary looking building, and suddenly you're in Morrocco! They have tents hanging from the ceiling and lights and fabrics; all the tables are low to the ground, and you sit on cushions or low couches to eat. (And btw, the food is wonderful). The Dutch side of the island is the place to go for shopping or gambling (we only ate one dinner on the Dutch side, a little disappointing, but we may just have been spoiled by all that French cooking!). The main city (Phillipsburg?) on the Dutch side is where all the cruise ships come in. They have all kind of knick knack shops, t-shirt stores and espcially jewelry, and plenty of casinos. There's also plenty of other things to do besides shop and eat of course. DH and I didn't get to do some of them because we both got badly sunburned even under an umbrella and wearing high spf sunblock. He burned the tops of his feet so badly we had to go to dinner at one of the beach shacks that night so he could leave his shoes untied and loose for comfort (I burned my hip). To get around, we wound up using a taxi service; we got a card for Winston Taxi and wound up using him the entire time to drive around for dinner or sight-seeing. I hope you enjoy your time there as we did.

[MrsReber]

Been there twice, but it's been a few years. My mom has time share at Pelican. The first time I went, we were upgraded and ended up at another time share, right on the beach. I can't remember the name of it now. It was gorgeous, though. The second time was fine, too. We had a 1 bedroom and were just a very short walk from the beach.

We had fun renting a jeep and checking out the beaches all around the island. The only problem is that I think many of them were wiped out during one of many hurricanes there. I believe Plum beach was very pretty.

We ate in the restaurants up and down airport road that time. It is pretty expensive, as far as islands go, though. Everyone always told us to stay on the Dutch side and eat on the French side, though I think we only ate once on the french side for lunch. I did, however, have the best hamburger I have ever had in my life. So the food was good. There was an English style pub on the Dutch side, too. We ate dinner there one night.

Should you like beer, the Heinekin (spelling?) there is exceptional. DH doesn't like that brand, but since it's a Dutch island, it's very fresh. The other thing is that we found out the beer there is also stronger than the beer that we get. At least it was then. And yes, I found out too late! But we still had fun. If I can think of anything else, I"ll post it.