Beach bars, Star Wars and rum…life as a tourist on Sint Maarten has a been a great week! We started the week in Phillipsburg which is on the Dutch side of the island. During non-Stupid times, it is a haven for cruise ships so it has just about every tourist shop available. There is Front Street, Back Street and Old Street. No frills by the Dutch people but at least they make it easy to navigate! There is also a boardwalk that runs along the beach on Great Bay. Now, on boardwalk, there seems to be something lost in translation because there is no boardwalk. It is a beautiful, cement Malecon that stretches the length of the beach with bars and restaurants everywhere. Many of the shops and restaurants were still closed due to no tourists but they all seemed optimistic that good times are coming soon. We have really enjoyed that nowhere on the island has any plexiglass dividers. At restaurants, you just eat. At bars, you just drink. At the casino, you just gamble. The majority of people also do not wear masks unless their job requires it. I am guessing that a nation that survives several hurricanes yearly really does not think a mask or plexiglass is going to save them from harm. So, enjoying our mask-less freedom, we wandered around town waiting for the Yoda Guy Museum to open. The Yoda guy is Nick Maley. He was a special effects designer in Hollywood for years and designed the character of Yoda. He also worked on many other films such as Terminator, Highlander and Superman. In all, he worked on 53 movies over the years. He decided one day that he needed a change so he bought a sailboat and cruised to the Caribbean where he and his wife settled in Sint Maarten and opened the Yoda Guy Museum. He had a lot of very interesting items in the museum including a collection of face molds that were used as base models for special effects makeup. He had Sean Connery, Johnny Depp, Michael Jackson and dozens more. He had even collected an original cast of Abraham Lincoln that was done a few months before his assassination. Overall, the tour was very interesting and if you are a Star Wars geek, you could probably spend hours in the museum. I think Nick was surprised when we did not have a lot of geeked out questions for him about Star Wars. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I was a Trekkie so we just moved on.
We had lunch at a place called the Blue Bitch beach bar whose theme was “A fun place to chill when you’re in heat” which we found quite clever. As we were eating, we asked one of the employees if there was anywhere in the vicinity to park because we had to leave our car in the grocery store parking lot several blocks from the hotel. In true island fashion, his response was “Give me a minute, mon. I will take care of you!” So, we sat back down and waited the usual island minute (aka 10 minutes). He returned and walked us to a parking spot and told us that we could use his spot overnight. He asked for nothing in return except that we enjoy our stay on the island and return to meet him again in the future. We celebrated our parking spot by sitting in his beach chairs and drinking a bucket of beer so we felt that we had definitely come out on the winning side of the deal! The next day, we continued our tour in Orient Beach which was on the French side of the island. As we crossed over the French/Dutch border, there was a sign that simply read “Welcome to French St. Maarten.” The humor in that statement is that no one is allowed to enter the French side of the island via boat. However, once we were checked in on the Dutch side, we were allowed to drive across this imaginary line with no issues at all. So, new conclusion, the Stupid only lives on boats that check into the island on the Dutch side….never in cars that drive to the French side. We enjoyed our day on the beach with another bucket of beer (Bill is enjoying this island!) and a pizza. We planned to grab dinner on the way back to our Airbnb which had a lovely ocean front balcony. Much to our surprise, all of the kitchens in the beach bars closed at 4pm. Evidently, during the times when cruise ships are here, all passengers must be back on board at 4pm so everything on land closes at that time….that gives you a great indication of how much their economy relies on the ships. One shop owner told us that his sales were down 90% from 2019 and that at least 80 shops had closed during 2020. Let the ships sail! It rained the next day so instead of snorkeling, we went sheet shopping. Sheet shopping does not sound like a daunting task, but if you have never been sheet shopping in a French speaking country, be prepared. I walked into the store (without a mask which was a delight!) and made my way over to the sheet section. Most people we have met on the island speak English so I was surprised when my sales clerk only spoke French. Most of the time, I try to speak a country’s language but let’s face it, French is hard and makes no sense! So, besides the usual polite phrases such as thank you and please, I have no French. So, looking at the sheets, I could not locate the familiar “Q” or “K” on the package. I asked the clerk, “Which sheets are queen sized?” Clerk looks confused and responds, “French, French, French, French” and points to a couple of things on the package. I stare at her like she is Charlie Brown’s teacher and respond, “English, English, English, english” to which she just shrugs. I finally went back out to the car and grabbed my phone to discover a chart on google that told me which sheets in Europe match a Queen size American measurement. The clerk and I celebrated our success together (French, French, French, French, English, English, English….universal high five!) So, if you must shop in France, remember to take your phone! We concluded the week with a tour of the Topper’s Rhum Factory. When we were researching it online, we discovered that it cost $25.00 each which we thought was a little pricey since most of the factory tours are usually free. With a little more research, we found out that this tour included at least 25 rum samples so Bill signed us up! The factory was a small mom and pop place with only a couple of rooms. They still bottle all of the rum by hand and somehow manage to bottle enough to sell to worldwide suppliers. There were at least 40 different flavors of rum and there were only a few that I had to hand off to Bill because they were too strong. I did take care of the rum cake all by myself, though! As you can see, it was a great week on a great island! Until next week, may the force be with you….unless you are in the cool kid bunch of geeks and in that case, live long and prosper! ****More pics on the pictures tab
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AuthorSally Miller Archives
May 2024
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