Cruise - St Maarten - #4...

There are two sides to St Maarten Dutch and French, sitting on our balacony at 6.30 a.m with a cup of green tea I watched our arrival at Philipsburg on the Dutch side of the island.

It was raining again.

The Carnival Victory was already docked as we approached so I took a photo for you Empress Bee of the High Seas.  Not sure if you've been on this one Bee?

Undeterred by the weather, we showered and went to breakfast then went to explore Philipsburg which is a duty free haven with lots of expensive shops.   Apparently in 1648 the Dutch and French joined forces to push out the Spanish from the island and agreed to divide the island and that's how it's stayed.  The currency on the island is the Netherlands Antilles Flori (or Guilder) and Euros on the French side, though American dollars are accepted on both sides - luckily we had some.    The only thing I bought was this gorgeous little elephant for my collection and 400 cigarettes for my Dad which were incredibly cheap at $30!!

We stopped at a little cafe for a cool drink, it was very warm even though it was raining.  I snapped MWM filming the surroundings.

We decided to explore some more around the quaint streets.

We found the beach, so we took off our sandals and went for a paddle.

It looks a bit grey but in fact the skies were clearing by this time.

How's this for a bargain?

We didn't partake though.


We'd had quite a long walk and decided to go back to the ship by which time the skies had cleared and here's the view from  the ship of where we'd just walked.

We had lunch and then sunbathed at the Splash Pool for a while.  I went for a swim but MWM doesn't so he just sat on the steps whilst I took his photo.

It got rather hot so we went back to our suite where we read for a while, had a glass of wine and promptly fell asleep!

The show that evening consisted of a singer called Jayne Middleton who did a tribute to Annie Lennox and she was just fantastic - she looked and sounded just like Annie of whom I'm a big fan.  We ended the evening in the Connexions Bar where the events team were running a take on the game show 'The Generation Game'.      Three couples volunteered to take part and it was hilarious.    Their first game was to make towel animals, then the men got to put make-up on their wives and do their hair - you can imagine the mess they made of that.  The wives got their own back though because they got to use face-paints on their husbands to make them look like a puppy dog!    I'm so glad I didn't volunteer MWM and myself - there's no way I'd trust him to put make-up on me or do my hair!


Did you know we appeared on the Generation game in 1981 - you can read about it here if you're interested.

By the time we'd stopped laughing it was late, again, so we took ourselves off to bed.

Join me again for our next stop - St. Kitts.