The Arbitrary ChuckJerry

After Curaco we spent the next day at sea sailing up to St. Maarten. St. Maarten is split between the Dutch and the French and going from one side to the other is a bit like going from New York to Connecticut in that you don't even notice you're on the other side except for a little marker. The boat docked on the Dutch side, which is why I say we were in St. Maarten instead of St. Martin, which is how the French side spells it. Right at the dock there's a sign to let you know you're in St. Maarten.

Also you can see across the little bay to the main city there, Philipsburg.


We didn't have a specific plan for this day, unlike the previous two days when we had planned snorkeling excursions from the ship. We had a guide book that suggested a place called Orient Beach on the French side of the island. Again coincidentally we ran into Chad and Teresa so we took a cab with them over to the beach and hung out over there. The beach was pretty nice. There were shops and restaurants up and down the beach and you could rent different equipment like jet skis or go parasailing. We didn't do any of that, though, we just hung out in the water.


We got a great picture of Kathy from Orient beach as well


After a while we went back to the boat and went out to the town of Philipsburg. The shopping there is supposed to be great, but it wasn't really. There was a jewelry store literally every 10 feet, but we weren't really shopping for any jewelry. Here's some of Philipsburg, off the water taxi.


An here's another view of the town's shore


So there's all these little shops with local art and little dolls and such. All of the islands were pretty similar in terms of the things you could buy and what not, except for these things they were selling in one shop on St. Maarten that Kathy thought were so funny that she took a picture of them. She just couldn't believe that someone might buy them to put in their home.


We walked around for a while and then ate lunch at a restaurant right next to the water taxi.


Also here's a picture of a palm tree in St. Maarten


St. Maarten looks like it's made up of lots of small mountains that are covered with trees and bush. Here's an example. If you imagine this about 100 times, then this is what St. Maarten looks like.


So after lunch we walked around for a few minutes more, but didn't want to buy any tanzanite, so we took the water taxi back to the boat.