St. Martins – the only island in the world with two
countries, the Netherlands and France.
It is only 37 square miles. Two separate
currencies and actually two different languages among the natives. Because of the huge tourist industry, they do
speak English and take American dollars.
The ship docked on the Dutch side of the island where all
the shops are and to us, the only thing to do here is to get a cab and go to
the French side of the island and Orient Beach.
Orient Beach is slowly coming back from the hurricane of a
couple of years ago, but there is still a lot that has not been rebuilt on the
French side of the island. It seems the
Dutch support their side of the island a lot better than France does theirs.
Notwithstanding all of that, Orient Beach is still a great
place to go and at least they have beach chairs to rent, a bar with food and
restrooms.
This time, rather than pay the high prices for food on the
beach, we built our own sandwiches from the ship and took them with us in a
small cooler along with bottles of water.
The weather was slight overcast when we arrived but it turned
out to be a wonderful day except for a brief rain shower and we simply stood
under an umbrella with a guy from the Netherlands for about 5 minutes and then
the sun came out again. The great sun lasted until
it was just before we wanted to leave and then the wind came up, the clouds
came again and we decided to leave to miss the new rain.
A quick trip back to the ship and up to get a snack and we were back
in our cabin getting ready for the evening.
After the day at the beach, we came back to our cabin and
cleaned up and went to the lobby for music and dancing.
After the music stopped we went up to the Sky Lounge on the
top deck as they had free drinks and pre dinner snacks for past guests who had
sailed a lot with Celebrity.
Then it was time for the show and it was just ok. It was a Motown type show featuring NBC’s
America’s Got Talent semi-finalist, Marcus Terell.
Then we went to dinner and had a good meal and again sat
with a new couple and enjoyed their company.
Of course the next stop was the casino where Barb lost just
a little and Ed won nicely and for the first time ever played alone at his
usual table as there were no players to join him. Scary but successful.
Today was our last stop and for the next two days we will be
at sea before arriving in Ft. Lauderdale.
Night
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| Going out the night before |
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| A Carnival ship docked next to us |
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| Storm clouds at Orient Beach before the rain |
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| Going out tonight |
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| Just a selfe for fun |
