Day 3: St. Maarten

 Day tourism is not my favorite kind of visiting a new city or island. Usually it takes a couple of days to find out where the cool places are and to meet interesting people. Of course, cruising always means that you have only a couple of hours at a specific destination and since Caribbean islands so much depend on cruises, many of them specializes to show visitors the most in a minimum of time.

From all islands we visited so far, St. Maarten has done the best job. Right off the pier there's an artificial village, which surprisingly summarizes a lot of the Caribbean charm. From there a watertaxi brings you right into Phillipsburg an nice and colorful little town, full of shops bars and restaurants. For whatever reason many people love buying jewelry and watches on the islands, supposedly there are significantly cheaper there.

 Elke and I just got some t-shirts and other obligatory souvenirs and had drinks at a picture book bar, before we headed to the French part of the island for two hours at the beach. This was an organized tour, guided by Italian-English tour guide Flavia, who not only provided many interesting tidbits about the island, but also unlimited rum punch at the beach. We had a chat with her and learned about another story of somebody who ended up with making a living on one of the most beautiful spots on earth.

 It's very well possible that we come back to St. Maarten for a longer stay. The island is pretty by all means, which lush green hills and beautiful beaches and the fact that there are two nationalities, French and Dutch living together on such a small piece of land, provides a lot of diversity.

Anyway, as much we liked the island, it's always great to come back on board. That's the great thing on cruising: it provides some clear-cut memories, not spoiled by long lines at the airport on sour-faced airline personnel. You just drop of your bag in your stateroom and some minutes later, you stand on deck with cocktail in hand and watch the island slowly glide away in the sunset.