Scotik
SBH Insider
Rambling long trip report for May 11 to May 18, I apologize for any mistakes in grammar and lack of organization ahead of time.
I want to say a huge thank you to the forum, I am a TA fan but this forum, at least for St Barts is much better and unique, you can see that the people who regularly post and answer questions love the Island. A big thank you to DavesMom, KevinS, JEK, TIM and STBARTHOPPER who answered so many of my questions, its appreciated.
This was our 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] trip to the island in less than year, our previous two trips were long weekend getaways, and this time we stayed a week. On all the trips we flew from Miami to St. Barts on AA but the first two times used St. Barts Commuter Airline from St. Martin to St. Barts, we didn’t like the customer service and worried that if plane which only had one engine failed how we would land or get to an airport safely. So we tried WinAir this time, their planes have two engines and the service is a lot better, however the planes look so much older. One of the mornings on the island I decided to research the safety record of the Twin Otter, mistake, so many accidents are attributed to the model. We love the island and wish that one of the airlines would get new planes that have better safety records than what is currently used now. We want to come for a 2 or 3 week vacation with our young son and Mother-in-Law but my Wife swears she will not put our family on the small commuter planes, shame because the ferry seems like such a hassle.
Day 1 - we arrived in St. Barts late in the afternoon and Pascal from BarLoc car rentals was waiting for us with our rental, a convertible Mini Cooper, what a difference this car is over our previous two rentals of a Fiat Abarth convertible (a great recommendation by forum members when I asked about alternatives). The Fiat is by far the prettier car and seating more comfortable than the Mini but the Mini had the power to go up the hills without the lag felt in the Abarth when it tried to find the right gear to go up steep hills and the Mini is a full convertible so much more fun than the Abarth. We arrived at Hotel Emeruade this is was our third time at this property and as a couple can’t imagine staying anywhere else on St. Jean beach. We stayed in the one bedroom beach front cottages; they really are on the beach just steps to the water and views of the Rock gorgeous. These cottages have a full kitchen with an outdoor bar area, covered terrace with an extra fold out canopy. The front French doors have an electric roll shutter that at night we closed giving us almost complete darkness and reduced the noise (not much to begin with). The service at the hotel is lacking, terrible bar with staff that have no idea how to prepare cocktails, no restaurant, no pool (but we have the sea just in front and if we wanted a pool scene would have gone to South Beach), which is all OK with me because less than a 5 minute walk on either direction on the beach is Tom Beach or Sand Bar. The first two trips we paid approximately 350 Euros per night ½ the price of Eden Rock with a better location and on par with what Tom Beach was charging for their beach front units (without the late night noise). This time we paid 580 Euros per night and I wasn’t too happy but when comparing it to a Villa rental or Eden Rock still represented a good deal, being on St. Jean beach was a priority for my Wife who felt comfortable sun tanning and swimming topless and me within walking distance of beach bars. The calm water, action on the beach, beautiful people and sights, can’t imagine staying anywhere else. If we come back as a family of 5 or 6 needing 3 rooms we will have to rent a villa and the choices limited on the beach. I would highly recommend the beach front cottages for couples, who are coming to experience the island, love the beach yet still want some of the amities of a villa. If you’re all about the service and resort amities guess that one the luxurious small hotels on the island would be a better choices. The first day after picking up the car we checked in, took a quick shower and went straight to town, my Wife convinced me that we could do a couple hours of shopping and she would be satisfied. Haha! The opposite happened, we went to Laurent Effel first and only shopping stop. It took almost two hours but Anna who is beautiful and a wonderful salesperson gained up on me with my Wife, we ended up leaving with an Alligator and a Python bags, several wallets and a Python clutch plus shoes. Afterwards we walked to Cote Port for dinner, a special note about Anna and Cote Port, last year during our first visit we bought a couple bags from Anna and asked where to go for lunch, she recommended Cote Port as the place where all the locals go. We went and within 10 minutes of arriving Anna and Eric arrived, they saw us and sent drinks over to us (we didn’t buy that much) such a classy couple and we ended up talking with them about their sons, life on St. Barts, etc. What a special experience. Back to Cote Port, we started with a bottle of Laurent Rose champagne and it was so good
to celebrate my Wife’s purchases. Both of us had the grilled calamari appetizers which I think is the best prepared calamari dish I have ever had anywhere. My wife had (and not sure about this) Dorado tartar which was the fish of the day and she loved it. I had beef tenderloin steak with mushroom sauce which was terrible, the mushrooms had been soaked in brandy and all you could taste is brandy in the sauce nothing else, the steak which I asked for as medium was very very rare. We finished dinner sharing desert, their version of profiterole stuffed with ice cream, yum. Busy first day, we ended it by sitting on the beach, opening another bottle of champagne and admiring the beach and Rock.
Day 2 – This trip I brought from home a French Press as I discovered so many places on the island used Nespresso, most of the Nespresso pods are made with the cheap quality coffee beans, Robusta beans:cower:. I am food, coffee and alcohol snob my friends know better than get me started about quality, which should always come over quantity. Boiled water and made fresh coffee made with locally roasted Sumatra coffee we brought from West Palm Beach. The pastries we picked up from Marche U the night before where a little stale but better than what we can get at home and it was so relaxing reading, drinking coffee and watching the planes land. This time I noticed more planes coming in for landings over St. Jean beach than on previous trips. One small white plane with two engines seems to land every morning around 7:30am and it would fly over the beach to land, I suspect it was commercial in nature and curious to find out. As expected and feared my Wife woke up talking about Les Soldes and going shopping later in the afternoon. I’m not surprised; she loves fashion and works for the most luxurious department store in Florida as a personal shopper. Even as I write this, her co-workers, management and clients are going crazy over the clothes that she bought on the island and wearing to work, St. Barts fashions are very suited to the weather in Florida. Last year she bought several types of the temporary gold and silver tattoos that look like jewelry, one of the managers saw it at her store and they started carrying it….she got no credit L…lol. We made plans to go back to town in the afternoon, she laid on the beach topless and I went to the beach bar at Tom Beach, so disappointed. Except for Manny didn’t recognize any of the staff from last year and the bar was empty. It was staffed by someone named Tom who was so disinterested in serving unless you were someone he recognized then he would cheer up and greet them like old friends. The other bar tender a pretty girl named Anna-Lize (sure I’m spelling it incorrectly and she is named after a perfume that my Wife knew) seemed overwhelmed at trying to serve customers at the bar, manage and serve those on the lying on the beach chairs on the beach. We went back to town in the afternoon, visiting a couple small shops then Marina, my Wife bought several items from Marina and the owner, just like Anna as previously mentioned, is pretty, smart and almost as good as Anna at selling. I have a strong back ground in sales, love selling and appreciate when others do it well, which means good customer service too. We then walked to Nina Rosa and this has to be one of the best shopping experiences ever….for me J and the only thing missing was some nice cocktails to enjoy the show. The store was on sale; almost everything had been marked down, some as much as 70%. Staff at the store, very pretty and helpful. My Wife spent over an hour picking out at least 30 to 40 items and then I got to sit on a nice comfortable couch while she tried them on and modeled them for me. Lucky me, and she is the model type. We ended buying 10 or more clothing items, we went to town a couple more times just so she could run in a pick up something else she liked and later convinced me to buy from Nina Rosa, the salespersons got to know us well over the week. Happy Wife, happy life and the prices were very reasonable, spent less than the Alligator bag. That night we decided to each at the cottage, cheese, Parma and other meats, lots of wine, very relaxing evening.
Day 3 – No shopping yeah! We drove around the island a bit brought back lunch from Maya’s to go. I was disappointed this time with Maya’s to go, it was a staple on out last 2 trips for lunch on the beach but this time I found the prices very steep and food quality didn’t match the cost. Shrimps were over cooked and bland, salads just ok, I did try a plantain salad from them, which was a first and it was very good, will have to find a recipe and try it at home. That night we walked to the Hideaway restaurant and had another amazing experience, I think it isn’t just the food, beach, topless sun tanning or shopping that makes St. Barts so special, it is the amazing experiences and beautiful people (yeah a lot have the looks but it’s also the inner beauty that count most) that we are lucky to meet and have on the island. We went to dinner at the Hideaway, they have either a new pizza chef or new pizza oven not sure which exactly but our waiter recommended to us that we not have pizza. We ordered drinks, and the Mojitos were great, noticed that everybody was ordering pizza! In fact people where coming and picking it up. So we decided to order pizza, the look from the waiter, priceless you could tell he didn’t want us to order pizza and told us it would be almost an hour wait. We didn’t care, weren’t in a rush. While waiting for the pizza we met Hafida, I think she is the owner or one of the owners. She came to our table to check on service, etc. Paulina and Hafida (another pretty woman, it’s like all the pretty woman from France have moved to St. Barts, awesome) started talking about fashion and children. We had dinner, pizza had amazing flavor, only compliant that the crust in the middle wasn’t crisp. As we were leaving Hafida came running over and invited us to join her at her table. She supplied us with endless Rose wine and wouldn’t let us pay, we spent hours talking and of course she recommended some more places to shop to my Wife, met the Chef, their new DJ, so many regular customers and them we moved to another table introduced us to more locals (think it was staff from another restaurant or bar) more Rose, etc. An amazing night.
Day 4 – Of course by now you can predict what’s going to happen, more shopping. We went to La Grain de Sel for lunch, it was very quiet but we really enjoyed the lunch. I had a curried goat, a first for me and it was so good, Paulina had their special a lamb stew which was excellent. Service was OK but the food made up for it. We decided to come back before leaving for lunch or dinner it was that good. Went shopping visiting a couple smaller shops, names I don’t remember and bought only a couple items. Of course we spent part of the day at the beach and swimming. That night went to Baz Bar and had some really great Sushi, loved the presentation in the oversized cocktail dish, my only wish that Sushi restaurants would serve more local fish, it always seems to be the same fish types, yet with so much local fish there should be a lot of variation by location. They had a cocktail special that night, kind of reminded me of a rum punch with ginger that I loved. The service was very good at Baz and there was some sort of Celebrity eating at the restaurant and it was fun to watch people get so excited. Met a couple from Germany sitting next to us, the husband a huge fan of Jimmy Buffet and it was interesting how much the Buffet culture influences people all over the world, we had fun.
Day 5 – Jewelry shopping! My Wife had been so focused on clothes that she completely forgot that she wanted to go shopping for some pearls. We went into town that morning and walked to several jewelry stores, Les Artisans felt more like an art gallery than jewelry store, Gold Finger (think that’s the name), Diamond Genesis and one other but we ended up at our favorite, Fabinne Miot. Left with a couple pearl necklaces as gifts and a one of kind gold and black pearl pendant for Paulina (I’m going to post it on the forum), she provides such excellent service and prices, highly recommended. Hoping she takes us up on our offer to come visit us for the Palm Beach jewelry show, her designs and products would do so well at it. We drove to La Grain de Sel for lunch arriving at exactly 12pm. We had a very strange experience and wonder what’s up with the restaurant. Arrived at 12pm, its empty, we still go in, the staff are all eating at a table and the same waitress from the day before came to greet us (we left her over a 20% tip previously) she said they were just opening and to have a seat. We went to the same table as before, it has 4 seats but is very shaded and being such a hot day wanted to sit there again. The waitress said we couldn’t sit there@@@@? We asked why? Her reason because it was noon and maybe the restaurant would become full, at that time we were the only people in the restaurant, it didn’t make a sense but we sat at a table for 2. We then waited 15 minutes, still the only customers and no one had come by to give us a menu, offer water, or take a drink order. Paulina got up to ask what the daily specials were, the answer, chef hadn’t arrived yet and they didn’t know. What! Daily specials, especially the Creole food type require lots of preparation and at 12:15pm not to know what you’re going to offer for lunch strange. We are very polite, fun, nice and good tippers so I don’t think the behavior of the staff was personally directed to us. We got up and left, this restaurant deserves to fail. Good news we decided to try Kike-E-Mo’s so close to us, last year we came June and July, they were closed. It was very good, staff very personable and I had a nice discussion with the owner, might never go back to Maya’s to go if Kike-E-Mo’s is open. I had an avocado salad, huge guacamole fan; the salad was very similar in taste but a bit more acidic and large chunks of avocados. My Wife tried the mango salad with cherry tomatoes the owner said it was her husband’s family recipe. With the salads and couple well made sandwiches took them back to our beach cottage for one of the best views on the island. Several bottles of champagne long nap, more champagne some snacking and woke up the next day, excellent relaxing day.
Day 6 – We spent this day mostly on the beach, it was Sunday and I went to the bakery in Lorient for the first time, OMG pastry heaven. I think they thought I went overboard and I did, I bought almost 10 different types of desert pastries….for my Wife, she is 5’5” weighs 104lbs and eats as much chocolate and pastries as she wants, not fair. Additionally bought a couple prepared dishes like curried chicken and different types of baguette sandwiches, quiches, etc. We had coffee, left over champagne and amazing pastries that morning. I walked up to Tom Beach to watch a paddle board contest, boring and rigged for a local to win. We decided not to do Nikki Beach, maybe we will again on a future visit when we can go with a big group, I feel it would be more fun. Went into town that night looking for somewhere to eat, poor planning, and so many places were closed and ended up at Cote Port again. Food was good, nothing to really write about, we were leaving the next day so we went back to the cottage and tried to finish off rest of the bottles of champagne and wine in fridge.
Day 7 – Paulina woke up; she had been thinking all night about a pair of shoes in a particular color that she didn’t buy from Anna at Laurent Effel, so I called Pascal and delayed dropping the car off by 20 mins. We rushed through breakfast, packed, check-out and went to town again, Paulina was so disappointed the color of shoes she wanted had been sold but that didn’t stop her from buying a couple more pairs and more wallets as gifts. Arrived at the airport in a rush 30 minutes before our flight left, no problems no hassle really like WinnAir. Hated that we had to leave security, stand in line for almost an hour at the AA check-in counter then clear security again, seems like a waste of time and in efficient, our first two trips we traveled with only carry-on and didn’t have to leave the security area in St. Martin, would recommend this to anyone who can do it, if for a week or less, next time we will only do carry on. Arrive back home safely and missing St. Barts.
A couple final thoughts: We had a great trip and St. Barts is our favorite Caribbean Island for vacation, so unique and special. We will be back maybe for a 5 day trip in July. We are planning a longer trip with our family for next year and we got the opportunity to visit a couple Villas, one of my Wife’s clients from Palm Beach asked her to check out a couple properties for their visit later this year and we liked several although they weren’t on the beach. Biggest regrets not going on a catamaran, not making it to Le Ti St Barth, I wanted to visit it badly but the thought of driving at 2am in the morning back to the cottage, scary and not exploring the island more. We have a 16 month old son, I’m an auditor and my busy season just ended, we were so tired and spent so much time just sleeping and relaxing on the beach, while not shoppingJ. We came home well rested, my Wife is happy and so am I. Almost a perfect trip.
***Have lots of photos and once my Wife downloads them will post them to this thread
I want to say a huge thank you to the forum, I am a TA fan but this forum, at least for St Barts is much better and unique, you can see that the people who regularly post and answer questions love the Island. A big thank you to DavesMom, KevinS, JEK, TIM and STBARTHOPPER who answered so many of my questions, its appreciated.
This was our 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] trip to the island in less than year, our previous two trips were long weekend getaways, and this time we stayed a week. On all the trips we flew from Miami to St. Barts on AA but the first two times used St. Barts Commuter Airline from St. Martin to St. Barts, we didn’t like the customer service and worried that if plane which only had one engine failed how we would land or get to an airport safely. So we tried WinAir this time, their planes have two engines and the service is a lot better, however the planes look so much older. One of the mornings on the island I decided to research the safety record of the Twin Otter, mistake, so many accidents are attributed to the model. We love the island and wish that one of the airlines would get new planes that have better safety records than what is currently used now. We want to come for a 2 or 3 week vacation with our young son and Mother-in-Law but my Wife swears she will not put our family on the small commuter planes, shame because the ferry seems like such a hassle.
Day 1 - we arrived in St. Barts late in the afternoon and Pascal from BarLoc car rentals was waiting for us with our rental, a convertible Mini Cooper, what a difference this car is over our previous two rentals of a Fiat Abarth convertible (a great recommendation by forum members when I asked about alternatives). The Fiat is by far the prettier car and seating more comfortable than the Mini but the Mini had the power to go up the hills without the lag felt in the Abarth when it tried to find the right gear to go up steep hills and the Mini is a full convertible so much more fun than the Abarth. We arrived at Hotel Emeruade this is was our third time at this property and as a couple can’t imagine staying anywhere else on St. Jean beach. We stayed in the one bedroom beach front cottages; they really are on the beach just steps to the water and views of the Rock gorgeous. These cottages have a full kitchen with an outdoor bar area, covered terrace with an extra fold out canopy. The front French doors have an electric roll shutter that at night we closed giving us almost complete darkness and reduced the noise (not much to begin with). The service at the hotel is lacking, terrible bar with staff that have no idea how to prepare cocktails, no restaurant, no pool (but we have the sea just in front and if we wanted a pool scene would have gone to South Beach), which is all OK with me because less than a 5 minute walk on either direction on the beach is Tom Beach or Sand Bar. The first two trips we paid approximately 350 Euros per night ½ the price of Eden Rock with a better location and on par with what Tom Beach was charging for their beach front units (without the late night noise). This time we paid 580 Euros per night and I wasn’t too happy but when comparing it to a Villa rental or Eden Rock still represented a good deal, being on St. Jean beach was a priority for my Wife who felt comfortable sun tanning and swimming topless and me within walking distance of beach bars. The calm water, action on the beach, beautiful people and sights, can’t imagine staying anywhere else. If we come back as a family of 5 or 6 needing 3 rooms we will have to rent a villa and the choices limited on the beach. I would highly recommend the beach front cottages for couples, who are coming to experience the island, love the beach yet still want some of the amities of a villa. If you’re all about the service and resort amities guess that one the luxurious small hotels on the island would be a better choices. The first day after picking up the car we checked in, took a quick shower and went straight to town, my Wife convinced me that we could do a couple hours of shopping and she would be satisfied. Haha! The opposite happened, we went to Laurent Effel first and only shopping stop. It took almost two hours but Anna who is beautiful and a wonderful salesperson gained up on me with my Wife, we ended up leaving with an Alligator and a Python bags, several wallets and a Python clutch plus shoes. Afterwards we walked to Cote Port for dinner, a special note about Anna and Cote Port, last year during our first visit we bought a couple bags from Anna and asked where to go for lunch, she recommended Cote Port as the place where all the locals go. We went and within 10 minutes of arriving Anna and Eric arrived, they saw us and sent drinks over to us (we didn’t buy that much) such a classy couple and we ended up talking with them about their sons, life on St. Barts, etc. What a special experience. Back to Cote Port, we started with a bottle of Laurent Rose champagne and it was so good
to celebrate my Wife’s purchases. Both of us had the grilled calamari appetizers which I think is the best prepared calamari dish I have ever had anywhere. My wife had (and not sure about this) Dorado tartar which was the fish of the day and she loved it. I had beef tenderloin steak with mushroom sauce which was terrible, the mushrooms had been soaked in brandy and all you could taste is brandy in the sauce nothing else, the steak which I asked for as medium was very very rare. We finished dinner sharing desert, their version of profiterole stuffed with ice cream, yum. Busy first day, we ended it by sitting on the beach, opening another bottle of champagne and admiring the beach and Rock.Day 2 – This trip I brought from home a French Press as I discovered so many places on the island used Nespresso, most of the Nespresso pods are made with the cheap quality coffee beans, Robusta beans:cower:. I am food, coffee and alcohol snob my friends know better than get me started about quality, which should always come over quantity. Boiled water and made fresh coffee made with locally roasted Sumatra coffee we brought from West Palm Beach. The pastries we picked up from Marche U the night before where a little stale but better than what we can get at home and it was so relaxing reading, drinking coffee and watching the planes land. This time I noticed more planes coming in for landings over St. Jean beach than on previous trips. One small white plane with two engines seems to land every morning around 7:30am and it would fly over the beach to land, I suspect it was commercial in nature and curious to find out. As expected and feared my Wife woke up talking about Les Soldes and going shopping later in the afternoon. I’m not surprised; she loves fashion and works for the most luxurious department store in Florida as a personal shopper. Even as I write this, her co-workers, management and clients are going crazy over the clothes that she bought on the island and wearing to work, St. Barts fashions are very suited to the weather in Florida. Last year she bought several types of the temporary gold and silver tattoos that look like jewelry, one of the managers saw it at her store and they started carrying it….she got no credit L…lol. We made plans to go back to town in the afternoon, she laid on the beach topless and I went to the beach bar at Tom Beach, so disappointed. Except for Manny didn’t recognize any of the staff from last year and the bar was empty. It was staffed by someone named Tom who was so disinterested in serving unless you were someone he recognized then he would cheer up and greet them like old friends. The other bar tender a pretty girl named Anna-Lize (sure I’m spelling it incorrectly and she is named after a perfume that my Wife knew) seemed overwhelmed at trying to serve customers at the bar, manage and serve those on the lying on the beach chairs on the beach. We went back to town in the afternoon, visiting a couple small shops then Marina, my Wife bought several items from Marina and the owner, just like Anna as previously mentioned, is pretty, smart and almost as good as Anna at selling. I have a strong back ground in sales, love selling and appreciate when others do it well, which means good customer service too. We then walked to Nina Rosa and this has to be one of the best shopping experiences ever….for me J and the only thing missing was some nice cocktails to enjoy the show. The store was on sale; almost everything had been marked down, some as much as 70%. Staff at the store, very pretty and helpful. My Wife spent over an hour picking out at least 30 to 40 items and then I got to sit on a nice comfortable couch while she tried them on and modeled them for me. Lucky me, and she is the model type. We ended buying 10 or more clothing items, we went to town a couple more times just so she could run in a pick up something else she liked and later convinced me to buy from Nina Rosa, the salespersons got to know us well over the week. Happy Wife, happy life and the prices were very reasonable, spent less than the Alligator bag. That night we decided to each at the cottage, cheese, Parma and other meats, lots of wine, very relaxing evening.
Day 3 – No shopping yeah! We drove around the island a bit brought back lunch from Maya’s to go. I was disappointed this time with Maya’s to go, it was a staple on out last 2 trips for lunch on the beach but this time I found the prices very steep and food quality didn’t match the cost. Shrimps were over cooked and bland, salads just ok, I did try a plantain salad from them, which was a first and it was very good, will have to find a recipe and try it at home. That night we walked to the Hideaway restaurant and had another amazing experience, I think it isn’t just the food, beach, topless sun tanning or shopping that makes St. Barts so special, it is the amazing experiences and beautiful people (yeah a lot have the looks but it’s also the inner beauty that count most) that we are lucky to meet and have on the island. We went to dinner at the Hideaway, they have either a new pizza chef or new pizza oven not sure which exactly but our waiter recommended to us that we not have pizza. We ordered drinks, and the Mojitos were great, noticed that everybody was ordering pizza! In fact people where coming and picking it up. So we decided to order pizza, the look from the waiter, priceless you could tell he didn’t want us to order pizza and told us it would be almost an hour wait. We didn’t care, weren’t in a rush. While waiting for the pizza we met Hafida, I think she is the owner or one of the owners. She came to our table to check on service, etc. Paulina and Hafida (another pretty woman, it’s like all the pretty woman from France have moved to St. Barts, awesome) started talking about fashion and children. We had dinner, pizza had amazing flavor, only compliant that the crust in the middle wasn’t crisp. As we were leaving Hafida came running over and invited us to join her at her table. She supplied us with endless Rose wine and wouldn’t let us pay, we spent hours talking and of course she recommended some more places to shop to my Wife, met the Chef, their new DJ, so many regular customers and them we moved to another table introduced us to more locals (think it was staff from another restaurant or bar) more Rose, etc. An amazing night.
Day 4 – Of course by now you can predict what’s going to happen, more shopping. We went to La Grain de Sel for lunch, it was very quiet but we really enjoyed the lunch. I had a curried goat, a first for me and it was so good, Paulina had their special a lamb stew which was excellent. Service was OK but the food made up for it. We decided to come back before leaving for lunch or dinner it was that good. Went shopping visiting a couple smaller shops, names I don’t remember and bought only a couple items. Of course we spent part of the day at the beach and swimming. That night went to Baz Bar and had some really great Sushi, loved the presentation in the oversized cocktail dish, my only wish that Sushi restaurants would serve more local fish, it always seems to be the same fish types, yet with so much local fish there should be a lot of variation by location. They had a cocktail special that night, kind of reminded me of a rum punch with ginger that I loved. The service was very good at Baz and there was some sort of Celebrity eating at the restaurant and it was fun to watch people get so excited. Met a couple from Germany sitting next to us, the husband a huge fan of Jimmy Buffet and it was interesting how much the Buffet culture influences people all over the world, we had fun.
Day 5 – Jewelry shopping! My Wife had been so focused on clothes that she completely forgot that she wanted to go shopping for some pearls. We went into town that morning and walked to several jewelry stores, Les Artisans felt more like an art gallery than jewelry store, Gold Finger (think that’s the name), Diamond Genesis and one other but we ended up at our favorite, Fabinne Miot. Left with a couple pearl necklaces as gifts and a one of kind gold and black pearl pendant for Paulina (I’m going to post it on the forum), she provides such excellent service and prices, highly recommended. Hoping she takes us up on our offer to come visit us for the Palm Beach jewelry show, her designs and products would do so well at it. We drove to La Grain de Sel for lunch arriving at exactly 12pm. We had a very strange experience and wonder what’s up with the restaurant. Arrived at 12pm, its empty, we still go in, the staff are all eating at a table and the same waitress from the day before came to greet us (we left her over a 20% tip previously) she said they were just opening and to have a seat. We went to the same table as before, it has 4 seats but is very shaded and being such a hot day wanted to sit there again. The waitress said we couldn’t sit there@@@@? We asked why? Her reason because it was noon and maybe the restaurant would become full, at that time we were the only people in the restaurant, it didn’t make a sense but we sat at a table for 2. We then waited 15 minutes, still the only customers and no one had come by to give us a menu, offer water, or take a drink order. Paulina got up to ask what the daily specials were, the answer, chef hadn’t arrived yet and they didn’t know. What! Daily specials, especially the Creole food type require lots of preparation and at 12:15pm not to know what you’re going to offer for lunch strange. We are very polite, fun, nice and good tippers so I don’t think the behavior of the staff was personally directed to us. We got up and left, this restaurant deserves to fail. Good news we decided to try Kike-E-Mo’s so close to us, last year we came June and July, they were closed. It was very good, staff very personable and I had a nice discussion with the owner, might never go back to Maya’s to go if Kike-E-Mo’s is open. I had an avocado salad, huge guacamole fan; the salad was very similar in taste but a bit more acidic and large chunks of avocados. My Wife tried the mango salad with cherry tomatoes the owner said it was her husband’s family recipe. With the salads and couple well made sandwiches took them back to our beach cottage for one of the best views on the island. Several bottles of champagne long nap, more champagne some snacking and woke up the next day, excellent relaxing day.
Day 6 – We spent this day mostly on the beach, it was Sunday and I went to the bakery in Lorient for the first time, OMG pastry heaven. I think they thought I went overboard and I did, I bought almost 10 different types of desert pastries….for my Wife, she is 5’5” weighs 104lbs and eats as much chocolate and pastries as she wants, not fair. Additionally bought a couple prepared dishes like curried chicken and different types of baguette sandwiches, quiches, etc. We had coffee, left over champagne and amazing pastries that morning. I walked up to Tom Beach to watch a paddle board contest, boring and rigged for a local to win. We decided not to do Nikki Beach, maybe we will again on a future visit when we can go with a big group, I feel it would be more fun. Went into town that night looking for somewhere to eat, poor planning, and so many places were closed and ended up at Cote Port again. Food was good, nothing to really write about, we were leaving the next day so we went back to the cottage and tried to finish off rest of the bottles of champagne and wine in fridge.
Day 7 – Paulina woke up; she had been thinking all night about a pair of shoes in a particular color that she didn’t buy from Anna at Laurent Effel, so I called Pascal and delayed dropping the car off by 20 mins. We rushed through breakfast, packed, check-out and went to town again, Paulina was so disappointed the color of shoes she wanted had been sold but that didn’t stop her from buying a couple more pairs and more wallets as gifts. Arrived at the airport in a rush 30 minutes before our flight left, no problems no hassle really like WinnAir. Hated that we had to leave security, stand in line for almost an hour at the AA check-in counter then clear security again, seems like a waste of time and in efficient, our first two trips we traveled with only carry-on and didn’t have to leave the security area in St. Martin, would recommend this to anyone who can do it, if for a week or less, next time we will only do carry on. Arrive back home safely and missing St. Barts.
A couple final thoughts: We had a great trip and St. Barts is our favorite Caribbean Island for vacation, so unique and special. We will be back maybe for a 5 day trip in July. We are planning a longer trip with our family for next year and we got the opportunity to visit a couple Villas, one of my Wife’s clients from Palm Beach asked her to check out a couple properties for their visit later this year and we liked several although they weren’t on the beach. Biggest regrets not going on a catamaran, not making it to Le Ti St Barth, I wanted to visit it badly but the thought of driving at 2am in the morning back to the cottage, scary and not exploring the island more. We have a 16 month old son, I’m an auditor and my busy season just ended, we were so tired and spent so much time just sleeping and relaxing on the beach, while not shoppingJ. We came home well rested, my Wife is happy and so am I. Almost a perfect trip.
***Have lots of photos and once my Wife downloads them will post them to this thread
