St Martin/St. Maarten, Pasanggrahan Royal Guesthouse

We stayed at the Pasanggrahan (sounds like Pas-ah-gran) Royal Guest House in Philipsburg. This was once the Governor's home and the Dutch royal residence as well (Parking is in tight quarters in front of building and security is there all night - we arrived about 11:30pm). Pasanggrahan is St. Maarten's oldest hotel, located at the Head of the bay (looking from the water to the beach it is on the right side of the bay, the foot is, of course, on the left side). We chose a room with a small safe so we could relax without having to take too many valuables with us on our outings. We have been spoiled by staying at fancier hotels in the past, which provide a blow drier and complimentary coffee. But this is not a significant reason to not enjoy being at the Pasanggrahan. We never smelled any bug killer yet did not see even one bug while there.

Our room was on the third floor overlooking the harbour.

The third floor rooms have a high ceiling. The air conditioning is not strong, but a ceiling fan keeps the room air cool (during the night you might even want to pull up the covers). The room was fairly spacious, includes a balcony, 4-poster king size bed (although a bit firm for our taste) and is furnished with period furniture. Our bathroom included a rather large shower. The bathroom also had a small window, mostly for venting. We normally stay at hotels that are more modern, but this was a nice change of pace. On our stay our room was listed as $148/day. An extra fee was added that amounts to a tip (often referred to locally as a Service Charge) for room service. Add on $22.20/day plus $7.40/day for tax making our room $177.60/day. We usually vacation using our timeshare so forgot about the extra add-on items until after-the-fact. This was our mistake, not their's.

FOOD

I am not normally a food reviewer but understand it helps to know what to expect. So here goes for some of it.

The Pasanggrahan restaurant is really very good. It's open aired. You are likely to find it still open when many others have closed for the night. Their breakfast and dinners were very tasty, and cost about $22 for two including coffee, tax, & the 15% Service Charge. I recommend their pork chop dinner as it is excellent and quite a sizeable portion as well. The coffee refills are at no extra charge. Note that the tax and tip (Service Charge) are included in the bill, as is done at several restaurants we dined at. I suggest you ask before leaving a tip, or not leaving one, as not all restaurants add the tip to the bill.

We ate at a few other restaurants. Chesterfields is a short walk toward the cruise ship dock and is good. We ate there 3 times for breakfast. The meals for two were about $18. I don't recall if the tip (Service Charge) was included.

An excellent restaurant for Italian food is Laguna. It is on the road from the SXM airport, about mile towards Philipsburg and is directly beside the main runway. The excellent coffee refills are an extra charge. Their food was the best Italian food I have had in a long time. It's a bit pricy. Two meals and coffee came to about $44, which included the Service Charge and tax.

If you have a need for it, there is a 24-7 restaurant called Cappuccinos on the main road between Simpson's Bay and Philipsburg. The espresso coffee is very good and should wake you up, however there are no free refills. Again, we didn't think to ask and thus the 6 cups of what we thought was just coffee cost $12, which was added to our tab. We just presumed the refills were free as is often the case in the US. Not necessarily the case on the island.

Another place we ate at was a little spot towards the Foot of the boardwalk. The Harbor View restaurant has local style meals at reasonable prices and fair sized portions. More importantly, they tasted good. The coffee refills are at no extra charge. Add your own tip here.

One last restaurant was an Indian one, Shiv Sagar, on Front Street, across the street near the Pasanggrahan, and above a music store. Our first ever Indian food was quite good also. Service Charge and tax are included in the bill here also. The window seats are nicer for viewing the street below but the air doesn't flow as well there. Most of the rest of the restaurant has ceiling fans that keep you cooler.

We slept in every morning with the exception of the trip to St. Barts. On that particular morning we ate at Cappuccinos. The food was not great, but not bad either. As it's a 24/7 eatery I will give it a grade above average for food. The coffee actually was good as well.

If you are on a tighter budget you will also find Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonalds. The KFC we found is just before the turn from the airport to go to Philipsburg. The McDonalds we found is on Front Street in about the middle of town (meaning no disrespect to the Head and Foot of town, but this ironically places it about at the belly of town, pun intended).

Our trip to St. Maarten was very nice, but we probably shopped too much. One of our biggest regrets was that we didn't take time for snorkeling. In fact, we never made it into the water on this trip. For the first time in many years our suitcase with swim gear never got opened. But strange as it seems, we did get to relax more than we usually do. You are somewhat forced to relax as Island Speed is generally slower than what most vacationers are accustomed to. low yourself down and enjoy it. We did, and that made the trip far more enjoyable.

We went to the tropics to avoid the heat as Denver was having a heat wave. OK, so it was far more humid in the tropics than in Denver. We didn't get rained on even once.

Flowers in the wild were not seen often as the land seemed dry. In this sense we were disappointed.

FLIGHT

We flew American Airlines from Denver to Dallas/Ft Worth with and felt we had walked back to Denver (or so it seemed) in their huge terminal,grabbed a quick bite, and then get to our departure gate. From D/FW we flew to San Juan, Puerto Rico and had enough time for another meal before catching our puddle jumper to St Maarten. We left Denver about 9:30am and arrived at the hotel about 11pm (3 time zone changes). We're early risers normally (4am often), but slept until about 9am the first day. The return trip was simply reversed. However, on the return flight someone opened our luggage and failed to place a TSA card noting that it had been opened by them. Our lead crystal vases in one suitcase might have caused some concern with the X-ray machine. One boxed vase was opened but both were still there and nothing seemed to be missing. Our carry-on bags contained 2 Lemoges vases, which are more delicate.

CAR RENTAL

We got a rental car from Ace Rent A Car from the internet and arranged to be met at the Juliana International Airport (aka SXM). We got a Hyundai Elantra 4-door sedan for only $118/week. It wasn't a large vehicle, but you probably don't want one on these roads as they are sometimes narrow. We arrived at SXM about 10:30pm and the car rental man met us at the airport's exit door holding a sign with our name on it. He does not have a location within the airport proper so we followed him to the parking lot. By then it was about 11pm. The rental car agent drove ahead of us in his own car and literally took us to the hotel door. It's a good thing he did, as we likely would have missed it on our own. One minor item with the car was that the dome light didn't work. Good thing we brought an extra flashlight to leave in the car. Ok, so it wasn't Hertz, but the price was really good. We didn't expect to spend too much time in it anyway.

Watch out for speed bumps as they can be anywhere. They aren't well marked so you might have little warning you are about to hit one. They aren't small either. If you're out with traffic you will notice other cars ahead of you slowing down considerably for these. Take this as a warning and do the same or you might leave an axle behind. Be extra cautious if you are hurrying to catch an early flight. You probably won't have traffic ahead of you for the warning.

We later found the roads on the French side needed some work, but you can get around without much trouble, except on a side road maybe.

Front Street is a one-way street from Foot to Head (explained below). If you want to get around the city faster then use Pond Fill Road.

TIP

You likely will get approached by someone to provide you with some sort of gift in order to get you to a timeshare or a vacation package. We had some time one morning so accepted the time share visit, for which we were given $100 toward our cruise to St Barts. You take a taxi (free) to and from the timeshare. You are told the presentation is only 1 hour long. Ours was 3 hours as a casual form of tag-team was used to keep you occupied and hopefully still willing to buy. With the day largely used up by the end of the visit we decided to shop some more. The next day we went to St. Barts.

Frankly, if we had it to do over again, we would have skipped out on St. Barts (of course, had we NOT gone, we would always have kicked ourselves for not going to see what it was like). We learned, just before shoving off, that most of St. Barts stores close for about half the time we were to be there and would reopen shortly after we were to leave (their version of a siesta?). Had we known this prior we would have worn our swim suits and walked to a nearby beach on St. Barts. I must mention that almost everything is very expensive there. Most of the shops are very high end. We found an ice cream store and got a single scoop each ($8 for us both). Euros might be required but we found the US dollar was widely accepted.

CAUTION

A couple of days later we were convinced to try scratch tickets. As expected, one of us won (how else would they get people in the door if someone doesn't win something?). We were led to a nearby building for another vacation travel deal. We were tempted, but walked away and now are glad we did. Be very cautious on these deals if you consider buying into it. It is rather difficult to contact them afterwards we found out. We were reconsidering our decision, but the fact that 3 different contacts provide the same wrong (transposed) number had us concerned. These items raised too many Red Flags. Now we are glad we made the decision to not make the purchase. Our scratch ticket prize is supposed to be mailed to us, but we don't expect it to ever arrive. I won't mention the company by name as that is not the purpose of this review. However, I want to warn people to be alert and I believe that our opinions should be passed on as they are relevant.

SHOPPING ON FRONT STREET

We shopped Front Street. AND shopped. AND shopped some more. We never made it to Back Street (one block inland) so we don't know what was there.

The cruise ships have a dock near the Head of town. If there is only one ship in port then the stores refer to it as a slow day. There can be 7 to 9 ships in port in high season. Each one normally stays less than one day. We encountered one our first day there and another ship the next day. The rest of the time there were no ships. Good haggling time for us!

To their credit, the various store personnel never badgered us to enter their stores. There are an estimated 70 to 100 jewelry stores alone on about mile of Front Street. Granted, once inside, they want to sell you something as they feel once gone, you won't return. They'll try to make a great deal for you. You have to know if you want the item or not. If you're not sure, then you probably won't be happy with it afterwards.

We had a store credit from Tanzanite International that we wanted to use. This was the primary reason for selecting St Maarten for our vacation. Tanzanite International had a Ceylon blue sapphire that was just what my wife wanted. There was more value left on the credit so we got a ring for me for a small amount more. After an previous disappointment, Tanzanite International have now regained our faith. There are 3 T.I. stores in Philipsburg alone. The main store had a salesman that didn't seem too interested in us so we left and found another T.I. store. They treated us very well at this store, and later at the store near the town's central taxi stop.

For those that do not realize it the cruise lines (or their shoppers guide?) are paid by selected jewelry stores to recommend their stores to the people on the cruise. These are usually the larger stores, but with so many jewelry stores on this street I would, and did, feel confident enough to visit and buy in other stores.

Since we were planning to go to St. Maarten we decided to take along one loose gemstone. It was a large, fancy cut, Topaz we wanted to have placed into a basket of some type for a necklace. We tried for 3 years and could not find anyone local to do it for a reasonable price. We knew in advance that there were A LOT of jewelry stores in Philipsburg, so we thought "Why not try there?". This was a secondary reason for the trip to St. Maarten.

We were told to haggle over prices and we did, and they did too. One of the problems is that there are so many stores that it is difficult to recall which you have visited already. If you are interested in a store ask for a business card. The street addresses aren't easy to spot but they're usually around somewhere. St. Maarten is a duty free island and there is no sales tax on purchases. Philipsburg has stores that sell jewelry, linen, and electronics primarily and about in that order.

There are also a number of casinos, but on the Dutch side only. These are not usually together, but are found at random on the Dutch side. We played the slot machines and did well enough there to allow us to get an even nicer ring for me at Tanzanite International. If you are used to Ticket In-Ticket Out slot machines you will be surprised that is not so easy to change from one slot machine to another. You might have to call for an Attendant, or sometimes take a paper receipt to the cashier, in order to collect your money.

FRENCH SIDE OF THE ISLAND

We drove from Philipsburg counterclockwise around the island. At the border there is only a marker that states you are entering the French side. No border guards or anything. I completely missed the sign on the return trip.

While on the French side we drove to the Butterfly Farm. The side road to it is far from good, but having driven on dirt roads in the mountains of Colorado it was easy for us to navigate the way. The reward of the butterflies is well worth the short drive in. They are beautiful. We didn't stop anywhere else on the French side and regret not doing so. The wind was too strong that day to go to the beaches. A week was just too short of a time to see and do all we hoped to.

Being from Colorado we aren't used to the high humidity and were uncomfortable if no breeze was blowing. We did get bug bites even through our socks. Bug spray with DEET had no noticeable effect. We never saw mosquitoes so don't know just what was biting us. Sizeable red blotches would appear and itch. Even not scratching them doesn't provide relief.

We used some Euros in St Barts and in the French areas, but they're not always needed. ne shop owner was pleasantly surprised that Americans would actually have Euro traveler checks. Another was disappointed because she then had to calculate the price difference.

Word has it that the beaches on the French side are generally 'clothing optional' (topless) beaches with some areas allowing the Full Monty. As we never made it to the French beaches, let alone the Dutch ones, I can't verify these facts.

Hmmmm. Is that why my wife wanted us to shop so much?!